We fall into the arms of a God because we need deliverance from death. The idea that we can suffer and strive so valiantly on this planet, only to have it all fall to pieces at the moment of our deaths is a frightening prospect. So, some people think we invented God as a wish fulfillment, to protect ourselves from the fear of dissolution.
Because we are disposed to die, we’re uniquely predisposed to the ideas of suffering and death. Death is inevitable, but we don’t necessarily believe that life is. We have a perverse faith in death, and it can prevent us from living our lives. When religion says that sacrifice is necessary for eternal life, it’s demonstrating this belief in the reality of death.
Science can assume the same faith in death as religion can. Science tells us life arose by accident. And many science-minded people belief life may not exist anywhere else in the universe. That may be why we’re so obsessed with the search for extraterrestrial life. Behind that obsession is the idea that life on earth may be an against-all-odds accident. Stephen Jay Gould, the famous paleontologist and evolutionary theorist, called this contingency. And if life is accidental, it’s not inevitable, only death is. Death is a certainty, and lie may not be. Death is thus regarded as more powerful than life. And if life = God, then death is even more powerful than God. Some have said that the dawn of secularist philosophy marked the death of faith. Yet regardless of what we believe, many of us have faith only in death.
This faith in death is not limited to materialist philosophy. The most potent fact in orthodox Christianity is the resurrection. Yet Christianity’s most powerful symbol is undeniably the cross, which represents Christ’s suffering and death. Since many of us have such faith in death’s certainty, but not life’s ultimate triumph, we invest our faith in death, rather than in life. This grim worldview has all kinds of consequences.
Beliefs can’t determine the nature of ultimate reality. They can’t change reality, and thus, if life is inevitable, my investment in the reality of death and its triumph over life can’t make that triumph a reality. Yet beliefs have consequences here, and this belief in the reality of death and its victory over life can make it seem that life is finite, and that it always ends in death. We can convince ourselves that it’s death that lasts forever, and not life. And yet, what proof do we have of this strange proposition?
None, it turns out. No one can prove that there’s no life after bodily death any more than we can prove that there is. It comes down to a decision, to an assumption of what to believe. Yet, whether we’re scientifically or religiously inclined, we can be more honest with ourselves and acknowledge when we place more faith in the proposition of eternal death even when we claim to believe in its opposite. We can admit to ourselves whether we place our faith in death, or whether we place our faith in life.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within