Could a benign God create a universe in which there is no afterlife for human beings? Or as the French philosopher Ernest Renan said,"O God, if there is one, save my soul if I have one." All of these controversial beliefs are up for grabs because no one has a definitive answer to the question, "Is there life after death" or even "If there is life after death, do I experience it as the same individual I am today or in another form?" Since there are no scientific answers to these questions, the void is filled with belief systems which tend to answer these questions in a definitive manner while offering no proof whatsoever. I would rather consider all the possibilities which can possibly be imagined and then whittle them down to the ones that seem more likely or more palatable or more esthetically pleasing. Belief systems tend to limit a consideration of all possibilities, and confine the believer to only one. But speculation opens the mind to a consideration of all possibilities in the hope that perhaps at least one of them may turn out to be correct, and, if so, the speculator has at least touched upon eternal truth whether or not he has adopted it as his own personal belief. And I don't accept the implicit threats that come with many belief systems of dire consequences unless one accepts that belief system wholeheartedly whether the belief system is political or religious. I reject belief systems that come with such threats, and I will freely examine all possible answers to unanswerable questions and adopt one of them as a belief or none of them as I freely choose. Belief systems that come with implicit threats I consider brainwashing. I can't accept that one must believe something or else there will be dire consequences either in this life or the next.
There are certain subjects for which there is no scientific proof one way or the other and these are subjects either for belief or speculation. For instance, is there a God or no God? There is no scientific proof. People are free to speculate or believe as the case may be. I believe in God because I can't conceive of a universe as multifaceted, complex and miraculous as the one we live in without there having been a Creator. But on the subject of an afterlife I'm not quite so sure. Hamlet said, "To be, or not to be, that is the question." He contemplated being or existing and non-being or non-existing, mainly in earthly terms, not in eternal terms. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a book, "Being or Nothingness," which I find impenetrable. However, the subject of this blog post is just that. Since we are alive, we have being. Since we have being, we can contemplate the state of non-being or nothingness which, evidently, we were in before we were born.
I have no recollection of anything before I was born. When I was born, approximately, I went from a state of non-being to a state of being. As a being, I have knowledge of three things: 1) there is a universe that exists, 2) life exists in that universe and 3) I am an individual who is alive in that universe. I did not have this knowledge before I was born. As far as I knew, I didn't exist nor did the universe. Therefore, I was in a state of non-being. Is it possible that after I die, I might return to that state of non-being or non-existence? Yes, it is a definite logical possibility. Or I might retain some sense of being without retaining my individuality. I might not retain awareness as an individual being. Or my existence as a specific individual might have ended but not my existence in some other sense, or, what most religious people believe, my individual existence could continue with or without an earthly physical body. However, I want to focus on the concept of there not being an afterlife, and is this compatible with a belief that there is a benign God?
Life to me is a window in space-time. We are born into the universe. We have a finite number of days of existence in that universe, and then we die. There is a symmetry to the birth death cycle. Practically everything we know of has a birth death cycle. Stars are born and then later they die. The universe itself was born in the Big Bang, and then some day, astronomers assure us, it will die either in a Big Crunch or because it has expanded to the point that it is just a bunch of space junk. One of the arguments for non-existence after death is that of symmetry. Scientists - especially physicists - love the concept of symmetry. So the symmetrical component of birth is death and vice versa. If there were birth but no death, this would be asymmetrical. If there is no Big Crunch to match the Big Bang, this would be asymmetrical. There is symmetry in the concept that we return to that state we were in before we were born after we die. When we are born, we go from a state of non-being or nothingness to a state of being or somethingness. After our window of space-time is up, perhaps we return to the state we were in before we were born - or nothingness. Could a benign God have created such a situation?
I think so. First a state of nothingness is associated with a state of no pain, and, of course, no pleasure as well. But a state of no pain is compatible with a situation created by a benign God. We as human beings might prefer a state of eternal bliss, and an afterlife in which we are either punished or rewarded based on our life as a human being is certainly a logical possibility, has a certain appeal, but not to exist after having existed is better than never having the experience of having existed at all. It's sort of like love: to have loved and lost is better than to never have loved at all. From that perspective perhaps we should be grateful for having had a window of existence in space time rather than to feel cheated if our window of space time, having been created, does not continue ad infinitum. So a God who made it possible for us to have the experience of existence and knowledge of ourselves as individuals and knowledge of the wonders of the universe, in my opinion, certainly is a benign God regardless of whether or not that window in space time comes to an end and we return to a state of nothingness at some point.
Human beings are extremely self-centered and egotistical. That's why we usually don't want to contemplate the possibility of our non-existence after death. We want to believe that we will continue to exist albeit in some altered state, a state that is even better than the one we experience on earth, commonly known as Heaven. But if we consider Heaven from an anthropoligical point of view, there are two facts that stand out. First, almost every religion contends that only members of that religion have the possibility of going to Heaven. Christians believe that non-Christians don't go to Heaven. Ditto for Muslims etc. So humans are OK with the idea of non-existence after death, or worse, for human beings that don't belong to their religion or human beings whom they don't like. Secondly, to be fair, if there is an afterlife for humans, there should be an afterlife for animals who after all are sentient beings too. But humans are OK with "putting animals to sleep" and that being compatible with a belief in a benign God. Humans are OK with a belief in non-existence or nothingness for animals once they die although some humans who are extremely attached to their pets do believe in an afterlife at least for their pets.
But to be consistent, if there is an afterlife for human beings, there should also be an afterlife for all individuals of whatever species. This leads to a belief that the universe would have to be replicated on another plane, as it were, and get messier and messier as time went on. The overcrowding and running out of resources we are experiencing on our planet would be nothing compared to the overcrowding in the afterlife. However, as miraculous as the universe and everything in it is, it would be entirely possible for such a God that created it to also have created an alter universe in which all beings that had existed on earth could continue to exist in some form. It is logically possible but not esthetically neat. Esthetically, the symmetry of life and death, of being and nothingness, is much more appealing. The other thing is that, if humans have eternal life, they would be in some sense putting themselves on the same level with God. From an esthetical point of view, God, the Creator of the universe and of all life within it, should be the only One to have eternal life. His creations should not have eternal life just because they are not gods; they are the creations of a God. The concept of one God or monotheism is esthetically most compatible with the belief that only that Being is eternal and that all other created beings ascend from nothingness to being and then, after their window in space time is up, descend again to that state from which they started, that is, from being to nothingness.
I think that it is humans' egocentricity that leads them to believe in an afterlife for themselves but not necessarily for others. Humans don't want to contemplate that there may be a limitation to their own exsistence. They don't want to contemplate that they may indeed become nothing although we can certainly imagine what non-existence was like since that was the state we were in before we were born. Before we were born, we had no idea that there was a universe with living beings including our parents in it, and yet the contemplation of that fact doesn't cause us great grief. So if we think about it, we can certainly comprehend what the experience of nothingness or non-being is. It is that state that we were in before we were born. And, if that is the state we return to after we die, we certainly are farther ahead than if we had never been born at all.
Another thing is that "life goes on". If we go into a state of nothingness when we die, there are others who are still living to carry on the human quest whatever that is. There are our children if we are lucky enough to have had them. We want them to have a good life. Our love for them can even exceed our love for our own life. The fact that some day they will die too did not deter us from having them. By extension we want others to have a good life too. The idea of progress, the idea that life and society are perfectable and can be made pleasant and pleasurable for subsequent generations is a joy in itself although not a foregone conclusion. We can imagine a day when there is Peace on Earth and all people cooperate to enjoy earth's bounty rather than compete to gather more of that bounty for their individual selves. We imagine this is what Heaven, if there is one, is like: people cooperating and sharing rather than competing for scarce and even non-scarce resources. The fact that our life on earth is limited in scope is not a deterrent to the idea that our life here is worthwhile and that we can make a difference whether or not we continue to exist after death. The fact that our life is limited in space time puts the emphasis on what we do while we are here. It puts the focus on the fact that we should make the best use of our time and energy since at some point we won't have any more of either. It puts the focus on the fact that we as individuals are not the be all and end all of the universe. It makes us less solipsistic, less egocentric and more altruistic. It puts us in the position of wanting to make the world a better place for our children, grandchildren and others rather than having lived just for our own gratification.
Which brings me to the subject of Pascal's wager. Pascal said that we really don't know whether or not God exists. But if we believe that God doesn't exists and it turns out He does we will have lost everything. However, if we act as though or believe that God exists and he does we will have gained eternal life. If it turns out He doesn't exist after believing He does, we will not have lost much. Well, Pascal's wager assumes that it is very important to God whether or not we believe in him. I contend that it doesn't make that much differfence to God, if He exists, whether we believe in Him or not. God's ego is big enough that He's not offended if we don't believe in Him. So belief, in and of itself, is not the most important consideration. This shoots Pascal's wager in the head and makes it seem ridiculous. If God takes you in after death whether or not you believe in Him, Pacal's assumptions are moot, and you will have spent your life efforting in a way that, all things otherwise being equal, you would have preferred not to have had to. That's the downside.
Another argument against the importance of believing in God is that Jesus Christ, when asked by His disciples how they were to get into Heaven, didn't even mention that they had to believe anything. Instead He responded as in Matthew 25:
Matthew 25:31-46 (New International Version, ©2011)
The Sheep and the Goats
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Well, when it comes to getting into Heaven, Jesus did not mention one word about belief. It was all about doing. Has Christianity been barking up the wrong tree for 2000 years? If getting into Heaven is predicated on "helping the least among us," how does cutting off government programs that help the poor bode for the chances of Republicans who are determined to do so? And these are the very ones who for the most part claim to be Christians? The above Biblical passage puts Pascal's wager in a different light. To cover one's bases one better have done something to help the poor. The quote, "I was a stranger and you did not invite me in" might have been translated as "I was homeless and you did not invite me in." The homeless are certainly in today's world among "the least of these my brethren."
So going back to original Biblical sources, it would seem that, if there is an afterlife, a belief in God has nothing to do with it at least according to Jesus. What is important is what one does to help out the poor and less fortunate. But to answer my original question, I believe that a benign, even a loving, God could have set things up in such a way that there is no afterlife, that we go back whence we came into the same state we were in before we were born into a state of nothingness, that, when we die, the lights simply go off and that's it. We had no awarenes of what went on before we were born, and we may have no awareness of what goes on after we die. So unlike Hamlet who contemplated continuing to exist or to be or the non-continuation of his existence, particularly his existence as a living being, when we contemplate the answer to the question, "What happens after we die?", the truthful answer is, "Nobody knows." But to extend Pascal's wager, to be on the safe side, action to help the less fortunate is more important than what one believes.
