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Everlasting Life?

One of the great assets that religion has is its promise of everlasting life after death. Whether it is an eternity in hell or heaven, reincarnation, our lives (for the price of belief and submission to a system of subsequent beliefs) can be continued after death.

Notice, however, that everlasting life is granted only after you are dead.

Religion does not give you everlasting life, immortality, when you are still living.

If religion really had the power to grant you immortality, then it would do so, magically, in this existence and not some other. If god really has the power to grant you everlasting life, then he could do so in this life and in not some other -- it wouldn't be beyond his power.

If religion really could deliver everlasting life while you are still alive there would be no sense of loss, no fear over dying, and no graveyards.

Religion only promises to deliver immortality after you are dead where no amount of scientific measurement can be done. No amount of metric gathering can be done. No amount of verification can be done to assure one that life does indeed continue after death. And no evidence can be collected to prove there really is everlasting life after death.

Religion only promises immortality after you are dead because it exploits our fears of extinguishment and gaps in our knowledge. It is a promise built on ignorance and fear.

The promise of everlasting life is an empty promise.

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Comment by MB on July 27, 2011 at 9:23am: One book that was formative in my thinking as a teenager was "The Death of Forever" by Darryl Reanney. Its a great deconstruction about the nature of death and our responses to it.

I reread it recently after a a gap of about 10 years and while I found some of the latter chapters a bit too mystical he makes some very interesting points about mankinds need for a belief in the after life.

In a nutshell its because humans are unique among creatures in that we can forsee our death.

Our DNA, or in his terms, the "selfish genes" that have driven humans to develope our intellect in order to prosper and pass those selfish genes to the next generation are faced with a conundrum. It is focused on delevering those genes at any cost and therefore its outlook is towards immortality, but the intellect tells us that this is impossible.

Therefore as a coping mechanism nearly every religion ever created has a belief in soem sort of life after death, be it rebirth or heaven.

Its an interesting idea and does seem to explain our need for this belief.

MB