life after death
Imagine two universes: Heaven and Everyone-Else. Heaven and Everyone-Else never touch or interact. A human in Heaven can’t see, touch, smell, taste or use any other measurement tool that could ever be created to observe Everyone-Else, and vice versa.
If such a scenario exists, and we are in Everyone-Else, is it useful for us to spend any time thinking about Heaven? Of course not, because we can’t affect Heaven and Heaven can’t affect us. In this case we can’t prove that Heaven doesn’t exist – but who cares, because it can’t even change one atom of this universe. This is a useless definition of Heaven, because we can’t even get there.
If we change the scenario and say you can go to Heaven, but you can’t come back, then this starts to look like a fairly common description of life after death as defined by Christians. When a Christian dies his or her sole soul leaves Everyone-Else and goes to Heaven and never comes back, (none of that reincarnation bologna). On the way to Heaven, the sole is stripped of sin which can’t ever enter Heaven.
By going to Heaven, we have taken something away from Everyone-Else — our soul. If this is the case, we should be able to measure this transfer of energy and prove that there is life after death. If there is nothing to measure, then there is no life after death.
It is impossible to create any version of life after death, any version of Heaven that does not at least in some way create a measurable effect. If it’s not measurable or observable, then it doesn’t exist and it is like the first scenario. If Heaven can’t interact with us in any way then it is pointless to think about or speculate on the existence of Heaven. If Heaven can interact with us then we can measure it and observe it – and therefore it is part of this universe. If life after death exists we can prove it.
We can take this logic and apply it to everything that we as Christians speculate exists – if it has the ability to affect the universe then we can prove it exists. If it doesn’t affect the universe, and can’t ever affect the universe, then we can’t prove that it doesn’t exist – but it also has absolutely no effect on the universe, so who cares?
April 9th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
That’s more or less my opinion, but I probably go much further with the “who cares?” philosophy. Whether or not there’s a god can’t be proven or disproven, so who cares? If free will is an illusion, at least it’s an illusion that gives us a feeling of importance, so who cares? It’s all fascinating to consider, but whatever decision you make shouldn’t affect the way you live in this world. This is why I prefer philosophical arguments about human morality.
I think the sum of my philosophies on religion can be summarized by the classic rebuttal to Pascal’s wager (which says that it’s mathematically safer to believe in a god): we live in one of an infinite number of universes with an infinite number of possibilities with regard to the spiritual world. Because there’s no way to prove or disprove anything as ephemeral as heaven or deities, no theory has a larger percentage of being true as any other. It’s as likely that there is no god as it is that there is one god, but He will torture you in the afterlife if you decide to believe in Him. Since every theory is as improbable as every other, each one has virtually a 100% chance of being wrong, including theories not yet conceived. So again, we arrive at “who cares?”
Nothing outside one’s experiences can be proven, so there’s no point in believing anything. Cheery, I know, but it’s brought me a great deal of comfort to be able to rely only upon what I experience (while simultaneously understanding how unreliable my experiences are).
It’s also nice that I don’t feel the need to waste my Sundays on meaningless rituals… besides watching football, of course.
-Darrell
April 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
You said, “Nothing outside one’s experiences can be proven, so there’s no point in believing anything.”
My point is that is is useless to believe in something that can’t affect us in any way, even beyond our current and future abilities to perceive the world.
Therefore, God must be measurable, life after death must be measurable, everything that we claim to exist must be measurable and observable either now or some time in the future and if it’s not…again, it’s absolutely useless to think about something that can’t affect the universe in any way. But if can affect the universe, if it can even move just one atom or some other base form of energy that we have yet to discover, then it can be measured! We HAVE to be able to measure God or therefore, God has no effect on us.
My God affects the universe, therefore I have to be able to prove he exists.
This is different than what you said.
April 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Aw, you bastard. You took away all my capital letters. Now I look like some lazy typist / e.e. cummings wannabe. Buh.
-Darrell (whose name happens to start with a capital letter)
April 9th, 2007 at 10:16 pm
First off, I don’t mean to sound like I was echoing you. I used your points as a basis, then turned it into my patented misanthropic viewpoint. It’s what I do.
But like I kinda hinted at, our philosophies are similar, but our personalities translate them into completely different desires. You want to prove a connection between the spiritual and physical, while I don’t see it happening, so I prefer not to care. I think the very nature of a spiritual world means that it’s immeasurable and unobservable (and thus, slightly more logical not to believe in it… or at least not to worry about it).
I have no doubt that there was a greater force that created the universe. Every effect has a cause, and all that. Even the Big Bang had to have a cause, I presume. But whether that force was sentient/intelligent or affects our experiences after we die is something that I think will never be answered, at least by humans. Of course, I’d like to be wrong about that — I’m a big fan of answers. But like anything, I remain skeptical.
-Darrell
April 10th, 2007 at 12:11 am
I think one interesting way to look at the ideas you discuss is to say that if a person truly believes in God their belief will in some way impact who they are, the decisions they make, etc. In other words, belief in God necessarily has measurable results. In Christianese, this would be discussed in terms of faith vs. works–one does not come without the other. However, I think that as soon as we allow ourselves to dwell on the actual process of measuring this impact, we seriously miss the point. God doesn’t always work in our lives in ways that are expected or fully-comprehensible…if there is one thing I have learned it is not to limit God based on my own very restricted, unimaginative understanding of the world.
Very interesting thoughts, Sean. Did anything in particular prompt this train of thought?
It reminds of Luke 2:14-19: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, ‘you have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and shudder.”
April 10th, 2007 at 12:12 am
In paragraph 3, are you referring to the fish or part of a shoe? I will reserve my reaction as long as this remains unclear.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:14 am
And what time zone are you in? Are you in heaven right now, or is your blog published in Europe?
April 10th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
[Be warned, this has grown quite long. Perhaps it’s because I don’t know what I’m going to talk about tonight at PCM and I’m procrastinating?]
Sean, I would agree that the heaven which you describe - something that is a product of modern, individualistic, and dualistic thinking - is, sadly, a dominant theme in North American Christianity.
However, I would argue that a with a closer, more thorough examination of scripture, we’ll find a much more compelling description of heaven. In fact, the kingdom of heaven/God is the subject Jesus spoke of more than anything else in the gospels. Usually it is described as, “at hand,” “near,” or “coming.” These leads myself (and many biblical scholars) to believe that the heaven the gospel writers spoke of had much more to do with this life and this world than an after-live or another world.
In fact, on of the most quoted scripture verses (Luke 17:21) has often been mis-translated. The ‘you’ in, “the kingdom of God is within you” is actually plural. So, a more accurate reading of the verse would be, “the kingdom of God is among you.”
Those early saints who pioneered the Christian faith were very leery of gnosticism and other dualistic (body/spirit, mind/matter) thinking. Sadly, this thinking permeates our culture today, both within the Church (with those who focus only on the “spiritual” or the “afterlife”) and outside the church (as emphasized in the Da Vinci code… mysterious, secret knowledge, only accessible to the “insiders”). Both perpetuate and insider/outsider dichotomy.
But, the early Christians stood firm on the belief that, in Jesus, God is redeeming all of Creation. Even in that whacky book of revelation (with all kinds of fantastic imagery), the author proclaims that God’s will create a new kingdom on earth.
Now we run into problem of measuring this inbreaking of God’s redemption into creation. Given the problem of evil and suffering, how can we take an honest look at reality and find measurable evidence of God’s redemptive work?
Before I attempt to answer this question, I need to take issue with you, Sean, and all those who need some sort of measurable “proof” for the existence of God/heaven/divine/etc in order for them to have any meaning or value. My concern is two-fold. First, there are many realities that drive humanity - love, hate, loyalty, lust, greed - that are pretty immeasurable. Yet, they are nonetheless powerfully influential in our lives and in the course of human history. Second, with my understanding of God as a transcendent, mysterious power, overflowing with love, I would be suspicious of any human efforts to measure or quantify God. In fact, just as many have no use for a God that can’t be measured, and thus verified, by humans, I have no use for a God that can be bound by our human understanding and limitations. While that position may sound like an intellectual cop-out, I find it much more intellectually compelling than both sides of the argument (scientific fundamentalists or religious fundamentalists).
So, if we can’t measure the coming of the kingdom of heaven (here on earth), how can we recognize it, and devote our lives to it (the gospels assert again and again) that we have a part in the kingdom?
Let me ruminate on that one for a bit and I’ll get back to you ;-)
April 16th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
Mia means James, not Luke, but the verse numbers are correct. Other than that, anything I could say has been said by Ben or Mia…