The majority of us believe there is an afterlife and don't even know it. Beyond the fact that America is an incredibly religious country, (it really is, in comparison to most European countries), there is a large percentage of the populous who don't belive in 'God'. For those people, often believing in 'fate' or believing our souls survive our bodily death replaces common religion. Though dualism seems a somewhat laughable notion, and is easily disputed, and quite well, (afterall, it is easier to disprove a theory than to prove it), we all have some secret notion that this isn't all there is to our lives. So is there an afterlife? Now, this all depends on matter and cycling. When did the world start? Most religious people would say that there was no beginning, save the creation, which was 'God's' work. But if 'God' existed, existence as we know it was not the beginning of the world. Without us, 'God' was the sole existence, therefore existence itself. Now, when did existence begin, and by that I mean, basically: Where did 'God' come from? One might say that he always was. Good. That sort of works. If God always was, then our world exists in one of two ways, the first being: forever. The reason this statement sounds a little fantastic is that we, as humans, cannot conceive of the notion of 'forever'. (Reference 'Our conception of 'nothing' and 'forever''.) The second way our world could exist is in a cycle, with no beginning and no end. Of course, a cycle is forever, but in a specific pattern, at least one which our human minds can conceive. So, if this 'God' does exist, causing the world to be forever, then we are also forever, in a couple of specific ways. Matter is agreeably forever. It may change form, but it still exists in the same quantity in the universe. Therefore, our bodies will remain eternally, though obviously not in the form we know it. That's not incredibly helpful in our search for mental immortality. But, our bodies do suggest something about our minds. As it is commonly acknowledged, the body does not remain the same from day to day. Regardless of the growing and then withering that our bodies experience, our cells are constantly dying and regenerating. About every seven years our bodies are 100% different than the body we possessed seven years before. This snake skin shedding of our momentary bodies suggests an attempt for our earthly vessels to keep up with our ever nimble minds, which do not realize their height until our bodies have been decaying for two or three decades. The stamina of our fifty-year-old minds is immense, nothing like our deteriorating bodies. But the something happens. At seventy our minds begin to fail us, often we are ridden with diseases that affect our memory. Are our minds finally beginning their decay? No. The reason is because for every problem the elderly encounter mentally, there is something within the brain that is going wrong. Our minds are simply having difficulty communicating with our brains, which, being part of our bodies, are finally breaking down. But aren't our minds part of our brains? That is difficult to say. However, animals have brains and they don't appear to have minds. (With minds comes free will, compassion...all the things that riddle us with anguish.) So, our mind's failure to show through in old age is yet another problem with our temporary bodies. Now, we know that our material self lives on, but only in matter. So, do our minds live on? Whatever it is that our minds are composed of, it seems unreasonable in a world of eternal matter, to think that they do not as well live on. But, since we see our whole, healthy minds escaping the faltering of old age, what is to say that they would not escape death....whole, healty? And if they do, then we, the essense of us, lives on, forever in this world. So, we are eternal minds.
Unfortunately, we will see (in 'Our Lonely Souls') just how bleak eternity
may be. |
