What do I get....?

I was watching an interview with Christopher Hitchens the other day and it got me to thinking. I started thinking of how interesting it would be to get Hitchens' perspective on death and religion now that he's passed to the "other side". I mean, who knows where he's at, if he's anywhere at all; but the interesting thing is that Hitchens was so sure of his non-religious (or atheistic) beliefs - as many religious or "spiritual" individuals are about the existence of an after-life - it would be interesting to hear what he had to say now that he's actually experiencing whatever it is we will experience.
Now certainly I would be more interested in hearing from my dead grandparents, or other dead relatives, or other dead people that I know, but the majority of the people that I know that are dead (in fact, I can't think of one that is not) followed a religion, and most of them followed Christianity which believes in the existence in Heaven and Hell, so the outcome whether you're good or bad is pretty much already known. Alright, maybe known isn't a fair word, but every religious person has some conception of what they expect to happen when they die; whether that means going to Heaven or going to Hell. Whereas, a person who doesn't have a religious belief (or doesn't believe in a deity) really expects nothing to happen when they die, and therefore any alternative would be an amazing wonder to behold.
This is why I think hearing Christopher Hitchens' perspective on his own life after death would be interesting. If nothing happens, as Hitchens believes, at least we would get a biting satirical rift  by Hitchens on the futility of religion and the idiocy of believing in something serves no purpose in life, and obviously even less so in death (ironically failing to recognize that his state could be caused by his lack of faith even if a deity did exist, so he would never know the difference). Or, more interestingly, would be Hitchens' take on an existence in either Heaven or Hell. I imagine he wouldn't even be frustrated living in Hell, because at least it would give him fodder and free-reign to further debase religion and God, because he would ask what type of god actually creates humankind with free will, but then damns them to eternal pain and anguish if they don't worship their creator (possibly justifiably so). I imagine Hitchens would be annoyed by Heaven; not only because of the unchanging feelings of bliss, but because it would be further evidence of the pomposity of God to actually reward people who worship that which has created them, all to his own glory. God created the universe. Created humans. Gave humans free will. But then only gives happiness to those who worship him. Hitchens would say this is the height of egomania.

Of course we respect the right of religious freedom...

I had to comment on something that I heard in the Republican debate the other day (yeah, I know, discussing the debates is getting old, but this is touching upon another topic). In his closing argument, Texas Governor Rick Perry said that we in this country need to get back to religious freedom and moral values - meaning that he wants the country to stop embracing religous freedom of non-christian religions, and instead adopt strict Christian moral principles.
This seems to be a long-running, but seldom spoken, open hypocrisy within the conservative ideology, that reveals an intolerance on the part of many conservatives, even going into a presidential primary.
I'm not so naive to believe that we have a complete freedom of religion in this country. I'll even concede that there is a certain amount of religious speak within the formative documents of our country and that many of our founding fathers were representing some form of religious moral values in creating the laws from the outset and moving forward. However, the founding fathers, regardless of their personal religious perspectives, explicitly wanted to create a separation between church and state, and create a freedom of religion. A freedom of religion means the express right to practice freely whichever religion or lack thereof that one might choose; and separation between church and state being the unequivocal declaration that no specific religion should dictate the positions of our politicians or policies. The specific documents that these ideas were included in are moot, but the fact that the founding fathers had such foresight in creating them is not in dispute.
But over the past 30+ years, conservatives have begun to define religious freedom specifically as protecting Christians against the gross infringment of other religions and beliefs upon their precious moral values (too snarky?). While it's true that around 75% of Americans consider themselves Christians, we are still a country of laws, and not a theocracy. Therefore, while we decry Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world who have theocratic regimes, the moral majority, Christian conservative right, still push harder and harder to make Christian moral values the values of our whole country, even going as far as changing laws to comply with Christian morality.
Either conservative Christians don't understand or don't care that their denigration of minority religions in this country, along their religious laws, morals and customs, is simple hypocrisy, and specifically antithetical to the Christ-principled creation of their religion. But I suppose all of this is nothing new...