Six Feet Under part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted part one where I ventured to suggested 3 possibilities for what happens when I die:

1. I am no more
2. I keep going in some religious realm
3. Something else happens.

I ruled out 1. on the grounds that if true, it's boring. 16 billion years go by, I pop in and experience the world for a few years, I pop out and another 16 or so billion years go by. If that's true, why am I sitting here wasting time writing this blog, I should be doing all I can to snag a night with Kate Winslet, so that my popping in could be deemed worth it!

So on to 2. Problem here is taking it literally. Religious afterlife is always based on one's moral standing during the prelife, and we know nature doesn't work like that. So maybe the afterlife isn't part of nature - and surely it isn't (except for the Jehovah's Witnesses, who proffer pictures showing how the middle-class afterlife will look). But that's a problem, because we are part of nature. In order to function, we need good old physical, natural things, like brains, hearts, oxygen, organic food. Hard to see how we could walk with God without those, and so hard to see how that could literally be true. I think the Christian concept is not meaningless, but it's not a prophecy about "how it will actually be for me". As Woody put it, "I don't want to gain immortality through my art, I want to gain immortality by living for ever". Well, how about reincarnation? Again, that begs a metaphysics rather than a physics - there is some kind of "super-self" that goes through various "lives", each predicated on the moral scoresheet of the last. As a way of seeing this life (and avoiding the world-view of 1.) it's wonderful, but don't take it as a prediction. There is no natural process that will have Hitler returning as a worthog because of the terrible deeds he wrought. Just as there is none that would allow graves to yield up their dead.

So 1. and 2. are out. Let's try 3.....