Kolbitar & Tuke,
No less a Christian than C.S. Lewis (I believe in
Letters to Malcom, but I'm not at home and thus don't have my books at hand) pointed out that the idea of going to heaven would always operate as a bribe until a person reached a certain spiritual level. And it was certainly in
Letters to Malcom that he made it plain that he would remain a Christian even if it turned out there was no afterlife--even if God said that to give him immortality was not in His power. (Lewis characteristically likened it to a Viking going off to fight with Odin against the giants in the Ragnarak, knowing he was bound to die.)
Edit: That quote about a bribe is right in the essay I mention below--
Religion Without Dogma. Here it is: "Until a certain spiritual level has been reached, the promise of immortality will always operate as a bribe which vitiates the whole religion and infinitely inflames those very self regards which religion must cut down and uproot." Hmmm--that sounds suspiciously like he's saying that a religion or an inidividual that's all about immortality best get over themselves! (He's also arguing that Christianity is not all about the afterlife. I'd agree--although I've known some Christians who talk as if it is.)
In an essay called
Religion Without Dogma, Lewis refutes the idea that a notion of personal immortality is a necessary component in defining what religion is all about. He uses Buddhism and Judaism as his examples. "The system [Buddhism] which is meaningless without a doctrine of immortality regards immortality as a nightmare, not as a prize. The religion [Judaism] which, of all ancient religions, is most specifically religious, that is at once most ethical and most numinous, is scarcely interested in the question."
He's right--Buddhism doesn't see personal immortality as a prize, and Judaism, despite periodic speculations (which are all over the map), is scarcely interested in the question of personal immortality. He may be right, too, to worry that the idea of going to heaven will sometimes operate as a bribe...although that's less likely in Judaism, since it's not much interested, and as for Christianity--well, I'd think most Christians would agree with Lewis that they would remain Christians even if there was no such thing as personal immortality.
And, yeah Kolbitar, I'd think that anyone who joins any religion only to 'get to heaven' (or some equivalent) might, indeed, need to get over themselves.
(I also think such people are few and far between.)
Tuke, there's no afterlife at all in the Torah (I wouldn't count references to the dead in Sheol, since they seem to be, ya know, dead) and very little notion of it in the rest of the Hebrew Bible--Elijah's story not withstanding. There's no formal doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, which doesn't (in Judaism) become firmly established until the Talmud. As for the dry bones--when I hear that chanted as a Haftarah in synagogue, my mind automatically goes to Israel reborn in 1948.