This weekend, I've been involved in two fascinating conversations with people who are not sure there is life after death. One of the people believes only in science, only in what she can see (although she has faith in her light switch and the electricity she can't see until it lights up the fixtures), and the other believes there might be something else just beyond his grasp. Again, this is an example of where Science and Religion work in harmony.
I find it slightly paradoxical that people who worship at the altar of a laboratory think that people who worship God are nuts. Ostensibly, these scientists believe in the Laws of Thermodynamics, which claim that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. They teach people that "when a man dies, that is the end thereof", or in essence that what we are ceases to exist. In order to be consistent, they would have to teach that the form in which we are presently recognizable ceases, but the matter of which we are comprised and the energy that holds us together continues in a form we are not trained or able to recognize.
Suppose that I took you into space and dumped you out the airlock without a suit. The molecules of your body would immediately separate to fill the empty vacuum of space at the optimum distance. This is spontaneous and involves no energy input. However, the matter of which your body is comprised and the energy is still there; it's just so far apart that nobody on earth recognizes it as you or possesses the power to put the pieces back together. However, we believe in, go to, and pay large sums of money to doctors to do precisely that on earth, just so long as the pieces are kept in proximity and a form with which we know how to work.
What are our thoughts, our memories, our activities, etc.? They are nothing more than electronic impulses between neurons and chemicals being transferred between cells. Assuming we could create the exact conditions (which scientists are trying to do by forming living cells in a test tube), we could not only recreate the form but also the substance that is a soul. Scientists are already ready to admit that electronic signals from TV, radio, satellite, microwaves, etc., continue to echo into space and could theoretically be put back together if you knew where they were and in what form they were broadcast (Star Trek dealt with this on several occasions), but they all think that the electronic impulses from your brain, your voice, etc., cease when you die. That seems duplicitous to me. Who you are and what you do echoes forever because it's all energy and matter.
It is therefore scientifically feasible for not only the reconstitution of a person's life from the dispersed fragments but also for a literal resurrection of the soul. Mary Shelley first popularized the notion of reanimation of dead tissue, combining the biochemistry of a preserved brain with a satisfactory mortal coil in order to return to the form of life we recognize someone else who passed beyond the grave. A power greater than our own could bring back the matter of which we are comprised, recapture the energy we send out, and put us back together in the form we currently recognize. People on earth call that "recycling". What we are persists after we die, albeit in a different form, and if it's possible to create life from lifelessness, we could easily suppose that it is possible to reconstitute a life once lost. That's the theory behind Frankenstein, Trek's Genesis Device, Asimov's Bicentennial Man, and myriad other science fiction themes through all time. Scientists just can't seem to tolerate the addition of a god unless they are that god, which smacks to me of hubris. It's ok for them but not ok for mine.
Thermodynamic principles teach that there is no net change in matter or energy except when matter is converted into energy. There might even be a way to reverse that. In fact, that's the notion behind science's Big Bang Theory- that energy gave rise to matter. Otherwise, where did all the matter originate of which the universe is filled? There is much we cannot explain, like how that much energy could be contained in a small space just before the big bang and where the energy originated in the first place. Its form may change, but it is still there, and so likewise what we are and do and become persists, albeit in a different form through all generations of man and throughout all eternity. Whether we contribute to entropy or to a more perfect union lies in the decisions we make and the lives we choose to live. We will rise again, in some other form, in some other place, at some other time, because all that is has been and will be, and what we are will live again. Whether you believe in the Force, or Mother Earth, the laws of Galileo or Copernicus or Newton, or in the God of Abraham, every one of those believes that matter and energy continue, even if they dispute the form it will take. We will live again; our ability to recognize that fact and the form we take probably depends on how we live while here, whether we advance to a higher energy level or decay to a lower nuclear energy. Each of us will adopt in the end the form of energy which gives us the greatest stability, because that maintains the rules of the universe, at least as we are willing and able to conceive them.
No comments:
Post a Comment