[Tenchu]

You being an Atheist, selling your soul means losing your heart. I think it ruins the question.

I love my wife, but I'm not very emotional outside that as it is. Saying I'd give up "happiness" in order to live forever, it just doesn't have impact on me.

As you can probably see from my signature, regardless I am not Christian, I often use Christian symbols to express and describe things, as it is what I grew up with and how I learned to reason. So I'll do it that way for the purpose of relation.

Selling my soul, to me, means you sign a pact with a Demon, and in return for your wish, you will venture into Hell with him when your time is done. It is something you would give up your heart for, as you said, mostly out of a dedication to fullfill a revenge or desire.

A King should enlist a Demons help to save his people. A father should enlist a Demons help to save his son. A son should enlist a Demons help to avenge his father. So on.

Someone who wants something bad enough, they'd give up anything to get it. It is someone who gives too far into desire.

Your soul should be considered your prise posession (next to the souls of your loved ones, of course). So giving it up means you want something beyond yourself. You're ahead of yourself; you've gone too far.

Of course, I view going to Heaven as gloating yourself in your own self worship and slap stick desire. Thinking you can end all suffering and actually be a competant person at the same time (which is what heaven promises) is patheticness.

In this sense, right now, without a moments hesitation, I honestly would sell my soul for all eternity to the Demon King if he appeared before me with a single Thai beer and offered it to me in exchange. I'd rather live a lifetime tested in Hell than a moment relaxed in "paradise".

Perhaps my soul is already sold?