Your Soul, Free Will and Afterlife in Heaven or Hell: Part Two

The soul, free will, and the afterlife consisting of Heaven or Hell are among the central tenets of the Christian religion, and because they are central to the human psyche, fall within the providence of anthropology, hence natural history. All have philosophical baggage attached. In two cases, the soul and the afterlife, that baggage is a rather excessive amount.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Concept of an Afterlife: Heaven, Hell or Other:  It should come as no surprise that we have some sort of internally hard-wired need to believe in an afterlife, especially one which is pleasant (like Heaven - that of course doesn’t make it of necessity a given). The only experience we’ve ever had has been as a living being. Since we haven’t yet experienced death, it’s in the realm of the totally unknown, and unknowable (until we cross that boundary). At best we are nervous about the unknown, even scared, perhaps terrified – even more so when the unknown is also unknowable. No one has yet be proved beyond reasonable doubt to have come back from the grave and tell us about death, which, is the biggest, most important unknowable of the lot. So, it’s no wonder that believing in an afterlife (or Heaven) helps us overcome our unease.  Despite that, we still fight like the dickens to postpone death, no matter how convinced we are that Heaven awaits! Anyway, let’s look at some specific questions that suggest that the concept of Heaven is, as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock would say, ‘Illogical’.

Firstly, I have to assume that Heaven is an actual physical place with a defined location. That is, if it’s to accommodate humans (and animals?), and presumably the humans are physical (in order to see, hear, touch, etc.), then you need a physical location – the exact place and size are immaterial. So, we have a third dimensional Heaven, that experiences the passage of time (not everyone arrives at Heaven’s Gate at the exact same moment), and allows an existence of physical objects that can be touched, seen, heard, tasted and smelled. Translated, Heaven has a physical location within our Universe and has the properties central to mass, energy, space and time. That said, the ultimate fate of Heaven, and therefore ultimately your ultimate fate, rests with whatever the ultimate fate of the Universe will be. Either prospect is bleak. If our Universe, of which Heaven is but one suburb, ceases its expansion and begins to contract, then it ultimately comes together in a Big Crunch, the mother of all Black Holes and presumably goes ‘poof’. On the other hand, if it continues to expand for all eternity, then ultimately the suburb of Heaven will be totally isolated from the rest of the diluted Universe; dark, freezing cold, and absolutely boring! The idea of spending eternity – absolute infinity - in one place, no matter how heavenly, must ultimately prove to be depressing. In fact, such an existence one could argue would be pure Hell! Lastly, there’s this scenario that as space ever expands, more and more ‘dark energy’ is created (because ‘dark energy’ is a property of space itself), and ‘dark energy’ is a repulsing push-apart force. It is postulated that there will be ultimately enough ‘dark energy’ in the Universe to firstly rip apart clusters of galaxies, then individual galaxies, then their stars, right down to the level of molecules and atoms. This Big Rip (obviously) scenario ultimately has the fate of the cosmos having a Universe composed of nothing but the absolute un-rip-able elementary particles. Presumably, Heaven and all it contains will be ripped to shreds as well.

Anyway, before the end of the Universe as we know it, okay, so you arrive in Heaven. What do you do? Apart from the wings and the haloes and harps bit that is, I would assume that Heaven would be a pretty boring with eternity stretching out in front of you. If they don’t have your favourite beer on tap in Heaven, are you really in Paradise? What do you do in that great cosmic eternal waiting (for Armageddon presumably) room after you’ve read all the National Geographic’s or Woman’s Weekly or Reader’s Digests from cover-to-cover for dozens of times? Do you have hobbies in Heaven? Do you have some kind of nine-to-five job? Are there cultural events and libraries and dining out available? Do you form new relationships, or are you stuck with the old ones? What about shopping – supermarkets presumably are necessary to feed a body that still has a physical essence. Presumably you also need water and air. If so, where do they come from?

Let’s start with one obvious question, what do you look like in Heaven? Presumably you must have some sort of appearance so that others can recognize you (I can’t imagine you go around wearing a nametag). Do you look the same as that you that died? That could be tricky if you died all mangled up in a car/plane/train wreck, or had your atoms scattered to the four winds at ground zero at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. What if you died as a six month old foetus? What if you died with some body parts of someone else or had plastic surgery – is your appearance that of before or after? We could assume that everybody in Heaven is given their appearance that reflects what they did, or would have, looked like at age (pick a number, say) 21. But how would Mum recognize her six month old foetus, or a child recognize their father when the child wasn’t born say until daddy was already 55 years old?

Let’s say you died with essential artificial body parts. What’s the status of your health in Heaven? Presumably you are restored to perfect health, so if you have an artificial heart I gather you get your old organic heart back, even if it ‘died’ decades before you and had long since decayed away. If you were mute, or deaf, or blind all your life, can you now speak, hear or see? If you were old and senile, presumably you’ll have your memory fully restored and razor sharp in Heaven.

How do you communicate? Is there one universal language in Heaven which you instantly master the moment you get there, no matter what your previous languages or language skills or in fact if you died before ever learning a language?

How do you get on with people in Heaven who you didn’t get along with when living, like maybe your neighbour, or boss, or ex-spouse, or that bully who pushed you around in school? Is everybody lovey-dovey with everyone else?

Do you have any natural sexual desires in Heaven? What about sex? I take it as given that you’re not allowed to, or can’t, reproduce (despite the edict to ‘be fruitful and multiply’). But is a Heaven without heavenly pleasures really Heaven?

So, a physical Heaven appears to be a somewhat difficult can-of-worms to deal with.

On the other hand, maybe Heaven doesn’t have any actual physical reality (there’s no matter, no energy, no time, and no space) and it just houses nebulous non-physical souls that exist in total isolation. That’s a rather depressing concept.

Either way, Heaven is illogical. Oh, the same sorts of arguments apply equally to Hell.

Forgetting Heaven for a moment, could there be an afterlife but no God? Yes, of course, but (there’s always got to be a ‘but’).  The ‘but’ in this case is that it’s possible, providing that you can provide a natural, as opposed to a supernatural ways and means of transcending life to life-after-death, and that I doubt you can do. Since I reject a supernatural explanation, and since you can’t come up with a plausible natural one, then I conclude that there is as likely as not, no supernatural God (or gods) that can provide this afterlife service. A natural afterlife would be akin to being a citizen of a country that has no government; an afterlife without any infrastructure. But (there’s that ‘but’ again), maybe there is a natural, well naturally artificial anyway, explanation for an afterlife after all.

I refer to the idea noted above that we might exist in a computer software simulated cosmos. If our life is simulated, so too may we, after being deleted from the alive-and-well, full-of-life software, reappear in another software program called Heaven or Hell (or maybe Spirit World). Now I know nearly all of you gentle readers will reject the idea that you are just a simulated being in a computer generated universe. However, I conclude that you take the idea seriously, since it just may well prove to be your one and only ticket to an afterlife!

Your Soul, Free Will and Afterlife in Heaven or Hell: Part One

The soul, free will, and the afterlife consisting of Heaven or Hell are among the central tenets of the Christian religion, and because they are central to the human psyche, fall within the providence of anthropology, hence natural history. All have philosophical baggage attached. In two cases, the soul and the afterlife, that baggage is a rather excessive amount.

The Concept of a Soul: The trouble here is that ‘the soul’ has so many diverse definitions that it can mean just about anything you want it to mean. Probably no two people would describe the concept in the exact same way. However, I think we can agree that an egg cell has no soul – however you define it. A sperm cell has no soul – however you define it. Therefore, at conception, you have no soul. No cell has a soul, therefore no tissue (a group of common cells) has a soul, therefore no body organ has a soul (an organ being composed of various tissues), therefore you, as a collection of various organs and organ systems must have no soul!

So when did you get a soul (assuming there is such a thing and that it has some degree of tangibility)? Did you get your soul at birth? Perhaps it was on your first birthday? Perhaps you received you soul when you became of age, say 21. Perhaps it’s just as likely that you don’t receive a soul at all – there is no such separate and apart physical thing you get from any higher authority. Perhaps your soul just develops or evolves naturally as part and parcel of your growing maturity over the years, in which case it can’t be totally separate and apart from the body. In other words, if you develop a soul akin to your developing a sense of morality or spirituality, then it can not ‘leave’ the body after death. Translated, your soul (however you define it) isn’t your ticket to an afterlife. It resides somewhere in that brain-thingy of yours, locked somewhere within that maze of biochemistry that collectively makes up your grey matter. As an aside, if you were to clone yourself, would your clone have a soul?

The Concept of Free Will:  To start will let’s examine the paradox of free will. Here’s one of many contradictions. You insist that you have free will. Therefore, God has no control over your actions. Therefore, God is not an all-powerful being. A God who isn’t all-powerful isn’t the most perfect being that can be conceived of. God has to be the most perfect being anyone can imagine. Therefore, there is no God. Now if God is all-powerful, even though God has granted you free will, your free will is ultimately an illusion living on somewhat borrowed time in that God can revoke that free will gift at any time He choses and thus have His wicked way with you!

Another take is that if God exists, all His attributes must be compatible. If all God’s attributes are not compatible, God must not exist. For example, God can not have His own personal free will and be all-knowing. If God is all knowing, then God knows in advance what He will and will not do. If God knows in advance that He will not do something, then He has no free will of His own. He has no options available to Him but to not do what He knows he won’t do.

Anyway, God has apparently granted humanity, including you, a concept called ‘free will’. That is, you are free to pick and choose between various alternatives, including making choices or decisions that can be described as good, or as evil; moral or immoral; ethical or otherwise. However, regarding such a free will, I would argue that you can never be 100% sure that any choice or decision that you make wasn’t due to the universal laws, principles and relations part and parcel of physical causality that started operating from Day One (the Big Bang event) and thus forever and ever predetermined. You might be 99.999% sure you have free will, and that it was God given, but I can’t figure out any way you could absolutely prove it to any outsider, or to yourself for that matter if you are honest with yourself..

If you accept free will, then you must of necessity admit that causality does not always operate. Just as you, dear reader might refuse to believe in pre-determinism, I absolutely refuse to abandon 100% causality, an absolute cause-and-affect principle, which then forces me to reject free will, even though I do so reluctantly. It gives me no joy to think that what I’m doing right now is the ultimate outcome of the set of conditions that existed at the time of the Big Bang event and that I therefore have no choice since that’s the nature of a clockwork Universe, but it’s the lesser of two philosophical evils for me!

I assume that anytime you, dear reader, make a voluntary choice, that there must have been some causality chain of cause-and-effect happenings that led to that choice vis-a-vis some other choice. Your decision didn’t happen for lack of any reason at all. Put another way, your choice has a foundation. Now I just extend that foundation, that causality chain, back to the initial set of conditions present at the origin of the Universe in much the same way as you can trace your (extremely improbable) existence via the chain of existences of (extremely improbable) ancestors, going right back through the unbroken chain to the first proto-cell some four billions years ago, (a proto-cell which in turn may have come from the depths of space and has an ancestry (your ancestry) extending back untold billions of years before Planet Earth ever formed).  You certainly can’t deny that ancestral causality chain, so why deny a causality chain that ultimately extends back to the Big Bang event and the pre-determined chain of happenings and which leads you to whatever choices you are currently contemplating?

And so ‘yes’, using that logic, you aren’t responsible for your decisions and resulting actions (though I’ll bet legal eagles everywhere would have something to say about that, for that undercuts our entire legal system). But from the point of view of the Universe, it might ask, ‘so what?’ It matters not at all to the cosmos (and to 99.9999% of all life forms, including humanity – past, present and future) whether you deposit money in a bank, or rob that bank!

Just as we have computer simulations (such as ‘Life’, a computer software package) that allow for no free will, that is, everything is pre-determined given the initial set of programmed conditions, could we in turn be part of a simulated ‘Planet Earth’ computer ‘game’ or simulation of someone (something) somewhere out there? Do the characters in a typical video game have free will, or do they dance to the tune of their programmer and player? Can you, dear reader, prove to me (or anyone) by some chain of logic that you or we are not the product of or existing in a simulated and therefore no free will, computer generated, virtual universe?  If not, then you have to admit, however remote the odds, that that possibility exists.

If the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of reality is correct, free will is an academic or moot point since all choices or decisions are enabled. To explain the ‘many worlds’ concept, it boils down to the interpretation that whenever you (or anything else – animate or inanimate) are forced to choose, to make a decision, all possibilities are entered into. So, you have this free will decision to do X or to do Y or to do Z. You actually end up doing all three, and thus there’s a new universe Y, and a new universe Z, which splits and branches off from universe X because you choose via your free will (or so you think) to choice X. In reality, you also choose Y and Z. Therefore, no free will was ultimately exhibited.

However, if I were a betting man, I’d bet that humanity does have free will, although that in no way actually proves the existence of God. Ultimately however, does it make any real difference whether you, dear reader, have free will, or the illusion of free will, as long as you actually believe you’re your own boss? 

By the way, can you have free will in Heaven? I mean can you, of your own free will, commit a sin in Heaven? If you can, well you shouldn’t be in Heaven at all and God has stuffed up, being all-knowing, in letting you in, in the first place. If you can’t commit a sin in Heaven, then God has revoked your free will!

To be continued…

Universals of the Human Condition: Part Two

Every human is unique in terms of their worldview. Every society, every community, every suburb, every village, town, city, county, state, country has a unique identity. Every culture, race (ethnic grouping) also has a unique identity. Yet there are certain universals seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all narrower divisions. Some of these universals are mysterious; some not so mysterious. Here are just a few of them.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Isms: We all feel more comfortable with our own kind. We tend to associate with others our own age, our own race, our own sex, our own religion, our own nationality, etc. Those who differ significantly from the standard ‘me’ get isms attached. Racism; sexism; nationalism, etc. are cases in point. It’s all discrimination on the grounds that someone else isn’t virtually your clone physically and/or in terms of worldviews (belief systems). 

Music: Music is an art form designed for the ears. There probably hasn’t, isn’t or will be anyone of any race, creed or culture, male or female, old or young, who hasn’t, doesn’t and won’t respond positively to music of one type of another. Exactly why however is a bit mysterious. Music, apart from bird calls and other animal ‘noises’ wasn’t part of our natural primate ancestral background. You could hardly call crashing surf, thunder and howling winds musical. And while bird vocalizations and animal sounds have survival value – species recognition or identification, warning/danger cries, use in mating rituals – ‘humans’ even multi-tens of thousands of years ago didn’t need to sing or strike rocks or blow across reeds to communicate. Though the saying “music sooths the savage beast” must have some significance, music appreciation seems to me to be more by design than by natural evolution. However, if we appreciate music by design, who was the designer and then what was the possible purpose behind that appreciation? If all music vanished from human society overnight, our life and civilization would still go on. Music is peripheral to our survival – then or now.  

My (fill in the blank) Right or Wrong: The blank could represent spouse, child, family, town, county, state, country or even planet if faced with an alien presence or threat. That applies equally to other belief systems like religion or sports team. The logic of course is faulty in the extreme, but that is beside the point when you’re engaging in your debate.

Mythical Creatures: There is no human culture on Earth that hasn’t stocked a make-believe zoo with all manner of fantastic creatures. From dragons to thunderbirds, griffins to the hydra, Grendel and Pegasus, unicorns to hellhounds, they’re all there and a whole lot more besides. Modern equivalents like Godzilla are clearly marketed as entertainment and fictional; not so marketed were the ancient beasts of ‘mythology’ according to our ancient ancestors. Why did they have a need to ‘invent’ so many weird beasties? Why did they believe these creatures existed? Perhaps the alternative explanation is that these mythical creatures weren’t quite so mythical.

Rank Has Its Privileges: Are all men (and women) created equal? Not on your Nellie! In very society, past and present, and no doubt future, there, have been, are and will be the haves and have nots. That’s nearly as universal and certain as death and taxes.

Rebellious: All humans tend to be rebellious. It’s just about as universal as it gets, and I don’t mean kids throwing temper tantrums or something confined to teenagers. ‘Thou shall not’ usually gets interpreted as ‘Thou shall’ if I can get away with it! I mean who hasn’t exceeded the speed limit now and again; parked in a ‘no parking’ area or overstayed their parking time limit; dropped that piece of litter when no one was looking; engaged in inappropriate Internet use at work or maybe nicking a few pens and paperclips; failed to return a borrowed library book on time; or told the occasional ‘little white lie’? What about fudging just a little bit on your tax return and declaration?

Resurrection: We’ve all seen the Sun ‘die’ at dusk only to be resurrected at dawn. The Moon ‘dies’ at New Moon, but then comes back gradually growing brighter each night until it’s Full Moon, then starts to slowly ‘die’ again until it does ‘dies’ again – death and resurrection. Some plants ‘die’ in the winter, but are resurrected in the spring. A lawn that’s been killed (mowed) usually survives to grow back again. A lizard can lose its tail but seemingly that tail is resurrected and grows back. So, viewing all these things, it’s not surprising that humans think that they too will be resurrected after death.

Symmetry: Humans love symmetry, which might tend to reflect nature as nature often exhibits symmetrical traits. A sphere has perfect symmetry; symmetry in two-out-of-three dimensions might be a cylinder; human’s exhibit symmetry in only one-out-of-three dimensions; left-right. But symmetry isn’t confined to just geometry though that’s probably the main kind of symmetry that one finds in nature apart from the biological like predator vs. prey or male vs. female. Humans apply symmetry to things that are relative and/or the more abstract – right vs. wrong; tall vs. short; black vs. white; heaven vs. hell; up vs. down; hot vs. cold; yin vs. yang – the list could be extended for quite a few more examples from politics to economics. However, as a general rule-of-thumb, for any concept humans conceive of, they will also conceive of an equal-and-opposite concept. Symmetry seems to be in our genes.  

Three ‘R’s’: Humans can be both literate and numerate. My cats couldn’t read the most basic three-year-old primer, no matter how much instruction I gave them. No cat can read and understand the word C A T; their paws aren’t equipped to put pen to paper and ‘typing’ or pawing on a computer keyboard is going to create gibberish. Still, cats specifically, and the rest of the animal kingdom in general, get by thank you very much without any need to read or write or calculate/crunch numbers. In fact, many ancient human societies or cultures never developed writing at all, and therefore reading, though they probably did calculations for various purposes, even if just in their head. Still, the odds are pretty good that the human species would exist today even if none of us or our ancestors ever had developed an ability to read and write. Yet being literate and numerate is one of those universals of the current human condition.  

Time: All life forms on this planet, except those companion animals we’ve forced into adapting to our ways, set their biological clocks by natural time, usually the rising and elevation and setting of the Sun; the duration of daylight. To a lesser extent, the rising, setting and phases of the Moon play a role. All life forms on this planet, apart from those who live their entire life in eternal darkness – deep inside caves, deep underground, or in the abyssal depths – probably have the concept, assuming they have IQs high enough to have concepts, otherwise an awareness, of a day – sunrise to sunrise – or more likely half-days – sunrise to sunset, and sunset to sunrise. They certainly have no awareness or concept of, nor requirement to have any awareness or concept of, a second, minute, hour, week, month, year, decade or century. These are all manmade constructions of no use and of no interest to other living things. So, while nearly all living things are aware of ‘time’, only humans, universally, have turned natural time (night and day) into artificial time – like time zones. Every culture has had a go at forming a calendar – how many units per day; how many days per week; how many weeks per month; how many months per year, and finally what to do with the leftover residue. Even in terms of the ‘day, there’s nothing natural about midnight – one could take any point and call that the end of the old day and the start of the new day, as apparently we have some sort of need to label the days that other living things don’t need to do. Ditto that idea when it comes to the end of our labelled year. There’s nothing special about New Years Eve. It’s a totally artificial concept. Only humans attribute some sort of uniqueness to it. To everything else on this planet it’s just another ordinary moment in a lifetime of ordinary moments. And Daylight Savings is as artificially phoney as it gets even if it does have, or at least did have, some practical application. Birthdays are another artificial and phoney concept. If anniversaries have any meaning then your ‘birthday’ should be the anniversary of your conception, not when you were hatched. We may also observe the birthday of companion animals for various reasons, but to them, it’s a non-event that has no real significance to them even if the concept had occurred to them. They require neither birthday card nor birthday presents and don’t feel insulted when they don’t appear. 

Trade: Trade is a universal of the human condition. It’s just exchanging what you have (skills, money, goods, crops, etc.) for what you need or want (money, food, sex, other goods and services, etc.). That trait, bartering, buying and selling, exchanging goods and services has gone on seemingly as far back in history as records allow for. There are no parallels that I am aware of existing in the animal kingdom, not even among our closest primate ancestors. Animals often share, but they don’t engage in commerce.

Visual Art: Visual art are art forms designed for the eyes, though they could also be natural like scenery – sunsets, cloud forms, seascapes, etc. Art appreciation is universal, although it’s often a case of different strokes for different folks. Paintings obviously come to mind, even Playboy pinups; eye-catching or pleasing architecture qualifies; 3-D sculptures obviously; dancing, the theatre and in more modern times cinema. The issue here is why art appreciation like music appreciation is appreciated or has a resonance at all since art appreciation has no obvious survival value. There’s little to be gained standing around admiring the striped patterns on a hungry tiger that’s got an eye on you that has nothing to do with its art appreciation. However, it would be interesting to be able to communicate with some of the higher IQ animals (birds and mammals) to find out if they appreciate the beauty in a rainbow, those northern or southern lights (the Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis) or the stalagmites and stalactites that’s in their cave. Do flying birds have an abstract appreciation of their aerial view or is it just so much ho-hum? At least we suspect that pigeons in the park appreciate the statues they sit on!  

Worldviews: I’m right; you’re wrong, even if it’s just opinions at stake. Today, there are no doubt a zillion debates that go on, on Internet message boards around the world that X is better than Y or vice versa. At least, despite the vehemence, nobody gets physically hurt! That’s not of necessity in a face-to-face barroom encounter, or High Noon on the highway – road rage. Every day in every way, say over morning tea breaks at the office water cooler, over breakfast or dinner at home, differences of opinions make themselves known in no uncertain terms. The human trait of loving an argument; ever willing to engage in one at the drop of the proverbial hat, is a universal one. It’s perhaps another side to territoriality. You stake out not a physical territory, but a non-physical one, yet defend it just as passionately. It’s even been formalized in debating societies or in public debating forums and political institutions like Congress or parliaments. 

In conclusion, many of these human universals are pretty unique relative to our animal kin; many appear to have had little or no role to play in our evolutionary survival. Many are therefore somewhat anomalous. But let’s not forget about all those gifts from our alien ‘gods’. If true, that really would help explain a lot of these anomalies.

Universals of the Human Condition: Part One

Every human is unique in terms of their worldview. Every society, every community, every suburb, every village, town, city, county, state, country has a unique identity. Every culture, race (ethnic grouping) also has a unique identity. Yet there are certain universals seemingly shared across the board by the great majority of individuals comprising any and all narrower divisions. Some of these universals are mysterious; some not so mysterious. Here are just a few of them.

Well it’s obvious that all humans share various and fundamental universals – death and taxes! Quite apart from that famous observation about certainty, we’re all susceptible to diseases like cancer, the flu and the common cold. Also universal are heart disease and heart attacks. We all have at least one phobia and we share common emotions as well as a common anatomy and body plan. We all need to fill what’s empty; empty what’s full; and scratch where it itches. Are there any exceptions for the need to sleep, perchance to dream? Let’s explore several other universals, though this is not meant to be a universally exhaustive list, which are innate to our internal psychology and/or based around external realities.

Afterlife: Humans are probably unique as a species in having a before-the-fact awareness that we are going to kick-the-bucket. I doubt if any other animal has an awareness of the concept of their own death. However, relatively few of us probably want to die, though the alternative, if you stop and think about it, immortality either with or without eternal youth, isn’t very pretty either. Anyway, it’s not surprising that we have come up with the next best security blanket going – an afterlife. Alas, wishing for it doesn’t make it so. You’d really think that if an afterlife was reality then somehow some definite proof would have filtered back to us aging mortals, just to shore up our belief system.  

Bigger Is Better; Size Matters: If you ask any child or adult to name several dinosaurs, it’s a sure bet they won’t name the turkey-sized ones! Then there’s the Guinness Book of Records that accents things that are big, bigger, biggest. Men want larger private parts; women bustier busts. And ask any Texan what really matters! We’ve all heard of keeping up with (and surpassing) the Jones family! They’re not called ‘Tiny Macs’ but of course ‘Big Macs’ and we’ve all heard of super-sizing!

Civilization: There are universal mythologies that don’t credit humans with any smarts in our march towards civilization. Important knowledge wasn’t hard won by us; rather it was given to us by the gods. You name it; it was a sort-of from on-high Xmas gift. Fire is one example; agriculture another; weaving yet another. If it wasn’t for the gods, we’d still be in the Stone Age, primitive hunter gatherers.

Clothing: To a greater or lesser extent, the human species now covers itself with clothing. Sometimes this is for protection, for the sake of art (so-called ‘fashion’), for conformity, and because society says so. That wasn’t always the case and in terms of animal life on Earth we’re the lone exception in having that kind of nature of body covering.

Cooking: When you think about it, cooking food is somewhat anomalous. All other life forms are adapted to eat all their nutrition in the raw state, be it the flesh of plants or the flesh of animals. And so too must early humans been so adapted, and even today we do eat a lot of plant flesh uncooked. The central ingredient required for cooking was fire, but whether the use of fire for cooking was obvious to Blind Freddy is doubtful. Fire was useful for light; for heat; for keeping large dangerous wildlife at bay, but cooking? No doubt the first cooking experiences were accidental, but that art has spread through to all societies. Cooking is now one of those universals. And while we think nothing of eating cooked meat now, and usually avoid raw meat, it must have been quite the brave individual to actually try cooked meat, say a dead animal ‘cooked’ in a bushfire after a lifetime of eating nothing but the raw variety. 

Creations: This one stumps me, unless we were told by the ‘creators’ or those more in the know that there were creations. I doubt we could figure out that things get created from personal observations and historical records. Consider the Sun. Every day we see the Sun rise and set. We ask our parents and they say that in their lifetime everyday the Sun rose and set. They say that their parents said the same to them, and their parents before them. We consult historical texts from thousands of years ago, and what do we read, well Mr. Sun rose and Mr. Sun set, it rises and sets, rises and sets. There is no person or history we can consult who can suggest anything other than the Sun rising and setting forever and ever and ever no matter how far back you go. If you could ask the dinosaurs their observations, well they too would have to tell you about that rising and setting Sun. Why would you not assume that the Sun has always risen and set? Translated, based on all available evidence you would have to conclude that the Sun had no starting point and based on probability, won’t have an end point either. The Sun is infinite in time. The Sun had no creation. The same argument applies to the ground underneath your feet – Planet Earth is infinite in time. Since you can’t actually question the dinosaurs, you have no reason, no contrary evidence not to believe humans as a species didn’t always exist. So how come you have “In the beginning God created…”? Why does every mythology contain creation stories – for the cosmos, the Sun, Earth, plants and animals, even for humans? - Something’s screwy somewhere. 

Deities: We don’t like mysteries. Well actually we do like mysteries as long as we can solve them to our satisfaction. If we can’t explain a mystery, there’s a convenient ‘out’ or explanation at hand. We attribute that unknown to some power higher than our own; a supernatural deity in other words. Unknown forces become ‘acts of god’ or godly miracles or ‘god works in mysterious ways’, etc. And so the unknown is explained. Mystery solved. That satisfies our curiosity, at least in the short term. That doesn’t mean supernatural deities really exist, but since we’ve named so many thousands of them they probably do exist – as extraterrestrial flesh-and-blood ‘deities’ that is. Regardless of their reality, a deity is also very useful as a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong, instead of blaming yourself, which would probably be a better reflection of reality. Deities can in the popular imagination get up close and personal and if you piss one off – not all that hard to do apparently – that explains all your troubles from the insignificant to the minor to the major, even life-threatening. And it’s a very universal human trait to shift the blame and find a scapegoat.

Fiction: When animals communicate with each other they tell the truth. Bees communicate where a new food source is; animals cry out warning/danger sounds and there is no doubting by those in hearing range the truth behind the message; dogs bark for a positive reason and whatever that reason, it’s representing something about the animal’s perception of reality. Humans however universally invent stories; untruths; fictions; lies; which sets us apart from other animals. The purpose of these fictitious inventions are varied – entertainment value; make a moral/ethical point, etc. Some fiction goes under another name – advertising! However, storytelling is a universal human trait; a universally absent one in the rest of the animal kingdom.

Fire: One thing common in major mythologies is that fire was a gift from lesser gods even if they nicked it first from higher authority. Prometheus is the obvious example though there are numerous parallel examples from North American Indians, even Polynesia and referenced in the Books of Enoch. However, that’s rather odd. You’d of thought that the ‘discovery’ of fire; the ‘gift’ of fire, was universally a natural event – no gods, no gifts, required. It would be a rare environment that didn’t experience natural forest or bushfires due to lightning strikes, or via lava starting fires from active volcanoes. Such natural sources should have prevented any need of an unnatural source, which is one via a deity.

Future Happenings: Animals have way too much on their plates to concern them in the here and now to worry too much about tomorrow. Even if they do it’s probably a case of ‘whatever will be, will be’. That’s despite some animals squirreling or storing away food in the good times for when times are not so plentiful. That’s just pure instinct on their part, not an original foresight concept thought through and through. Humans on the other hand from all walks of life, then and now, are obsessed with tomorrow and beyond. Maybe that’s because we alone know that our demise looms in that future of tomorrows. And so there’s a flourishing industry in astrology and soothsaying, prophets and oracles, tea leaves and chicken entrails. It’s all nonsense of course except to true believers, and perhaps, for deeply embedded psychological reasons, that includes the majority of us, even if we won’t admit it.    

Ghosts: That reports of and beliefs in spirits or phantoms or more commonly ghosts are universal throughout all societies, past and present. They probably have origins in people latching on to any possible evidence that proves there’s an afterlife. If the concept of an afterlife is a security blanket for humans facing inevitable death, ghosts are a security blanket that supports an afterlife. But, how do you then account for phantom trains and buildings or ghost ships or other non-living objects that sometimes appear as ghostly images? Something’s screwy somewhere – yet again! Actually that screwy-ness might be evidence that we’re actually ‘living’ in a simulated universe; we’re just virtual reality not real reality and phantom trains say are just the residue of previously overwritten software.

Humans First: Actually that’s ‘humans first and foremost’ in all things where there’s a conflict between what humans want and what everything else needs. Translated, when it comes to the use of land, humans vs. the environment for biodiversity or endangered species, it is humans first and foremost. A typical case history is the Amazon Forest vs. humans – humans 1; forest 0. If humans want to use land that’s home to an endangered species – screw the endangered species. If farmers have crops attacked by wildlife – kill the bastards! Universally, it’s called ‘progress’ and nothing stands in the way of human progress – even other humans as the native Amerindians found out. Ditto that for the Aztecs, Incas, and the Australian Aborigines too. I recall here the Spencer Tracy narration for the film “How the West Was Won”, narration that’s not exactly something that’s politically correct in today’s society: “This land has a name today, and is marked on maps. But, the names and the marks and the land all had to be won, won from nature and from primitive man.” [Easterners heading westward would] “Look at a mountain and see a watershed; look at a forest and see timber for houses; look at a stony field and see a farm”.  That’s how the west was conquered. Actually it’s all God’s fault of course. We take direction from His Holy Words and He instructed us to be fruitful and multiply (like rabbits) and take dominion over the Earth, its lands, oceans and all its living inhabitants. He, being all knowing, realised we’d get carried away and go way over-the-top and stuff things up. That’s His secret agenda – instead of drowning us in another flood, He’ll let us exterminate ourselves into an extinct species! That way God doesn’t have a guilty conscious.

Humour: Humans alone and collectively within the animal kingdom have a sense of humour. We tell and play practical jokes; comedy shows on TV abound as well as feature length comedy films. It’s a rare work of literature that doesn’t contain at least a few lighter moments; ditto most other works of drama. However, the question is why? Humour has no survival value in any Darwinian sense. I mean do your odds of surviving a shark attack just happen to lie in your telling the shark a few dirty jokes thus distracting it while rapidly back-pedalling out of the water? In any event, the transmission of humour usually resides in language, and humans were on the road to civilization way before we had language. So humour and survival do not seem to be linked. So, how do we explain this human trait? It’s universal; it’s yet another example of something’s screwy somewhere. 

To be continued…

Death and All That Jazz

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes”, so the saying goes, and while much has been written about taxes, death is my topic under consideration. The concept or subject of death (and closely related subjects) has (much like taxes) spawned billions of words (and conversations), millions of documents, multi-thousands of texts – and for all of that, we’re still none the wiser when it comes to death, or at least post-death! [Taxes we understand!]

Death is certainly a topic that has interested us, probably since the earliest humans who had evolved the intelligence and language to ponder such things walked the Earth. Unfortunately, nobody has returned from that state, at least beyond any reasonable doubt currently acceptable to mainstream medical science, to tell the still living what death and post-death is all about.

Of course there are lots on anecdotal tales of death and post-death (the afterlife) – religious texts (hundreds of them), tales of ghosts and ghostly hauntings, spirits communicating from beyond the grave, so-called near death experiences (where you get a preview of things to come), perceptions of previous lives (reincarnation) etc. Alas, when crunch comes to crunch, anecdotal tales remain just that, anecdotal tales. Speaking just for myself, I personally can say that (to date) I’ve never had or experienced any vision or visitation or communication from anyone who has passed away into that great unknown beyond, be they pets or parents, friends or foes. If there is an afterlife and its ‘easy’ to crossover and manifest your ‘spirit’ back in our dimension, you’d think there would be indisputable evidence for that by now. I mean, you’d think family; loved ones, who have passed on prior to you would, if they could, manifest their spirit selves to you to reassure you about life-after-death, the spirit world, how you get three meals a day, and how everything and everybody is lovey-dovey. So, either there’s no afterlife, or, it’s not easy to accomplish a spiritual return to say “hi” to previous loved ones. 

One thing is certain, it’s a universal fate, something that we will share in common, not only with other humans but with, at least, all other multi-cellular life forms, from mammals to reptiles, amphibians to fish, invertebrates, and much of the plant kingdom as well. You will boldly go where nearly every living thing prior to you has gone before. I say ‘nearly everything’ in that unicellular critters that reproduce asexually achieve a sort of immortality. In the sense that you, as a multi-cellular critter die, you ain’t unique. You’re not being discriminated against! What perhaps makes humans (collectively) unique is that we alone (probably) have a before-the-fact awareness of our demise. I have to admit I have often wondered whether or not any of my companion animals (pets) and by extension the rest of the animal kingdom (at least), have any perception of their death? Alas, I don’t have the ability to ask, and they don’t have the ability to answer, that question. If they don’t, is that perhaps a blessing in disguise? 

Death is, at least from an ecological and biological point of view, essential. If multi-cellular living organisms were immortal, what point evolution? Evolution wouldn’t happen, indeed couldn’t happen. And how would Nature recycle the stuffs essential to future life if said stuffs remained locked up eternally in currently existing life forms? Eventually all essential life-stuffs would be locked away in existing living tissues and no further life forms could be created as there wouldn’t exist any more of the ‘right stuff’ to help them on their way!

So, what exactly is death? There’s obviously a legal and a medical definition, but it’s probably a tad more complicated than the legal and medical niceties make out. I mean when you (legally and medically) die, the entirety of you, in most circumstances, isn’t dead – yet. One minute after your last breath, most of the individual cells that comprise your body are still very much alive (although it’s apparently a myth that your hair and fingernails/toenails will continue to grow for a while – post death).

Leading up to your death, from a whole body point of view, slowly but surely various cells in your body must be dying – they cease to function – until some sort of critical number is reached. When that number is reached, you collectively die, even though at that time lots of your cells are still left alive and functional, including, I surmise, some of your brain cells, which I also surmise are the critical ones. Even when pronounced medically dead, at least some of your brain cells are still alive and viable. Your brain just doesn’t die on mass as a lump sum in the space of a few seconds.

One saving grace is that in nearly all cases, death results because of oxygen starvation to the brain. Anything which stops the transport of oxygen to the brain will cause death. Such oxygen stoppages include massive bleeding, the heart stopping, your breathing ceasing, choking, an arterial blood clot, fluid in the lungs, etc. Ultimately, something essential is going to fail inhibiting or preventing oxygen from reaching the brain. The state of play as that happens is that you lose consciousness prior to your medical and legal death – in other words, you go to sleep first, then die, or in other words, you die in your sleep. Those final few seconds are trauma free, no matter how traumatic the events causing said oxygen starvation to the brain may have been. In that sense, death is perhaps somewhat akin to something you’ve experienced many times – the act of going to sleep, only in this case, you don’t awaken again. That’s not so bad, is it?  I have observed in my time the final moments of various birds, cats, fish, etc. – the universal I observed is that their final last moments had every appearance of being peaceful.

I’ll grant that there is a difference between losing consciousness while routinely going to sleep – and gaining same as one slowly wakes up – and losing consciousness just prior to dying. There’s the fact that in the former you expect to regain consciousness; in the latter you might well be aware that you won’t. One commonality I suspect is that in both cases you do feel extremely tired, and, as you welcome sleep when seriously fatigued, so to might you welcome ‘sleep’, however final, just because you are exhausted – for whatever reason (loss of blood or just pure old age). In any event, events leading to sleep seem to be the closest analogue we have to events leading to death. [Sort of reminds me of the student’s prayer – “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep; but if I should die before I wake; that’s one less exam I’ll have to take!]

As an aside, I suspect children are far more clued about death than we adults would give them credit for. Even young kids see death in the form of leaves turning colour and falling off trees and eventually rotting; road-kill; mice killed in a trap; dead fished washed up on a beach; squashed insects; the demise of pets (theirs or neighbours); perhaps the death of a neighbour or their friend’s parent, etc. That’s quite apart from simulated ‘death’ experienced via watching TV shows or hearing about real death via the news. Death is, no matter what your age, something academic (even if still somewhat traumatic), since it isn’t yours. It’s only up close and personal when it’s yours!

By the way, I reject that entire visual “life draining out of the victim’s open eyes” concept. I’ve seen the open eyes of cats, fish, & birds immediately pre-death and immediately post-death, and I’m damned if I could see any difference.

A negative, I suppose, is that when you die, you die alone. Even if 100 friends and relatives surround your deathbed, it’s YOU facing death, not they. Even if you are one of 100 passengers in an airplane about to fatally crash – with no survivors - you still face your THE END all by yourself. Perhaps a case where misery doesn’t love or need any company!

Anyway, back to the question as what is or results in death, I offer the following which is pure speculation on my part and probably shouldn’t be taken seriously – probably. My basic premise is that death is the result of the irrevocable lose of “The Inner You” – “The Inner  You” being that part of the physical you that defines or is your personality, wisdom, emotions, memory, ‘soul’ (if you will), sense of self, and all other traits that make you an individual; the individual that you are. That’s the loss of your mind in other words.

I suspect that a clue to death is to be found in those unfortunate individuals who do survive after having suffered a prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain. These ‘living vegetables’ (as it were), while maybe having perfectly functioning body organs or systems, have lost most of their mind – the “The Inner You” - facets, like memory, personality, knowledge, etc. and as such, usually hence require round the clock, 24/7, care for the rest of their natural lives as the ability to somehow get those essentials back is apparently lost.  The hardware is still there, but the software has been largely deleted or at least severely corrupted.

Notice I said immediately above that most of “The Inner You” is gone in these surviving individuals, but not all. Death is the total inability of your brain to further store, process, or add to those “The Inner You” elements. I surmise that lack of oxygen causes those bio-molecules (in the brain) that are part and parcel of housing and processing the inner you -“The Inner You” - to break down, presumably into much simpler bio-chemicals which don’t have the ability to store and process those “The Inner You” elements. Therefore, you lose your abilities and processes essential to such operations, and the longer oxygen starvation goes on, the greater the loss, until “The Inner You” is totally lost, and you die.  Now while that’s pretty simplistic, and there’s probably much more to the death process I’m sure, it’s also pretty probable that lose of “The Inner You” is an essential part of the death process and what death is. Why?

It’s clear that you have an automatic nervous system that functions independently of your conscious mind – you breathe in your sleep; you don’t have to think about keeping your heart beating, and lots of other body processes are on automatic pilot. But, “The Inner You” has a lot of mastery over your physical body too. “The Inner You” (call it the conscious mind) can dictate to your body to walk across the room, or do unnatural acts like very rapidly blink your eyelids for no apparent reason – just because you want to. If 100% of “The Inner You” is lost , the physical body has lost too much of the software (including ultimately the automatic piloting) that’s in charge of regulating or controlling it, and thus the physical body, albeit there’s a lag time or delay, follows the death process that’s already been legally and medically verified. Perhaps all this is an example of ‘mind over matter’ – lose the mind, and the matter goes to pot! [Or, if there’s no mind, then it doesn’t matter anymore!]

All of this may be just a very long-winded way of saying that with lack of oxygen, higher brain function areas are the first to feel the effects and the first to go. And while your physical body could, in theory, be kept on artificial life support for years, what’s the point if there is no longer any of “The Inner You” left in that physical body?

All of the above equally applies to other ‘higher multi-cellular’ animals that also have a “The Inner You” component in them. (Since plants don’t have minds, or a “The Inner You” aspect to them, I exclude them from this rambling.) Anyone who has ever had pets or observed wild animals close up knows they, as humans, are individually unique – with all the traits that humans have, even though they be to a lesser degree. I don’t expect my cats to learn and do calculus though every cat I’ve owned has been unique in his/her own way(s)!

Apart from organic death, there are two other types of death I can think of, but both invoke you not having the reality you think you have. Firstly, if you are just a figment of someone’s dream (or imagination), and they wake up! Secondly, you are part and parcel of someone’s computer software, say as in a video game, and then that someone hits the delete key, or kills you off (if its one of those types of video games), exits the program or turns the PC off. Should the physical you be an illusion, that is, you’re actually a virtual person, a product of computer software (never mind who’s computer), then concepts central to an afterlife, reincarnation and/or immortality are just other software routines that you can be routed towards at the programmer’s whim when the software program that runs the physical you and your environment terminates! The saving grace is that in either case (wetware dreams or software video games) there’s the possibility of a resurrection!

If death is final, no afterlife, no reincarnation, no prospect of immortality before you’re a goner, then the big regret, at least in my case, is never having been able to find out an answer, or the answer(s), to all those questions that’s been bugging me for all (or at least most) of my life! Phooey!