"I'm not sure. I didn't much understand previous explanations."

"I could give it a try, if we are not presently in a hurry."

"We can spare at least a day."

"Many religions on Earth teach that people who do not believe in them go to Hell. Do you have an understanding of it being reasonable to fear going to Hell if one thinks that's a plausible outcome?"

"Yes. Hell is the worst thing."

"And does it make sense that I did not have a way, in life, to distinguish confidently wrong claims about who goes to Hell from ones that happened to be accurate?"

"...Yes. Because Earth is sealed, and lies are prevalent even without Demons to spread them."

The angel Daniel is crying quietly now.

"So, having been an atheist, I was expecting to upon death have no experiences. When instead I had experiences, and indeed had specifically pearly gate and angel experiences, I thought: oh, at least some things said by people who believed in those things were true. But I didn't know which ones. And it could have, from my perspective, included the ones where I was about to be judged wanting and sent to Hell, for not being a believer in life."

"...You believed things because other people had believed them? Even though you thought they were wrong, before?"

"I considered guesses because they had been put forth by people who were then proven partially right. Like... if someone tells me that the plot of a particular rare book is that the character kills a monster, falls in love, travels to the moon, and then dies there, and somebody else told me that the main character instead tricks the monster, swears an oath of celibacy, travels to Atlantis, and lives happily ever after, but I didn't believe either of them because I thought the existence of the book was apocryphal, if I then discovered that the book existed after all, I'd be suddenly quite alert to the possibility that at least one of them got the plot right. They can't both be right, but it would be abruptly less surprising."

"But you could simply read the book, instead of abstractly reasoning about what it might contain."

"Right, that's what I'm doing now, metaphorically. But if I just saw that it existed, and hadn't yet had time to read it, the speculation would pass through my mind first."

"I don't think heaven-born angels do that."

"Don't speculate about things before you examine them? Wow."

"I can speculate about things by explicitly reasoning about them, but I do not do so by habit. I think I am missing something else. When you awoke and saw the Gates, you observed that they matched descriptions you had heard of Heaven. And from that, you concluded that you were likely at the Gates of Heaven in truth. And from that, you... Concluded that other people who had thought Heaven was real, had spoke truth in other things as well? Is that because observations had narrowed the range of possible worlds, and of the possible worlds that remained, more of them contained the fact that atheists go to Hell than before?"

"Mostly, but also, like - it indicated that the people who discussed those possibilities had contacted reality and weren't just repeating outright fiction."

"A re-evaluation of trustworthiness...? That seems difficult to do."

"Does it? Does this not come up for angels much, discovering that someone you thought was talking nonsense had a line on something worth knowing?"

"I know well that it is in the nature of mortals to make mistakes and on occasion to lie. I know also that some are more prone to this than others. It is very difficult to make an evaluation of a particular person's trustworthiness, if you cannot trust them fully by their nature, as heaven-born angels, or distrust them fully by their nature, as demons. You must carefully review all that you know of them for inconsistencies and lies, and even then some who had been loyal faithful for decades can suddenly fall to sin and betray and lie to their fellows. Even priests who had sworn sacred vows..."

"Wow. Okay, so, like, if you imagine - let's go with literal shades of gray, if angels are all-white and demons are all-black, no humans are going to be either, but if you get a look at a shade of grey in, literally, a new light, it'll look lighter or darker. Discovering that there was any truth to any religions made a bunch of different proponents of a bunch of different religions, all incompatible and all previously dismissed as very dark grey, look brighter."

"...I do not experience this. A shade of grey, to me, simply looks grey no matter what it is next to. I do not perceive the optical illusions that humans do. I see things with great clarity and wholeness. I could compare a shade of grey to the colors nearby and thereby judge it subjectively. But such thinking does not come naturally to me. It sounds as if, to you, it is as natural as breathing.

And I have noticed too that mortals do not oft see the future implications of a thing, the patterns that it forms. When I observe a mouse enter a chimney, I know immediately the immense confluence of things that has led to this, how the mouse acts according to its nature and is influenced by weather, other beasts, human action, and chance, and the myriad small or large changes it can bring, though which possible changes will actually come to pass requires careful analysis. I do not think that would be natural to you.

This, I believe, is why God had chosen to create mortal-born angels. That host had differing strengths and specialties, and differing failures and weaknesses, than the heaven-born."

"Huh. I think that is incredibly interesting and would love to study it more but do not know if it is the best use of the day. What does becoming an angel having been a human entail?"

"I describe to you at length the options for crafting an angelic form from the stuff of Heaven, and the tradeoffs therein. We discuss your needs and preferences and craft a set of choices to fulfill your new form. The major categories are World, Form, Foundation, Blessings, Relics, Vows, Miracles, and Welcomes."

"And there is definitely no communicating with Heaven at all if I want to leave the angel option open, I can't like, look in on my grandma, or anything, first?"

"The miracle of the Spirit can call back the departed to speak with you should they be willing. They are not truly present. It is merely, essentially, a video call. Such things are generally to be done sparingly, but it is no issue to reassure you in this case by calling back a few who you have some personal connection to. I know not how you would become certain of the truth given what I imagine you know now, however."