I’m thinking WAY too much today. But I felt like writing it down. If you are extremely religious, dont read unless you are an open person.
Now, no matter how religious you are, I would bet that just about everyone here believes in life after death in some way. I am not religious (i did go to catholic school till 8th grade so I do know something), but I certainly believed in the afterlife. It just seems so “unfair” to us if there wasn’t one. However, I got into a thinking moment sparked from my writing seminar on unknown human beliefs. Now, if you are religious, you dont need any proof or logic to affirm this other than it’s in scripture or you have faith. But the Greeks believed in their own mythology (that is wrong as we know today), and going by facts, there aren’t many reliable facts showing much support for religions. Even religious books do not attempt to explain how the afterlife works, they just tell you it’s there. If you are by-the-book religious, I know that you dont need an explanation. You believe it. But is this just wishful thinking? To go further you really have to clear your mind of things you think are facts when in reality they aren’t facts.
So then we have the things we know. If you are strait up against the proof of evolution, then I suggest not to go further. Evolution happened. The evidence is there, and we can even see evolution in short-term experiments. We know it happens. In science, there is also evidence that humans are not superior to any other living thing, meaning we were subject to the same evolution. This can be seen by how closely our genes match other species. Knowing this, I think of how life was created according to many scientific evidence/experiments. Life was created from non-life, it’s in every biology textbook. Life is made up of organic chemistry and we know life’s main organic molecules can be made from non-living, non-organic molecules; we’ve done it. So then these evolve until they are able to replicate themselves using genetics; that is when life officially began according to the major scientific community.
So here’s my dilemma. We, humans, are basically a fancy holding chemical molecules. How could the afterlife exist before there was life? When these chemicals changed into life (which is marked by when things were able to inherit traits from the previous), it doesn’t make sense for the existence of an afterlife to just suddenly pop up.
Also, what exactly is a soul? Chemically, everything we think, our feelings, morals, everything can be explained using cognitive science. Most people think that when you expire, you can still think like you do and have the same personality. But, these are all created from a complicated build of chemicals, which are concrete things that wont move from this world.
Lastly, we know “non-living” things cant die. Since we are not much different than these, what makes us think we are on a different path? What? Do organic molecules get to go to an afterlife and non-organic dont? Doesn’t seem logical.
I am for sure hoping this is not the case, believe me. But I dont like just accepting something because it seems right or because the opposite is too scary to think about.