Someone I know once commented that what was clear to him when it comes to the subject of religion is that this is something that is embraced by people who are essentially suffering from a fear of death. Because these folks cannot face the idea of extinction, he surmised, they choose to believe in a fairytale notion of heaven and eternal life and seek to surround themselves with people and a belief system serving to constantly validate their hope.
But as comparative religion scholar Karen Armstrong among countless others has pointed out, religion collectively is much more about life in this world--the life of the individual and the life of the planet and all its peoples than about an afterlife that can only be vaguely visualized or imagined. Religion is the spiritual foundation that truly enlivens now, not at some time in the future.
It seems to me that if there is fear regarding death, it resides in he who invests his belief in nothing, an unavoidable abyss, an inescapable end. How bleak, and how frightening. These clutch at the only straws available to them. Medical science, for instance, must continue to push the length of life expectancy with new medicines, new treatments, new organ transplants. Why, even brains may be transplanted one day (although one cannot help but wonder whose brain he would be thinking with from that time forward). People may one day be frozen, like freeze-dried coffee, and reconstituted at some future date when death had become scientifically conquered. Another popular idea is that the essential person, which would seem to be contained in the brain alone, will be downloaded into a cyber eternity such that the person will continue, his comprehensive being captured in a program (God forbid that the program should crash).
These, as it seems to me, are the desperate manifestations of fear, and are really no more than clumsy substitutes for the simple assurance of religion.
It was Blaise Pascal who pointed out that human beings make a basic wager with their lives--that either God exists or does not. The rational person, he argues, will live as though God exists and seek a knowledge of God within himself and in his actions. If, as it turns out, God does not exist, the believer will merely have been wrong (as well as dead), whereas he, by believing, will have invested in infinite gains--that is, eternal life--and avoided infinite loss--that is, extinction according to his own belief.
How much more pleasant it must be to face death in the anticipation of new light than with the expectation of nothing at all.
But as comparative religion scholar Karen Armstrong among countless others has pointed out, religion collectively is much more about life in this world--the life of the individual and the life of the planet and all its peoples than about an afterlife that can only be vaguely visualized or imagined. Religion is the spiritual foundation that truly enlivens now, not at some time in the future.
It seems to me that if there is fear regarding death, it resides in he who invests his belief in nothing, an unavoidable abyss, an inescapable end. How bleak, and how frightening. These clutch at the only straws available to them. Medical science, for instance, must continue to push the length of life expectancy with new medicines, new treatments, new organ transplants. Why, even brains may be transplanted one day (although one cannot help but wonder whose brain he would be thinking with from that time forward). People may one day be frozen, like freeze-dried coffee, and reconstituted at some future date when death had become scientifically conquered. Another popular idea is that the essential person, which would seem to be contained in the brain alone, will be downloaded into a cyber eternity such that the person will continue, his comprehensive being captured in a program (God forbid that the program should crash).
These, as it seems to me, are the desperate manifestations of fear, and are really no more than clumsy substitutes for the simple assurance of religion.
It was Blaise Pascal who pointed out that human beings make a basic wager with their lives--that either God exists or does not. The rational person, he argues, will live as though God exists and seek a knowledge of God within himself and in his actions. If, as it turns out, God does not exist, the believer will merely have been wrong (as well as dead), whereas he, by believing, will have invested in infinite gains--that is, eternal life--and avoided infinite loss--that is, extinction according to his own belief.
How much more pleasant it must be to face death in the anticipation of new light than with the expectation of nothing at all.
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