In Continuum.

It would be pretentious and hypocritical of me to believe in a life after death if I do not believe in the existence of a God. The whole idea of Heaven and Hell, eternal life and eternal damnation, kind of goes against the idea of discrediting the Almighty One's existence, you know. You either believe in one or the other, you don't believe both at the very same time. I believe when we die, we die. It takes a while for you to go away, and perhaps those flashes of images before your eyes is true. Still, I believe when you die, you just go away like all the other plants and animals in this world. Animals don't really have their own Heaven to go to, or plants either. They just decompose, the disintegrate, and then they disappear from the face of this planet complete, with their genes carried on only by their offsprings. Like the mushrooms I kicked this morning, or the ants I killed in the sink today, they die after they die, nothing happens afterwards. Perhaps there is another place to go to when we die, a better place for us to infest and spread our diseases when we die. After all, they say that the problem with atheists isn't very much different from devotees of various religious institutions. Both groups vehemently believe in something that they cannot prove, though one is more rational than the other, and you know which is which that I am talking about I'm sure. 

Long, long time ago, humans were really stupid. OK, maybe they weren't stupid, but probably really ill-informed. They didn't know what caused the lightning, the thunder, the storms, and the earthquakes. Fire fascinated them, how it could bring life and to destroy life, same with the lakes and the ocean. So they came up with elaborated stories to explain these phenomenon, which was why the earliest humans started off by praying to mother nature, the first Almighty One in the history of mankind. Then, of course, it wasn't enough to worship the sea or the sun, because a bunch of people came and said that their beliefs are definitive, and it should be followed or else everybody would be doomed to Hell. This particular religion then accused that original religion that worshipped mother nature of devilry, and burned everybody at the stake for no apparent reasons. Some of them were supposed to be witches, some were just mentally challenged, while others probably just had a bad odor. At any rate, more blood has been shed in the name of religion than all the other reasons, but all these happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago. This is the twenty-first century after all, you would think that modern-day science and logic would propel people to seek out the truth.

Some people are just stubborn, you know, they don't really want to listen to themselves, they don't want to know the truth. The truth is, ancient beliefs in religion does not apply in our evolutionary society any longer. Sure, the values that religion instills shall never whither in the test of time, yet the blind faith in subjects like, say, the afterlife, is seriously outdated in view of modern day's science. Some may argue that no one is certain whether or not there is an afterlife to speak of - but, does that also mean that you should believe in something, just because no one can disprove it? This is how logic usually works for a normal human being. Let's just say that I am hiding a peach behind my back, and that I tell you that I am hiding a peach behind my back. You do not believe me at first, but you are fully convinced when I show you the peach. This, however, is how religion works. I am hiding a peach behind my back, and I tell you that I am hiding a peach behind my back. When you question the validity of my statement, I don't show you the peach to prove my point, I just simply ask you to believe me. Have faith, trust me, trust that I have a peach behind me. When really, I could be really holding a pile of feces for all that matter, who knows? 

Nobody can prove that there is no afterlife, but you cannot believe it on that basis alone. But humans don't buy that most of the time, they kind of want to know that there is a place for them to go to after they die. It doesn't matter if you were ran over by a truck, poisoned by muffins, stabbed by the horns of a pit bull, or tripped and rolled down the stairs one morning. People like to think that they will go to somewhere nice, somewhere good, when they die. The idea of Heaven was probably created by death-fearing human beings, people that were deeply disturbed the idea of death. They didn't like how everything ended with a big fat full-stop, they wanted there to be a next sentence, and perhaps a next paragraph, or a volume two. People like sequels, which is also why Hollywood keeps churning them out like car parts in a factory. So these death-fearing people came together one day, and combined a book that detailed what happens after a man dies and goes to Heaven. I wonder how ordinary human beings could accept another human being telling them what happens after they die, when no one alive has experienced it before. It's like saying that you know every corner of ever street in Detroit when you've never stepped foot in America at all. It's absurd, if you look at it from this perspective, don't you think.

Believing in eternity, makes life irrelevant. Doctor House was spot on in that episode in season three when he mentioned that to a girl. But what the girl said in return got me thinking for a while, in regards to the whole idea behind karma and consequences of life. The character of the girl was raped by a man, and she wanted to believe in the fact that that man would get punished, even if he doesn't get caught and brought to justice in life. She wanted there to be an afterlife, a Hell, a place where it'd give justice to the things that human beings do in life. Like, if we do not have the fear of Hell to keep us in check, we'd all be robbing banks and raping women on the streets, something like that. The idea of an ultimate consequence, a judgment if you please, keeps us humans in check somehow. It lets us know that everything we do in life affects another human being, or it ultimately determines your fate in the life after life. To think that a man could commit a hideous crime and get away with it for the rest of his life would be ridiculous. It'd be an idea that normal human beings won't be able to accept, to think that people can get away from anything as long as they are smart enough to remain under the eyes of law. They want to know that there is an all-seeing being in the skies, watching out every move and recording down your every crime. It makes us good people, even if we are good people because we fear a certain consequence after death. 

But, here is what I think. I agree with the fact that these people do deserve certain punishments, but I suppose not everything works according to plans. I still believe that when we die, we die. We do not go anywhere, and thus there are a lot of people out there who has probably gotten away with a whole lot more. They always say words like "life is unfair", and yet they also claim that "God is fair". OK, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but I suppose I prefer the former statement better. If this world is the best God can do, then he is really doing a shitty job indeed. Everything is unfair, you cannot ask for it to become fair just because you were the victim of a crime. Some people get away with things, they do not get persecuted in court or be raped in jail. People get away all the time, that is the way life works, because death changes everything. It erases away your crimes, takes away your achievements. Everybody is equal under the eyes of death, everybody is the same. It doesn't matter if you are a priest that helped thousands of people, or a priest that touched little choir boys. When you die, you die. That's death, and that's life. 

Why do people fear death so much, anyway. It's not a plague, though not necessarily one in our day and age. I believe that we were all a part of a star that exploded a long time ago, not because I blindly believe in it but because we've seen it. We know that everything in this world and beyond are made from atoms. You are made of atoms, I am made of atoms, the iMac I am using now is made of atoms, and the fish burger I ate for dinner was made of atoms. When we die, we disintegrate down into tinier atoms and we go back to nature, we go back to where we came from. It is a simple concept, though a lot of people cannot accept the idea of reuniting with mother nature. Perhaps mother nature is still seen as somewhat of a devil in this world, when it really is an outdated idea. The truth is, there is no more comforting thought than to know that when we die, we return into the embrace of nature and we become one with everything that is around us. The feeling that everything and everyone is related is just, somehow, very liberating in that sense. A "church" that somehow has thirty-four thousand different sects, is not a "church" at all. Atoms, however, don't lie, and we are all made up of the same fundamental material. We are all, but stardusts, and there really isn't anything about death that we should be afraid of, is there?