What Happens When We Die

It was a time-waster, a conversation filler, or at least a way to keep the discussion going I'm certain.  I was asked this yesterday, and answered in a perhaps too sincere manner, such that I lost the audience of one.  That bodes well for what you're about to read.

The reason to re-hash the answer I offered isn't to make it clearer, or even perhaps different.  The reason is that I think the answer matters. I'm not pushing religious dogma here btw, though I do think there is some elegant metaphysics in the answer I'm about to offer.

Let me start by saying I think we as a species think ourselves too important.  We very quickly lose historical perspective and assume that the last couple centuries have been infinity, where we will rule the galaxy forever.  Poppycock. (younger generation pls use Wikipedia to get that reference). Science tells us that the planet is about 4.54 Billion years old, about one third the age of the universe.  In that time, almost 4 Billion of those years saw an earth populated by very small and/or microscopic life.  So life as we'd acknowledge it only appears in the last 550-580Million years.  The first 4B years are referred to hereafter as Heaven's soft opening.

In that last 550-580 Million years, vertebrates and other creatures evolved, and amongst them was some early ancestor or two of ours.  Dinosaurs had their day, for 160+ Million years and the first recognizable hominids - those we can look at and say, yes that looks a little like us -are really appearing only 2 Million years ago.

Evolution as they say takes time, and it wasn't until Cro Magnon man that we've unearthed the first signs of spirituality - about 32,000 years ago. Burying the dead, cave paintings and some early symbols.  So, if we grant this point in history as the evolution of a soul (A huge uncertain leap), our ancestors were soul-less for 98.4% of their evolution.  Herein lies the first issue I see - we take today's level of spiritual awareness and assume it's always been like that.  It hasn't.  In fact if we rounded these numbers just a little, we still don't have souls, statistically.

The second argument I'd make concerns the body v soul division.  We came up with that I believe as a handy way to get around the fact that once a body is dead, and placed into the ground, it begins to no longer be a body. Said nicely, it re-joins it's surrounds.  That clearly doesn't fly if I'm trying to fund a great new religious building (cathedral, synagogue, mosque, temple etc) as there needs to be something more than the physical that can't be proven or disproven.
The spirit is a beautiful answer here - the good have their spirits rewarded, and the bad are punished.  But wouldn't that be the case for animals too ?  Wouldn't your loving dog, dolphin, whale or whatever also have this spirit that could move on..?  Seems not in our humano-biased view.  Its the same issue with zombie movies, why are there no mammal zombies, just people..we know we share diseases across species, why not spirit life as well. Factor in time on top of this, and you have an empty Heaven waiting for us to become self-aware and when it finally happens they no longer admit our furry buddies. Bummer.

While it's a little too easy to poke holes in some established theories, the real trick is arriving at one's own.  I do offer this, for your scoffing and smiling pleasure. Poke away..

There are a finite number of atoms in the universe.  I'm currently 'using' some Oxygen, Carbon and Hydrogen atoms (96% of each of us) and some smaller amounts of others. On the universal scale, I'm gonna live to be 100 (as if) and so I'm really borrowing these for 0.00000769% of the time. Again...we're rounding errors.  The elegance to which I earlier referred is that "I" get to rejoin the universe in another form quite soon.  I may come back as dust, or a plant or perhaps this assembly of atoms may never assemble again, but "I" will have existed, made some kind of impact and the cycle continues.  I'm not preaching reincarnation in a traditional sense - we can't all have been King Richard or Shirley McClaine.  But we all do come back.  The trick of course is recognition, or perhaps should I say appreciation of what's around us.  Birds have wings, fish have gills and people have a sense of self-awareness.  Enjoy your time in this form.

So, it's your turn now.  Answer the question for yourself.  You don't have to tell anyone, or you can - your choice.