Life After Death For Microbes

When you kick-the-bucket in this terrestrial abode and head off into that great eternal afterlife located in an even greater heavenly abode somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules (or equivalent), no doubt you expect an everlasting existence interacting with deities and of course your fellow, albeit also deceased, humans. But what about all the other terrestrial life forms (animals and plants). Don’t they too deserve their slice of the afterlife pie? No fear. You’ll find them too out back of beyond, or wherever ‘heaven’ resides.  

According to most religions, after your demise, you enter into the afterlife phase of your ‘life’. And apparently you will be sharing that afterlife with some rather exclusive company, just your fellow human beings*. There will be no other life forms present in Heaven, Hell or Hades, be they companion animals (pets), butterflies or vermin**. But if you stop and think about it, that’s nonsense. If you have an afterlife, all living things have an afterlife. 

Okay boys and girls, run this bit of wisdom past your local clergy.

Let’s be clear from the outset, you are not an organism. You are a colony of organisms. You call these individual colony members or organisms, cells***. Your body’s cells are living things in their own right.

Now chances are, you believe in an afterlife when you die, an afterlife that’s still within the physical realm of matter and energy. A non-physical afterlife would be hell indeed, since you couldn’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell, and all your lifetime memories, your personality, your creativeness, all encoded in your neurochemistry, your neurons, your brain cells, would go poof. Thus: that physical you, that’s now in a physical afterlife, is still a colony of unicellular living things or organisms. If you head to the afterlife, so do all the individual living cells that made you up, including sperm cells, eggs cells, blood cells and those all essential neurons.

The logical upshot of that is that each and every single-celled micro-organism, microbe, bacteria, etc. when it dies, goes to ‘heaven’, or whatever realm(s) you think houses the afterlife. For lack of something more suitable to label this location, let’s just equate afterlife with ‘heaven’.

Thus, every multi-cellular organism, in reality also a colony of single-celled organisms, goes to an afterlife upon their demise. Jellyfish, sponges, clams and oysters, snails and slugs, ants, newts, frogs, mackerel and  minnows, ravens and robins, pussy cats and puppy dogs, whales and dolphins, apes and monkeys, even plants go to a ‘life’ after death. So presumably, when you mow the lawn, all those soon to be dead grass cells will go to ‘heaven’. But at least when you get to ‘heaven’ any lawns there won’t need mowing – you couldn’t kill off anything that was having an eternal afterlife now could you? So, how cows and goats and horses get nourishment in ‘heaven’ would be a mystery.

Of course maybe you don’t need nourishment in the afterlife (so much for beer and pizza nights). That would solve a lot of problems, like the need for lions in their afterlife to kill lambs in their afterlife, but why then drag all of your digestive systems including blood circulation, liver functions, kidney functions, etc. along for the afterlife ride?

But then you can’t discriminate. Digestive cells are just as deserving of an afterlife as your (required) brain cells and neurons and nerve cells and sensory organs like eyes and ears. So in your afterlife you carry a lot of now useless baggage along, like your lungs. You no longer need to breathe in order to provide oxygen to your now immortal cells.

Further, any cell that’s part of a multi-cellular organism that expires before the rest of the colony of cells goes to ‘heaven’ or whatever (or should that be wherever?). Anything defined as alive, when it dies (as all things must even if it’s a bacteria that reproduces asexually generation upon generation), has an afterlife. That’s the logical upshot of believing that you have an afterlife. It makes no sense that your brain cells should accompany you to a ‘life’ eternal, yet a chimpanzee’s brain cells don’t because a chimpanzee doesn’t.

The proof of that pudding is that some animal cells, in the form of organs and tissues, can get transplanted into humans. Some body parts from pigs I believe are compatible for human transplantation, like heart valves. Now when the human who received that animal transplant dies and goes to ‘heaven’, isn’t it logical that the donated animal body bits go along for the afterlife ride?

As another little titbit offered up, consider the fact that 90% of you is not you at all. There’s all those trillions of bacteria and worms and mites and other hangers-on that live in your mouth and nose and guts and blood stream; those that are in your hair and on your skin thriving as parasites or even as symbiotic organisms. Most of these critters will die with you and go with you to ‘heaven’.  

Besides, you wouldn’t want to go to your afterlife without having all of your previously departed companion animals present to greet you at the Pearly Gates, now would you? And of course ditto for all those pets you now have whose demise will follow yours. You’ll want to be reunited with them too.

On the other hand, if pets ‘survive’ into the afterlife, and ditto microbes, then so will black plague bacteria, sharks, scorpions, man-eating tigers, icky spiders, cockroaches, rats, cobras, and any and every other nasty you can conjure up. Your own afterlife might not be so heavenly after all!

Now I keep talking about ‘heaven’ and not ‘hell’. Why? Because it would be difficult to argue that any biological cell can be or is sinful or evil. Therefore, all cells go to ‘heaven’ and by implication you must go to ‘heaven’ since none of your body cells deserve to go to ‘hell’!

On the other hand, maybe there’s no such thing as an afterlife, a ‘heaven’ or a ‘hell’ to spend eternity in, for anything from humble bacteria to the decidedly un-humble human.

The absurdity of it all! Not that the concepts that microbes have an afterlife, rather the concept that there even is an afterlife.

*That’s good to be with your friends and loved ones forever. That’s bad if it’s your ex, your mother-in-law, and your old supervisors that would just as soon fire you as look at you.

**That’s good – no pesky flies, mosquitos, cockroaches and rats. That’s bad – no pretty flowers, no good fishing (catch and release only of course) and no songbirds.

***Thus, when you die (i.e. – declared medically dead), you don’t really die in absolute totality in the interval from one heartbeat/breath to the lack of what would have been your next heartbeat/breath; you aren’t completely dead, since not all of those cells that make up you die at the exact same time that medical science says you have kicked-the-bucket. Of course all those not quite yet dead cells will shortly follow suit, but all up, unless you were at ground zero at Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or equivalent), the snuffing of all of your cells is a drawn out process, not something that’s instantaneous.



Where Was God When…?

Humans can and do die prematurely through no apparent fault of their own. It’s a common feature on the news. It’s reasonable to ask who’s responsible. There are various agencies that can be held accountable: God, Mother Nature and Mankind. Since God is allegedly the Top Banana, the buck stops with Him when it comes to a ‘please explain’ those premature deaths. So, here’s an analysis of possible explanations with God taking centre stage.

Either God exists or God does not exist. If the latter, God cannot be held accountable for anything good, bad or ugly. But, if God exists, and has those positive attributes given to Him, even by His own words in the Bible, then God has a lot to answer for when it comes to explaining why humans are allowed to die prematurely through no fault of their own. The basic charge is premeditated murder at worst, almighty godly negligence allowing death at best.

Let’s review some positive Godly attributes:

God is Loving – Jeremiah 32:18.

God is Merciful - Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13.

God has Compassion – Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8.

God is Forgiving – Daniel 9:9; Ephesians 4:32.

God is Kind – Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13.

God is Gracious – Exodus 34:6. Psalm 86:15; Psalm 116:5.

God is Righteous – Psalm 24:5; Psalm 116:5.

And there’s a lot more besides but you get the idea. God is the good guy. God is your friend. God looks after you. Pure bovine fertilizer! In fact the extreme Christian Right Wing, those televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc. all like to stress some other of God’s attributes, like being a jealous God, a vengeful God, a God quick to anger and a wrathful God – they like a God who hates and who kicks human butts, hard, and fatally. To them, any premature death to anyone by any cause is attributed to God, thank God, full stop. That also strikes me as pure bovine fertilizer. 

Humans die thanks to God before their time is due:

Why God’s rush to judgment? Since everyone is doomed to die anyway, there’s no apparent need for an immortal deity to rush their demise. To God, a billion years either way, either side of now, is of no consequence, so a human lifespan is just a piddle. If other words, since God will get His pound of flesh, or the devil his due in the fullness of time, there’s no need for any human not to be granted the right to live to die of natural causes – old age.

Innocents have been put in harms way through no fault of their own. Who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? The buck ultimately stops with the chief cook and bottle washer – the Almighty. 

We have humans killed by deliberate Acts of God:

An Act of God usually implies wilful death and destruction, pain and suffering, inflicted on humanity by well, guess who, the Almighty Himself. That’s murder in the first degree. What else would you call Sodom and Gomorrah; the Egyptian tenth plague on the firstborn; the invasion of the Land of Canaan? Nor does it have to even be a mass murder scenario – even God smiting a single individual is premeditated murder. Fortunately, there have been no unnatural actual Acts of God (as opposed to natural Acts of Nature) in way, way over 2000 years plus, at least defined as a major destructive event that happened without benefit of a natural cause, or even a single death that can only be attributed to “God” and so listed on the death certificate. So in the Common Era, God is off the hook for premeditated murder, though God should still stand trial for atrocities committed in the Old Testament. 

We have humans killed by random Acts of Nature:

That’s wilful negligence since God, if there be a God, ultimately controls nature, God being all-powerful and all that. But first, if it appears to be a natural disaster (flood, drought, famine, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone, tornado, bushfire, volcano, earthquake, hail, epidemic, pandemic, asteroid/meteor impact, solar flares, blizzards, icebergs, lightning, tsunamis/tidal waves, etc.) then lets adopt the duck philosophy – if it looks, sounds, swims, flies, and otherwise behaves like a duck, it’s a duck, or in this case, it really is an Act of Nature and not something deliberately set in motion by Mother Nature’s boss, God, though that’s not set in any philosopher’s stone by any means.

Acts of Nature have an apparent natural cause, but of course that could mean that God is hiding behind an apparently natural causality curtain, but in reality forcing Mother Nature to do His bidding. But why would an all-powerful God hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts? - Back to the duck philosophy. So let’s just assume that God just sits on the sidelines (if He’s still in the neighbourhood, don’t forget He hasn’t been seen or heard from in over 2000 years) and lets Mother Nature strut her stuff – the nice balmy spring mornings; the multi terror-tornadoes that strike in that afternoon.  

Now what does He do from His heavenly sidelines? Well, He can do nothing and wash His hands of the unfolding events, whether it’s the twisters that form in Tornado Alley, a Hurricane Katrina moving towards New Orleans or an Asian tsunami about to strike. But God failing to take action is akin to the parents of a toddler who’s crawling across a road busy with traffic and failing to take action to prevent the inevitable tragedy. That’s wilful negligence. Or, God could manipulate apparently natural events to suit His purpose – create winners and losers.

In any natural disaster (Acts of Nature) there will tend to be ‘winners’ (survivors) and losers – the newly deceased. If God got down off His throne and intervened then presumably He wanted the ‘winners’ to live and the losers to die and made sure the natural dice were rigged to ensure that outcome. If so, then the ‘winners’ can “Thank God”, at least for the surviving part, though God should still get the Big Finger from true believers for allowing that Act of God under the guise of an Act of Nature to have transpired in the first place. Is the credit due God for saving some lives outweighed by the blame for the deaths and overall destruction God caused in the first place?

We have humans killed by Acts of Man at God’s direction.

That’s God being an accomplice to murder in the first degree, for example the Battle of Jericho. Of course today such a defence holds no legal water. If I murder someone, the jury is unlikely to be swayed as to my innocence if I suggest that God wanted and directed me to carry out that murder. So let’s let God off the hook for Acts of Man, even if humans were inspired by God setting a bad example, summed up by that old chestnut, “do as I say, not as I do”. God may say “Thou shalt not kill”, but God’s own track record matches anything Jack-the-Ripper accomplished by many, many orders of magnitude over and above Jack, the serial killer.

We have humans killed by Unintentional Acts of Man:

Friendly fire is one such term, ditto collateral damage. It’s quite apparent from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on TV that human related accidents cause the death of other innocent humans. A driver has a heart attack, loses control of his vehicle which slams into another car killing the occupants. A hunter shoots at what he assumes is a deer only to discover it’s a fellow hunter he shot by accident. It’s not a difficult assignment to come up with dozens upon dozens of accidental death due to some human error or unintended scenario unfolding, like that cigarette butt tossed out the window which starts a bushfire which goes out of control and ultimately kills dozens. The issue arises; we know why Hercules or Superman can’t come to the rescue, but why doesn’t an all-powerful deity, believed by the multitudes to exist, come and save the day? Doesn’t the deity, say God, care for the innocents? Or perhaps the multitudes are mistaken and God has no more reality than Hercules or Superman. If the former, God doesn’t come out of the situation smelling like a rose, that’s for sure. If the latter, the multitudes need to engage their brain into forward gear and question their beliefs, rather than have it idling in neutral, ever unquestioning.

We have humans killed by Intentional Acts of Man:

Though God ultimately has control over the actions of humans; God could argue that because of man’s free will, He shouldn’t get involved or be held accountable, even though parents are morally accountable for the actions of their children, and aren’t we, allegedly, God’s children? That analogy aside, though God probably thought it was none of His business, should He have really turned a blind eye towards what was to unfold in August 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And what about the innocents caught up in the events of 9/11? What about tens of thousands of similar, but less memorable happenings like intervening before Jack-the-Ripper ripped? Again, God probably said it’s none of my doing; I’m not going to get involved. But, would such an attitude jive with all of those loving, kindness, compassionate attributes so noted and logged in the Bible? 

We have humans killed by their own stupidity: The Darwin Award:

Many a human has ended his or her own life prematurely through sheer stupidity, forgetfulness, negligence, and similar concepts. There are a whole series of books on what’s titled the “Darwin Awards” – those who benefit humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool and thus not passing on their stupidity genes to the next generation. Some people are their own worst enemy, accidents waiting to happen. While we’ve probably all experienced an ‘oops’ moment, some ‘oops’ are fatal ‘oops’. Now the question is should God save you from your own stupidity? Whatever your answer, God’s clearly answered that philosophical issue in the negative since people do die prematurely because of their own stupidity. Humans have a far better track record saving or rescuing people from their own stupidity – in the nick of time – than any deity.

Conclusion:

By way of final explanations, either 1) God does not exist or has left the building for parts unknown; 2) God doesn’t give a damn which suggests He isn’t compassionate or merciful, etc.; 3) God plays favourites which also implies He’s not merciful, etc. to all equally. It’s also statistically improbable that only those who were the losers in every natural or human related disaster deserved, in God’s eyes, to burn, baby, burn, and every ‘winner’ was a saint in human skin. When it comes to allowing even dictating the premature deaths of God’s children, well, God’s a god-awful parent! And this is the God you want to snuggle up to in heaven? If God really doesn’t have these positive attributes (mercy, compassion, etc.) then it illustrates that the Bible is full of it, and I don’t have to elaborate or spell out what “it” is.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part Three

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

NO TWO GODS ARE THE SAME BECAUSE NO TWO BRAINS ARE IDENTICAL

I read recently that “… nothing precise can be said about God, because God is that which is beyond the scope of human thought or experience”. That’s wrong. At least I was under the impression that a whole potful of Biblical characters experienced God, like Moses. Anyway, God is totally within the scope of human thought since God’s our mental creation (recall all those human traits God has), and even if by chance God has some sort of independent existence, as per all else in life, the universe and everything, that existence is shovelled into and contemplated within something that’s human, the human mind. The human mind absorbs and reduces God down to understandably human terms. How many zillions upon zillions of words have been written and spoken about the concept of God (or Allah or whoever). 100% of those words have been generated via the human mind, so we’ve certainly spared no mental expense in dealing with the Almighty! Even if God is the sound of one hand clapping, well we can contemplate that. That contemplation might be wrong, and again every person will have his or her own personal contemplations that will all be different, but everyone comes to terms with the concept, so God (or the lack of a god if you’re an atheist) is not beyond the scope of the human mind.

Even if there is an external reality (your brain isn’t the sum total of all things), no two individuals, or rather their brains, will perceive that external reality down to the last and infinite decimal place. I believe in a god; you believe in a god, but when we compare notes, subtle shades of grey appear. How can there be such a thing as absolute reality when no two people will ever agree on what that reality is, even if it takes going down to the quantum level to find the split in the perception of that reality.

So there are as many versions of God’s (or equivalent) existence and nature as there are human minds. Quite apart from the formal definitions and distinctions between the thousands of formal religions that have been in the past and that are now in the present as to ‘who and what is god’ (all formally presented by the human mind), or even restricting things to God-of-the-Bible (the Bible by the way is the product of the human mind, as is the Koran, as are all religious texts), each individual human member of each religious sect or cult (like Christianity) has his or her own variation on the God theme, courtesy of their unique brain chemistry. So considering God apart from the thousands upon thousands of polytheistic deities (and who’s to deny their validity), there isn’t one God, but billions of Gods, each a unique God in the mind of that beholder. No two insides (minds) are identical.

GOD ON THE BRAIN

To illustrate all of the above with a specific concept near and dear to the hearts and minds of many a human, we shall further consider the lone ranger we call “God” or in more general terms the concept of a supernatural god or deity.

That God exists in one form or another is in no dispute since there are zillions of references to Him in all manner of formats, from the printed word like the Bible to what resides inside your wetware. That existence however can be akin to that of say Allan Quatermain, the creation of H. Rider Haggard. That Allan Quatermain exists is in no dispute either since there are millions of references to his existence too. But, Allan Quatermain is virtual reality – perhaps God is too.

That God is near and dear to the hearts and minds of humans is also because that’s probably what’s been taught or otherwise rammed down our collective throats by parents, teachers, church and sometimes state. Or, perhaps you have self learned about this godly concept off your own bat. Or you may have had what you perceive as having had a direct experience – a eureka moment – when God talked to you, or the angels paid you a visit, or you had some sort of defining rapturous moment that you identified with the supernatural, like your prayers were answered or you experienced a miracle.

Why would the human mind, the human imagination invent a god, or the human mind accept as given the concept of a god? Well probably because the human mind, of all the animal kingdom’s minds, is the one unique mind to have foreknowledge about personal death. Humans, like all animals who battle for survival, don’t want to die. Humans know that they will die and that they are powerless to prevent their death. But what if (a variation of the phrase let’s ‘make believe’), there was someone or something that could rescue one from this pending unfortunate state of affairs of kicking the bucket and give one a second (after) life? To do so, the imagination has to go beyond the natural to the supernatural (why not) and to a local inhabitant of that supernatural world, a god or a deity, who can make it so. 

The key word here seems to me to be ‘supernatural’ not God, since God is a small subset of alleged deities inhabiting the realm of the supernatural. It doesn’t really matter if you substitute Odin or Zeus or even the Rainbow Serpent for God – same general concept.

Perhaps because of that concept of impending finality, death, our brains seem to be hardwired or conditioned to accept the general nature of the supernatural – things which are ‘above and beyond’ the natural or normal bits and pieces we associate with the concept of a Mother Nature. For comparison, it would be interesting to have conservations with, or read the mind of, your cat or dog or an elephant or chimpanzee (our ultimate primate ancestral species) and find out what beliefs or worldviews they have in all things supernatural, like in a deity or life after death. My guess is that only humans ponder over the possibilities of deities which maybe extra evidence that someone or something impersonating a deity (i.e. - ‘ancient astronauts’) has mucked about with our wetware to ensure this.

So somehow or other, the human mind, brain, and all associated electromagnetic energy and biochemical bits that collective make up our brain’s neural networks, are quasi-hardwired to invent and contemplate and in general put faith in the reality of the supernatural and a supernatural deity, albeit, if I’m right, it’s really just virtual reality since it all stems from within the mind contemplated by the mind and not from an external outside to the mind via the five senses.  

THE END

When your wetware dries out; when your neurons cease firing; when the microbes attack and the rot sets in and the chemistry stops, then your inner reality ceases too. Whether you take life, the universe and everything with you or not is irrelevant. Your reality is just as kaput as kaput can be. 

CONCLUSION

Assuming a really real reality, an external reality (and that’s probably the way to bet) coming to terms with life, the universe and everything is a job performed by your brain chemistry. The concept of God (or equivalent) is part of life, the universe and everything, so coming to terms with the nature of God is also a function of and a task performed by your wetware. I suggest that ‘coming to terms’ with God is entirely an internal mental affair; God was created in our image.

Religious Hatred: The Westboro Baptist Church: Part One

One tends to associate religious intolerance for other religions with bloodshed. The phrase ‘holy wars’ comes to the fore. However, the peace movement has come to religious hatred as well as in all other manner of protest movements. The most famous, or infamous, of the peaceful religious haters is probably the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). I’m sure many of the recipients of their hate would prefer the days of bloodshed so they could dish a bit something back in return.

All monotheistic religions – and there are many of them – all have as a core value that theirs is the one true religion that represents the one true God and that all other monotheistic religions are false religions and represent a false version of God. That alone immediately leads me to the conclusion that they all are just full of B.S. and that there is no such animal as the one true religion and the one true God. But that’s not my overriding theme here.

Rivalry  between various monotheistic faiths have of course given rise to much inter-religious hatred and stemming from that, much violence and bloodshed. Methinks the God of the Old Testament, a serious fan of blood and gore, would be Lord Almighty pleased!

Anyway, religious hatred come violence has spanned the range from all out warfare, to terrorism, to more localized conflicts. Across the generations, so it has been and so it is now and no doubt so it will be way into the future (if humans don’t breed themselves out of existence first). A definitive list of monotheistic religious conflicts is way too extensive to give here, but Northern Ireland, the Crusades; and 9/11 all come to the mind as examples.   

At least when the holy bombs explode and the holy bullets fly and the holy swords slash away, you know what you’re up against and can strike back accordingly or as best you can.

But there’s religious hatred and violence, and then there’s religious HATRED that replaces physical violence with psychological warfare. No holy bombs, bullets or swords. Violence is replaced with the picket line, the placards, the chants, the songs. This now becomes the new (and improved?) non-violent version of bombs, bullets and swords. But make no doubt, the religious hatred, or in some cases, to make it clear, the HATRED, remains – in spades. To the best of my knowledge organized religious hatred of the peaceful kind is uniquely American. I’d like to say only in America, but I’d probably be corrected quick-smart. Still, God’s own country is awash in religious hatred without a bomb, bullet or sword anywhere in sight.

And so you can express your religious hatreds and carry out those messages and shed not one drop of actual blood and thus stay inside the law since the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech as long as such speech causes no actual or potential physical harm to others. For example there's no incitement to cause a panic, or to induce a riot or stir up the masses and cause a lynching. Still, what it lacks in doing physical damage is more than made up for in psychological trauma that these picketers direct their “God hates” placards against.  

Now what do civilized people, Americans or otherwise, make of religious picketers that carry placards that have as a central message “God hates…” and variations on the theme. Here are some actual examples of messages written on picket placards: it’s a representative, but hardly exhaustive list:

“America is Doomed; Fag Flag [the Stars & Stripes]; Fag Lover Obama; Fag Soldier in Hell; Fag Troops; Fags Are Beasts; Fags Are Violent; Fags Are Worthy of Death; Fags Die, God Laughs; Fags Doom Nations; Fear God; God Blew Up the Troops; God Hates America; God Hates Divorce; God Hates Fags; God Hates India; God Hates Jews; God Hates Obama; God Hates You; God Is Angry Everyday; God Is Your Enemy; God Killed Your Cops; God Killed Your Sons; God Sent the Shooter [various lone gunman massacres] ; God: USA’s Terrorist; Pray for More Dead Soldiers; Prepare to Meet Thy God; Remember Lot’s Wife; Thank God for 9/11; Thank God for AIDS; Thank God for Dead Cops; Thank God for Dead Soldiers; Thank God for [Hurricane] Katrina; Thank God for IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices]; The Siege Is Coming; The World is Doomed; USA = Fag Nation; Your Sons Are In Hell; You’re Going to Hell”.

Then there’s a picket chant: “1, 2, 3, 4, God Hates the Marine Corps”.

And their song title: “God Hates the World”.

Pretty disgusting wouldn’t you say? Well, all those and more are brought to you, if not in person, then via your TV or Internet screen, courtesy of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), with a home base in Topeka, Kansas, which must be insulting to real Baptists since the WBC has no actual affiliation with any official Baptist organization. They’re a rouge organization, and for all practical purposes, an extended family organization. Well the BBC in a documentary on the WBC called them “The Most Hated Family in America” (2007).

Ah, but what does the WBC picket and why? Well their usual target is funerals and the higher the celebrity profiles of the funeral (victim or attendees) the better. But the funeral has got to have some sort of connection with, in their twisted logic, sins against God. So as long as the funeral has something to which, in their convoluted form of ‘sins against God’ religious logic, they can claim that “God hates” that something back in return. If “God hates” that something, and since the WBC stands shoulder-to-shoulder with God, then the WBC hates that something too and by God are they going to let the world know it!

Funerals are of course especially emotionally-charged occasions; military (killed in action) funerals all the more-so, which of course ramps up the impact the WBC will have, so military (killed in action) funerals are just about Target Number One.

The WBC also pickets other churches, since those churches, obviously, advocates a false religion or theology or god and thus are evil in the sight of the WBC God; and thus the call to arms and person the picket line. As long as something has a connection to something the WBC perceives that their God is against; then the WBC stands ready to picket! Apparently God can’t defend Himself adequately enough against false religions and needs additional moral support!

I spotted in one of their numerous extremist videos the statement that if you took on the WBC, any challenge to them at all, well God would get you for that since a slap in the face to the WBC was a slap in the face to God Almighty. Okay, I’ll take up and swallow their bait. I’m not afraid of their (non-existent) Big Bad God.

To be continued…

Those Tall Tales of Biblical Disasters: Part One

Despite what you might hear in church, or view on Christian websites, the Bible isn’t all about those ten Godly commandments, loving your neighbour, doing onto others, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, truth,  justice and everlasting life. Star Wars aside, there’s a dark side to the Force. Even apart from hell, fire and brimstone and lots of sins and sinning, there’s much death and destruction all around. The Bible is full of tales of disasters that rival anything Mother Nature has conjured up. 

We all tend to love a good disaster story. In films, we have “Atlantis, the Lost Continent”, “The Towering Inferno”; The Poseidon Adventure”; “Earthquake”; “Deep Impact”; “On the Beach”, “Swarm”, “Twister”, “When Worlds Collide”, etc. not to mention more alien invasion films than you can care to mention, far less remember. Surely films about nasty extraterrestrials are an order of magnitude greater than your fingers and toes put together, and when you toss in those nasties that Mother Nature can summon up, well it’s just pure gloom and doom all around. There’s no escape! 

It’s even better when a gloom and doom scenario is based on a real disaster – Pompeii (79), the San Francisco earthquake (1906); the floundering of RMS Titanic (1912), the Hindenburg crash (1937), the SS Andrea Doria sinking (1956), the Asian tsunami (2004), Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy (1974), the Black Plague, and literally thousands of other disasters, from plane crashes and train wrecks, to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, explosions; you name it – if it causes death and destruction it’s front-page and evening TV news.

Biblical disasters hold special pride of place (there’s even several documentary DVDs devoted to the theme) but first I’d better define what I mean by disaster. If an ant gets hit by a lump of hail, or even several humans wiped out in a car accident, well that’s a disaster for the ant or the humans, but not really a disaster in the larger context of what we think of as a real disaster (so Jonah and the ‘Whale’ isn’t a real disaster come survival against all the odds story). A bona-fide disaster has to inflict major damage and/or loss of life on a reasonably high percentage of the geographical area impacted upon. That ‘geographical area’ could of course be a ship or a plane carrying a relatively large numbers of passengers and crew down to their gloom and doom.  

Now there are disasters contained within the texts of the standard Bible. Some, especially the story of the flood (Genesis), have parallels in many other mythologies. Most are one-offs. I will make no absolute claims for the truth and accuracy, reality or non-reality, of these tall tales; apart from the observation that there are no non-Biblical bona-fide historical references or archaeological confirmations for the lot of them. Instead, they are just to be taken as  ‘riveting’ or as ‘captivating’ as much as the various real and imaginary disaster happenings part and parcel of our modern society that hold the attention of the reading and/or viewing audience.

*We Are Sailing on Noah’s Ark (Genesis)

Fortunately, Captain Noah doesn’t run into any icebergs on his maiden voyage. Disaster lurks elsewhere, and its Noah and crew who get to enact the great escape of all great escapes and survive. Survive what of course is that burst water main that floods everything for a rather long period of time, which is bad news for those 99.999% not on board with Noah as cork or foam-filled life jackets haven’t been invented yet. It is sink or swim time, and those without either life jackets or the timber deck of the Ark to stroll upon end up sinking.

If 99.999% of the world’s human (and non-human) population drowns because of this unprecedented and singular event (that 40 day and night global rainstorm and resulting flood), well that’s got to meet the dictionary definition of a disaster. There’s no evidence for it of course, and an event of this magnitude on a global scale isn’t physically possible in any event, but small-scale floods that can get embellished and blown out of all proportion in the telling and retellings, well that’s a different kettle of fish. But that’s hardly going to put a major dent in the human (and animal) population. Still, if you’re a fan of disaster flicks, this Biblical downpour (or water main burst) has appeal and will float your boat as it were, and no doubt it had appeal to disaster fans way back then. But all up, I suspect this was a minor event that got hyped up out of all proportion from its actual reality (if any). 

*Then there’s Sin City: Sodom & Gomorrah, the Las Vegas of the Era (Genesis)

Genesis 19: 24: Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown! This almost reads as if God was doing a preseason exhibition demonstration as a warm-up to Pompeii!

So what was the reason for this massive exercise in smiting? What exactly pissed the Almighty off? Apparently, among other wickedness, all sorts of unnatural acts (close encounters between the same sex) were enacted.

One question therefore immediately arises, if God was so against unnatural acts, how come He didn’t smite ancient Greece, ruled by those – shock, horror – ‘other gods’? That’s strike one alone. Homosexuality was socially acceptable in Greek society (strike two), not only between consulting adults but between adults and minors as well (strike three). Well maybe God was more than just a tad worried about being thrashed by Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades, and being outnumbered by the Olympians, thought discretion was the better part of valour. 

Maybe God should now smite down the United States and other Christian countries that have given equal rights to their gay communities. Well see that hasn’t happened (much to the disappointment of Christian Fundamentalists) which either tells you something about the reality of God or of God’s alleged wrath against unnatural acts – or maybe God’s too scared to take on the might of the USA, et al. least He get nuked in return.  

In any event, archaeologists and other ancient historians and Biblical scholars haven’t yet been able to turn the Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah into a patch of physical real estate despite apparently knowing where to look (the Dead Sea region). Still, if a disaster via geological forces (i.e. – Pompeii) is your bag; Sodom & Gomorrah fits the fire and brimstone bill. If of course you get away from an Act of God to a Deliberate Act of God (as the Bible says it was), then there’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Japan) or Dresden (Germany) as parallels (though whether or not Acts of War qualify as disasters is another issue, but in that context I’ll rule out the Battle of Jericho as a Biblical disaster).       

To be continued…

Jesus of Nazareth: R.I.P.

Assuming that the Christian religious figurehead known as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth actually existed, and that is not a given by any stretch of the imagination, then the odds are, IMHO, that he was just another mortal human and not an immortal supernatural deity, the alleged ‘Son of God’.

There's this concept or character of Jesus Christ (JC), or Jesus of Nazareth (depending on religious philosophy), the alleged Son of God. JC is probably the most famous or most well known character in all of recorded history, even if in his own time he was as unknown and unheard of as 99.9% of rock and film star wannabes are today. But did Jesus actually exist? It would really be a bummer if JC had all the reality of other famous and well known but fictional characters like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Santa Claus. Yet for someone so famous after-the-fact, there's damn little documentation outside of religious texts to support his reality, and all of that 'reality' was penned many decades after-the-fact. Not only that, but the four main New Testament gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, that detail the life and times of JC don’t always agree on various key points.

While there is relatively little doubt in my mind that there really was an historical figure that went by the name of Jesus, there are those scholars who would, and do, argue that Jesus was as totally a mythological figure as Zeus and Apollo, or for that matter Santa. That aside, I suggest that JC was a person who was very human, born in the normal way, died as any human eventually does, and has remained dead ever since.

If JC is indeed an historical figure, I suggest that while he existed he was seen as a very charismatic character, but one who alas, would most certainly have been mentally ill. Our mental institutions or asylums are full of people who sincerely believe that they are this person, or that person, or a reincarnation of this or that historical figure, but in reality, are totally delusional. I'm sure this syndrome is not unique to this era. I just mean that I'm sure mental illness existed some 2100 years ago - then as now - and it's possible that JC could have suffered from delusions of grandeur to some greater or lesser degree assuming he made some extraordinary claims about himself.

There have been lots of charismatic religious figures over the centuries, which, in another time and place, if claiming to be the Son of God, would have attracted a massive following, and a near mythological aura. Perhaps JC just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right personality to pull the charade off - in fact JC probably sincerely believed his own story. I'm no expert on what exactly JC said about himself, or has been alleged he said (if any of his quotations can be taken a face value). Perhaps he made relatively few claims at all and it was only others who embellished him as something he never really claimed to be. If that's the case, then of course maybe he wasn't mentally ill. Regardless, the bottom line is that JC, whatever he and/or others thought he was, was the son of a man and a woman, not the Son of God. To accept JC as a deity is to, IMHO, accept one of Alice’s White Queen's pre-breakfast impossibilities.

Captain Yahweh and the Starship Heaven: Part Two

We’ve all heard of Heaven, but beyond that the concept is pretty fuzzy depending on your culture, your religion, your upbringing, and your personal interpretation(s). There are probably as many worldviews of Heaven as there are people who think about it. My own unique spin on the concept not only envisions Heaven as a physical place, but a high-tech one as well – not the home of Yahweh (God) the deity (who doesn’t exist) but Yahweh the extraterrestrial – once Captain, now ex-Captain of the Starship Heaven. That is, Heaven is a spaceship (or was – it’s gone away now).

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

3) Enoch Visits the Starship Heaven

Now apparently some flesh-and-blood human mortals have visited Heaven and returned in the flesh-and-blood - Enoch is an example.

Enoch apparently authored a trilogy of books, titled the “Book of Enoch” or “1 Enoch”; then there’s the “Second Book of Enoch” and finally “3 Enoch”.

While the first chapter of the “Book of Enoch” describes the fall of the Watchers, the angels who fathered the Nephilim, the remainder of “1 Enoch” describes Enoch's visits to Heaven in the form of travels, as well as visions and dreams, and his collective revelations about what he saw and learned.

In that first “Book of Enoch” there’s a chapter called “The Astronomical Book” (1 Enoch 72 – 82) which is also called the “Book of the Heavenly Luminaries” or “Book of Luminaries”. 

This chapter or book contains descriptions of the movement of heavenly bodies and of the firmament, as knowledge revealed to Enoch in his trips to Heaven guided by Uriel. Uriel acts firstly as a guide for Enoch in chapter one of the “Book of Enoch”, titled the “Book of Watchers” and he (Uriel) fulfils this capacity in many of the other chapters or books that make up “1 Enoch” like the chapter comprising his astronomical thesis. Now Uriel is one of them there archangels (or senior crewmembers of the Starship Heaven, IMHO) and therefore pretty qualified to act as host and probably chauffeur (shuttlecraft pilot?).

The upshot is that one can visit Heaven up close and personally while in a very much alive physical body and return safely to Earth. Sort of sounds like a Biblical version of Shuttle astronauts visiting the International Space Station!

4) The Afterlife Carrot-and-Stick

So why is there an entire deception over this ultimate Retirement Home in the Sky (Heaven as paradise) concept? Well, it’s a version of the old carrot-and-stick approach. Captain God has got to keep the primitives under his jurisdiction on his straight-and-narrow; keep them in line, off the streets and out of trouble. It’s like being under the thumb of your parents – if you’re good, you get dessert; if not, you get no supper at all. If you’re good, an afterlife of paradise awaits; if you’re bad, an afterlife of hell awaits. That there is no actual afterlife paradise, or afterlife hell, is beside the point. As long as you think there is, you’re under Captain God’s thumb and under control.

Now “life wasn’t meant to be easy” according to the wisdom of a former Australian Prime Minister, and no doubt in 4004 BC it wasn’t for most of the great unwashed. But an afterlife in paradise made all the hardships easier to bear. You were less likely to go out on strike and earn an afterlife down below instead.

5) Resurrection

Now I really have to clear up one very popular conception, or rather a total misconception, and that is, when you die you get resurrected, you go into Heaven, body and all. Consider how many people have died. That would make for one very crowded spaceship! The proof of that ‘no body’ pudding is that archaeologists, anthropologists, forensic professionals, the police, the medical profession, undertakers, etc. deal with dead bodies all the time. If you dig up your great grandfather’s grave you’ll find a body in it – a skeleton at least and skeletons qualify as a body or at least a vital part of what makes a body, a body. If somebody dies in a car accident their body doesn’t suddenly do a vanishing act Heavenly bound.

Some bodies don’t even survive death intact to get transported to Heaven. If you get eaten by a shark, you get converted into fish flesh and fish poo. If you were at ground zero at Hiroshima or Nagasaki your body got vaporised. Many people post death opt to have their bodily remains cremated; ashes either stored in a jar by loved ones or scattered to the four winds eventually to be incorporated into the environment. Your ashes aren’t whisked away to Heaven and reassembled into a resurrected you.

Even if the body remains intact post death, it’s not going to remain that way for very long. The zombies may not get you; the vampires may be denied; but the itty-bitty germs won’t be. A frequent phrase is “what is my purpose in life?” Well, your ultimate purpose for existing is to die and be a food source for bacteria. Your brain, that which contains all of what makes you, you – the ‘inner you’ rots away consumed as food by various microbes. Whatever remains of the ‘inner you’ (memories, personality, etc.) is now housed in millions of microbes. You become microbe flesh.

So, scratch out any immediate thought of resurrection and a quick trip to paradise within seconds of your demise.  

As to a much later, future, resurrection of the body, forget-about-it! Once dead, you’re like that fallen Humpty Dumpty. Once you’re fish poo; vaporised; cremated; your brain scrambled and digested and turned into microbe flesh, no jigsaw puzzle or Rubik’s Cube enthusiast can put you back together again – now or ever. In a nutshell, neither you nor God (supernatural or extraterrestrial) can unscramble a scrambled egg.

Now there will be multi-millions of people who will vehemently disagree with this. Why? People have a vested interest in God being able to unscramble eggs. People desperately want to and need to believe in an afterlife especially one that dangles paradise in front of you. It’s understandable but that doesn’t make it so. 

6) Is There A Starship Hell?

Now I’m sure the question on everybody’s lips is that if there is a Starship Heaven, does this mean there’s also a Starship Hell? No!

Nearly all people, therefore nearly all societies and cultures believe in an afterlife – those multi-millions referenced immediately above. Very few of us want to die even though we have no choice in the matter, so it’s not surprising that we have opted for the next best thing and invented that security blanket – the afterlife – and we would have done so irrespective of any deities be they supernatural or just plain old extraterrestrials.

Another trait universally shared by humans is the concept and application of symmetry. For every concept there is an equal and opposite one, an anti-concept. If you have goodness you have evil; truth vs. lies; beauty vs. ugly; the yin and the yang. So if you conceive of a paradise afterlife in the above direction, there will need to be an anti-paradise afterlife in the downwards direction. And thus nearly all societies have the underworld, or Hades or Hell or whatever you wish to name it.

But since there is no such thing as an afterlife the application of symmetry in this case is totally irrelevant. So just because you have a Starship Heaven (which has nothing to do with your nonexistent afterlife – those concepts of Heaven/paradise and the afterlife being just God’s carrot-and-stick strategy) doesn’t mean you have a Starship Hell – an afterlife in Hell also a part of God’s carrot-and-stick mind control. 

Fortunately, God, his Starship and those carrots-and-sticks have gone away.

Author’s note: All Biblical quotations taken from the King James Version.

Reincarnation: Hatched Again or Forever Dead and Buried?

“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 here, well a variation on the theme anyway. Reincarnation doesn’t of course cheat death, but it certainly circumnavigates or negates the finality of it. However, reincarnation makes relatively little if any real sense.

If reincarnation is bestowed upon you as a reward or punishment for whatever you did (fill in the blank yourself) in a previous life, the lesson is lost if you have no memory of that past existence(s) or of whatever it was that you did (fill in the blank). Now here I discount the claims of some people that they have lived prior lives and have memories of same. No matter what the merits of reincarnation are (and there are none IMHO), it is impossible to recall past lives. The egg and the sperm from which you were conceived had no past memory of your alleged past lives since they came from individuals not so related to your past existences. So, you started out from the get-go with no memory. A newly conceived embryo (blastula) has no memories. Any and all memories you now have started from that day of conception onwards – full stop*. On top of that, there’s been no absolute hard and fast historical evidence to support any such claims – otherwise reincarnation would be scientific fact, not pseudoscience supposition. It’s rather suspicious that all too often a previous  life or lives includes, against all probability, well known historical figures, like Napoleon, Elvis or JC (Julius Caesar -  presumably, if you believe in the Biblical account, that other JC is alive and kicking in an somewhere elsewhere). The probability, based on sheer numbers, of a previous life or lives, actually favors said life (or lives) being that of a cockroach, or ant, or microbe by odds of billions to one in favor. 

Anyway, the reincarnation mechanism isn’t ever explained other than by resorting to supernatural powers – there’s no known physics or chemistry or biology that could explain reincarnation.

And exactly what is reincarnated?  It’s certainly not anything physical like body shape, sex, or eye color, and it can’t be anything to do with memory, since nearly all of us have no personal you-were-there recall of what happened in say 1812 (AD or BC for that matter).  Do you have the identical personality, emotions, I.Q., etc. as your previous lives did? It’s all too nebulous!

Another thing, if Julius Caesar, Napoleon, or Elvis, or even your not as well known great, great, great Aunt Gertrude were floating around in their afterlives, and you are now ‘they’ reincarnated, you’d think they would have a vested interest in you and might therefore appear to you, keeping you on the straight and narrow  to ensure that when you get reincarnated in turn, your whatever goes to a good family who are about to conceive a child instead of a puppy dog about to drop a litter off!

Of course if your previous lives still exist in an afterlife, then what part of them can actually be in you? Of course maybe there’s no afterlife and somehow Julius Caesars’ essence goes directly into someone else hence someone else, etc. hence Napoleon, hence more people of unknown race, creed, sex and nationality, until we come to Elvis, and you (assuming you were born post Elvis’s demise)!

What if someone is totally obsessed with a particular historical time, event, and/or character, might this be a sign that they, in a previous life, lived in that time period, or participated in that event, or was that character – even if they have no direct memory of same? Methinks not. For example, there are way more individuals, with a lot of time on their hands and with a less than healthy obsession over the RMS Titanic disaster, than there were individuals on the actual ship – obviously not all could be reincarnates of the actual crew and passengers. In fact, there’s more than one individual claiming to be the reincarnation of her captain – a mathematical impossibility.

Then too, some people are equally ultra-fanatical over fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond or Harry Potter. Clearly you can not be the reincarnation of a fictional being! And how many thousands of Star Trek fanatics are out there whose life seems to revolve around that universe?  If it’s impossible to be a reincarnate of a fictional character from the past, then its impossibility squared to be a reincarnate of some literary character depicted as existing in your future.

The upshot is that you can be a person totally immersed in, highly knowledgeable of, or even obsessed to the point of delusion, with something historical, without there being any actual causality connection between the then and the now that one could interpret as reincarnation. Some people just live in fantasy worlds of their own making.

Then there’s the interesting “On the Beach” scenario. The novel (plus film plus made-for-TV remake film) deals with nuclear war. Unfortunately, fallout radiation spreads across and around the entire globe. Everyone is doomed – the plot deals with the waning days of the last few survivors in Australia as the radioactive ‘cloud’ heads their way. The question is, if all of Earth’s billions of people (and other higher animals) all die off, what happens to all those essences in search of something to be reincarnated into? Oops!

To pile on the absurdities, why confine your reincarnation(s) to Planet Earth? Perhaps you’ll be reincarnated as an ET (extraterrestrial) – perhaps you were an ET in a previous life!

No, reincarnation doesn’t make any sense, IMHO.

*When I mentioned this observation to a friend, she immediately suggested that the memory of a past life or lives was due to the implantation of your soul. It’s your soul (assuming there is such a thing) that has the memory.

Actually I was under the impression that it was one soul per person, but maybe not. One soul might be passed down from one person to that person’s reincarnation to that person’s reincarnation for however long the process goes on for. Maybe it’s like in Doctor Who - you only get so many regenerations (or in this case reincarnations).

Anyway, I was also under the impression that the soul is intangible or nebulous – it has no actual substance. The soul isn’t a thing that can be examined in the laboratory and under a microscope. If it has no actual matter/energy substance to it, it can’t store any memories.

Memory has to be something part and parcel of the biochemical’s and biochemistry and associated energy flows that happens in your brain whenever you remember something. Memory is encoded in your brain’s biochemistry. Memory must have some physical substance – it takes mass and energy to store and process memories. Memory can be affected by chemicals and energy. A soul that doesn’t have mass or energy presumably can’t be altered by external influences. So, if your soul contains the memories of your past lives, then no amount of foreign drugs, disease, lack of sleep, the aging process or injury will make you forget past lives because the soul is indestructible. Sorry, but if you have a memory of a past life then I suggest that memory, even though it’s a false or delusional memory, can be affected by physical influences, like drugs, disease, lack of sleep, the aging process or injury.

Death, and All That Jazz: Part Two

“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!]

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

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!

Death, and All That Jazz: Part One

“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 analog 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 color 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 neighbors); perhaps the death of a neighbor 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!

To be continued…