What is death and why does every living thing die? It is the common thread of life, but still a mystery. It is observed since the beginning, and nothing can be said about the afterward.
Death remains the final frontier, the nail in the coffin for every human being, who can wander through life without experiencing anything else, but will share this finality no matter the lifespan.
So, does science have any answers? Not really. Science still does not know what consciousness is. It cannot define death like it cannot define life, gender, or any thing else.
What about hell, which every major religion teaches of. Does that exist and can science explain it? Well, before defining hell, there is the present reality. What should this be called? It is not just 'reality,' which doesn't explain the situation. What we live in now, can be described as a kind of hell, heaven, or purgatory, depending on who you ask.
Some enlightened, based, chad might describe reality as heaven, because he has reached the pinnacle of satisfaction out of being. A starving Marvin in a jungle who has limbs chopped off by roving gangs might say he is already in hell. The boiling pot of water they cook his body may well describe hell exactly.
But science proclaims reality as a neutral, dark matter substance, that doesn't feel one way or another about any thing. Humans just happened to be meat blobs floating in space, experiencing pleasure and pain to further the species future of pleasure and pain. Death is the final destination no matter the course however.
That would be convenient, to be meaningless, pointless blobs of grey matter, it really puts everything in a black and white perspective, it is easy to digest on television from science comedy cartoons; but this ideal rejects reality the same way it rejects death. Because if every thing is meaningless, death can't hurt any one.
Death is not a permanent state of being. State is not a permanence, or it'd be called not state. Before becoming a human being, there was matter and being. And after death there remains being, whether the consciousness of the human being still remains is the question.
Before death there had to be life. An animation of matter that was not yet alive. And before life there was something even before that. We can’t know for sure what that was before life. But death is one step towards something for sure, we can be sure of that because steps follow one after another. Death isn't a random step towards the nihilist's phantom. It occurs because the organism is too old or unhealthy, or suffers some accident that causes the matter to die.
Then, since death is as natural as life, there must be another step, and many more, after death. The existence of matter has no expiration date. It continues, even in its rottenness, into something brand new. Soil turns decayed matter into new life. Life doesn’t end with death. But for the individual who experiences death, this isn't the end either.
Why if that were true, the steps would truly have an ultimate conclusion. Let me illustrate.
A baby is born after many thousands of years of reproduction. This baby is an extension of lineage much older than itself. However it is both younger and at the same time senior to all of its ancestors because it exists in a sequence much older than its ancestors, who were born in a younger earth.
Then after death, which follows its ancestors, this baby also dies. What happens next? He may have surviving children. But what else? Did the life amount to nothing more than offspring? No, the children are their own independent beings, not continuations, but sharers of the baby's reality.
Then for the baby who dies. His body rots and every thing goes into soil or other organisms. What happens to the baby? He is dead. His body is worm eaten and now dirt or what ever. Does the baby as an identity cease to exist? Sure, legally speaking he is deceased. To those who knew him they will never speak with him again, at least physically, because he has taken the next step.
But does this conclude the adventure of this baby? I don’t think so. That's all science does. Measure our current reality but it doesn’t know a single thing beyond death, because they cannot go into death and measure things to return to the living to explain what happens next. This puts the religious type to obviously conclude that there is some thing after death.
Hell and heaven. I will cover hell because heaven and the few who get there, have no problems once they arrive, their best course of living has rewarded them with something better than the present living.
Hell is an important topic of discussion, precisely because most people are there. 99% at least, of the dead, and currently alive, will be filling its quarters with eternal suffering and stuff like that.
Heaven is not a point of discussion because there are no problems to discuss. Those people who go have reached their cycles.
But in hell, well there are many implications of suffering and eternal damnation. And society really fears death, even though the scientists and state propagandists say YOLO and you're just dead matter, well people don't swallow the shit so well. They know in their bones and heart they don’t want to die, not because life is so great and living forever sounds swell. No actually, many Marvins prefer death over their physical suffering. Even then suicide is a rarity.
People want to live because they know there is something after death. It is an intuition that isn't taught by schools, religions, or what ever bullshit they say made this be. People fear death not because of eternal nothingness and non-being, resting without sensation for eternity. They fear death because there is hell and its very very real.
Nightmares of children and adults can attest there are many scary things beyond our vision, beyond our scientifically peaceful reality of death and suffering without consequence.
The hell which people fear is the worst place any being can go. And the Buddhists know it too. They want to escape all pain of that place and the non-religious are of course in denial of anything that isn't scientifically provable, because that's the cope. Suffering is an emotion that isn't science. It is death and horror beyond imagination.
People will continue to die and go to hell. This is inescapable. What really needs to be done is well people must accept this and really stop avoiding the inevitable, with their material bullshit that science says matter.
So in conclusion, since life is something which came after non-life, and death followed life, it follows that there will be something after death that isn’t life or non-life, but the culmination of these all because we are not a cohesive organism but individual organisms that must face the music all on our own. Our ancestors who are in hell aren’t going to lead us by the hand for the first mortgage payment in the hellscape. We will be shoved one by one into the flaming lake of fire because of our own individual lives, the actions and non actions we each did of our own free will.
Hell will be a great amusement park like experience, if instead of pleasure that we were expecting from the Mouse, we will be suffering much horror and stuff like that instead and the regret of denying this reality is really the greatest tragedy of all.
I enjoyed reading your post. I think you made some good points regarding humanity's fear of death and intuition and that these should be taken into any account as to what happens after death.
I also appreciated your point about a new baby is an extention of an ancient heritage, and that it contributes to our understanding of "steps" in the pattern of life on Earth.
I disagree, however with some of your conclusions. One example concerns heaven and hell and how we should behave in our lives to ensure we enter heaven.
Even though I don't think you have made a convincing case for an after life of heaven or hell, if I were to accept that conclusion, I still don't understand how you would be qualified to explain how each of us should behave to gain entrance into heaven.
Aren't there numerous religions claiming the authority on how to do this? They can't all be right, because they are often in direct conflict with each other. I don’t have to go any farther than Islam vs Christianity or even Catholicism vs the Reformation to make this point.
If there is a heaven or hell in an afterlife, it does us humans little good to know it if we are unable to know what is required of us to enter heaven.
What makes you sure that you know the way into heaven?
Cheers!