Most Americans age 50 and older believe they are heaven-bound.

You, they're not so sure about.

This is just one of the findings of a survey commissioned by AARP and published in the latest edition of that organization's official magazine, which also included these probably not-all-that-surprising statistics:

94 percent believe in God.

86 percent believe in heaven.

70 percent believe in hell.

77 percent are not frightened by thoughts of what happens after death.

Those are just numbers, though. They are statistics without faces, without lives lived behind them.

A group of seniors meets twice a month at the Neptune Senior Center to engage in a discussion called "Let's Talk About It." One recent afternoon they sat down to consider the AARP survey and their own opinions on heaven and hell, and how to get wherever you're going once you die.

All seven of the Neptune women are over 60, and at least four of them are in their 80s.

All of them believe in God. "I'm 101 percent sure of God," said Helen Colson, 81. "And heaven is a beautiful place."

And every single one of them knows she is heaven-bound.

Diane Jackson has some theological training and is comfortable with the idea that heaven is both a place and a state of being.

Waiting for us

"Jesus said the kingdom of God is within us," Jackson said. "I believe that in some ways then, heaven is both here now and waiting for us."

Bill Newcott is the features editor at the AARP magazine, and the primary author of the magazine article reporting the findings.

"It's my job to dream up story ideas for our demographic," he said. "This seemed like an interesting avenue to pursue. In large part, I think the results probably mirror the population as a whole, although there were some interesting results that stood out."

Among the findings that struck Newcott, he said, were the fact that more women than men believe in an afterlife, and that "as our sample got older they tended to worry less about what happens after death."

No fear

The women at the Neptune Senior Center seem to bear that out.

Given the inevitability of their coming deaths and what they believe awaits beyond that, none of them is afraid of death.

"There's nothing you can do about it anyway," said 83-year-old Fran Pettit. "But I can understand that fear: So many of us live alone."

If death holds no fear for Colson, there are parts of dying that do.

"I've been afraid," she said. "I've been near death, and I was frightened because I was alone. It's not the destination that's scary. It's just that for those last couple of steps on the journey, you want a hand to hold."

Americans 50 and older are downright conventional in their basic beliefs, the study reveals.

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) agree with the statement, "I believe in life after death."

Women are a lot more likely to believe in an afterlife (80 percent) than men (64 percent).

The group of Neptune women were not surprised by the gender gap in the AARP survey.

Barbara Neuman, 68, put it this way: "Men are more concerned with the here and now than in what happens later."

Time seems to have only strengthened the spiritual attitudes of seniors, according to the survey.

"(The average of) those responding said 64 percent of all people get to heaven and many think the percentage will be a lot smaller than that," Newcott reported. "Some respondents said as low as 15 percent of people will make it there."

Among those who believe in hell, their attitudes about who goes there mirrored the poll's results about heaven.

Forty percent of those who believe in hell said "people who are bad" or "people who have sinned" go there.

Seven percent said, "People who do not believe in Jesus Christ" are condemned to hell.

All of the women in the discussion group believed in hell as well as heaven.

"These are the things we've been taught all of our lives," said Beatrice Hector, 86.

But they seemed less certain of envisioning perdition in typical fire and brimstone terms.

"I've always thought of hell as being removed from God's presence," she said.

But none of them thinks that hell is going to be quite as populated as do the respondents to the AARP survey.

And they all thought that heaven is going to be crowded. Pettit thinks close to 90 percent of humanity is going to wind up there.

This certainly beats the relatively meager 66 percent that the AARP respondents figured would be joining them at the pearly gates.

The Rev. Al Acer, of Reformation Lutheran Church in West Long Branch, thinks he understands many of the results of this survey.

In his 36 years of pastoral ministry, Acer estimates that he has officiated at a thousand funerals and ministered to many seniors near death.

"It's been my observation that the more advanced the age of the person, the less fear of death is present," Acer said. "Call it ontological. I believe that we are hard-wired to know that we are mortal, and often, at the end of a long life, we see that mortality as a blessing."

And he thinks that people may become more expansive and more tolerant as they age, even in matters of theology.

"People are like a single-malt scotch," he says. "Over time, it becomes more concentrated. I believe people become more and more like they are as they age. If you are a generous spirit, you will become more so as you age."

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