What do me mean by the term temporal death? That consideration was pondered, speculated upon, and pontificated about from the beginning of recorded history. Scientific understanding has shown us that with physical death comes the immediate decomposition process leading to eventual reduction of any entity into its basic gross chemical components—the elemental atoms and compounds of which it was constructed. In due time, each of those basic components will be incorporated into other entities in a continuing and continual process until time ceases and no further change exists in the universe. That process is now scientifically understood and not contestable. However, there looms a much larger question; what happens to entities’ existence giving principle, their spirit, when their temporal existence ceases?
Again, historically, some cultures, particularly Native Americans, adopted the idea that ‘spirits’ of their dead resided in their burial grounds—therefore, those grounds were considered to be sacred. Other cultures believed their spirits would be reincarnated into other living beings. The Jews, on the other hand, for the longest time believed that when they died, their spirit died with them. However, later they concluded that their God was the ‘one true God’ who could be bargained with, and in that bargaining process, they formed a pact with him—if they would be faithful to God, he would never again abandon them. In fact, they were promised a Messiah who would restore paradise here on earth just for them—after all, they were God’s ‘chosen people’ to the abandonment of all others. Despite their “chosen’ status, their God demanded appeasement with sacrifices supplied and offered on their behalf by the High Priest. That scheme became a scandalous ‘money-making machine’.
When Jesus appeared on the scene and declared himself to be the Messiah, the Jews were flabbergasted when he began speaking of God’s love. In fact, when questioned about which of the Ten Commandments was the greatest, they were astonished and dismayed when Jesus told them he would give them two commandments—love your God with your all, and love your neighbor as yourself (paraphrased). They had developed a religion of sacrificial appeasement which Jesus readily recognized as a sacrilegious abasement of his (our) Father’s Perfect Love—Jesus despised religion. So, he made a desperate attempt to liberate the Jewish people and all the world from the despicable blanket of guilt under which they existed. He knew the consequences of his heretical teaching, but in his glorious determination, he succeeded—so they killed him—they hung him on a tree. What then happened to Jesus’ message of love?
I have been unable to locate any surviving piece of evidence of Jesus’ message of love except the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. That Gospel was excluded from the Canonical Gospels by the prevailing bishops during the First Nicene Council in 325 AD, and for obvious reasons. The Roman Catholic Church which emanated from that Council was (is) patterned exactly after Jewish sacrificial ritual, while, simultaneously, ignoring Jesus’ teaching of love. That church, formed under the pretense of being Jesus-like, was nothing of the sort. It fashioned and fostered a concept, just as the Jews had done, of a vengeful God—a God who would cast your spirit(soul) into the unquenchable fires of eternal hell for a breech of his commands.
Several hundred years after Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed appeared, and Islam was born. While I am not aware of all Islamic tenets, I have heard that ‘their heaven for men’ guarantees them seventy-five virgins—I wonder what women’s heaven is like.
Be that as it may, all the above demonstrates clearly to me that all ideas of a spiritual afterlife have been based on different groups imagination and/or wishful thinking, but most of all on their selfishness. Certainly, it is rational and simultaneously selfish for us to to manufacture concepts of an afterlife. It would be difficult to imagine any sane person who would wish to vanish into total oblivion upon dying. However, any concept of an eternal afterlife must be based on scientific understanding of temporal life in this and possibly other universes.
I have shown in my extensive writings and publications a logical, scientific basis for delving into the unknown subject of a ‘spiritual afterlife’. We know that everything in temporal existence is composed of perfect quanta of energy which, being perfect in both form and function, and being unchanging and unchangeable, already do and always have existed in eternity. Since we have defined God’s essence as prefect rationality which means he perceives all with his Perfect Intellect and he wills (loves, chooses, accepts) all with his Perfect Will, it is mandatory that those quanta be stamped with the loving brand of their Almighty Creator, God. Those perfect quanta constitute all temporal existences and consequently are the spirit or existence giving principal of everything. In my graphic description of the Holy Trinity, I call that existence giving principal the Holy Spirit.
All gravid existences have an essence which imparts an identity to them in the temporal world. The question is, will they retain that essence or identity in the supernatural world? It would seem that, since the quanta which constitute one entity also constitute many other entities, each entity would lose its identity at the time of its demise. However, that represents human reasoning, and certainly not the perfect reasoning of God. We can and must reason that all existences are in God and that God is in all existences. For that one singular reason, knowing that God is perfect and lacking nothing, we must assume that God loses nothing including each of our identities. Therefore, we will have an eternal identity—our existence giving principle—our soul.
Likely, many of you have not experienced this scenario, but I have witnessed it many, many times as a boy growing up in a rural farm setting. A female spider lays hundreds of tiny eggs in a pouch attached to the rear of here abdomen. Early in the incubation/gestation period, that pouch would not be noticeable to the casual observer because of its tiny size. However, as the extremely small eggs begin to swell and eventually hatch, that pouch enlarges to a centimeter or more in diameter, and she continues to drag it behind her until the thin walled pouch ruptures delivering what appears to be thousands of tiny spiders which immediately become independent. I have caught many spiders dragging their pouches and opened their pouches to observe the tiny spiders—a truly amazing sight. Many times I have harkened back to those days and, somehow, imagined that is how God operates. It is his DNA, so to speak, which reproduces exact likenesses of himself. Of course, in the spider’s case, it takes two to tango. The spider’s egg sack represents the entire universe and each little spider represents us and all existences. Sounds strange, doesn’t it, that we humans could be equilibrated with every snake, every tree leaf, evert blade of grass, ever drop of water, every grain of sand, indeed, every existence, past, present and future—I believe without doubt that is the case—everything is God, and God is everything.
Yes, there will be an afterlife. It will not be the mythical type promoted by organized religion. It will, however, be perpetual serenity in the perfection of God.
I have based my conclusions on what I believe to be sound scientific and philosophic principles. In addition to the many blogs I have written, I have published three books outlining and expounding on this philosophy and its many extrapolatory facets. Those books are Wilderness Cry-A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe, Peace in Spirituality, and Provocative Catholic.
In addition, you might find my little book, Growing up in Fancy Farm Kentucky, quite interesting. It describes, in vivid detail, many of my life’s most unusual experiences from my earliest memory at age two, growing up during the Great Depression in a primitive, pioneer setting, until age twenty-two, the last year I lived there, 1955. It has been enhanced with many accompanying photographs from that timeframe—Amazon and Kindle.
Buddhaism Christianity Eternity Faith Future of Christianity God God's Will gods Hilary L Hunt MD Hinduism HolyGhost Holy Spirit Islam Islam Christianity Jesus Judaism Judaism Buddhism Money Philosophy Power Religion religions salvation Science The Trinity
WILDERNESS CRY by Hilary L Hunt MD 