And there is Shakespeare, who came as close as any man to immortality. Cormac McCarthy will probably live longer than me. Thomas Wolfe, who wrote about a wind-grieved ghost, was already dead. When I read about the nature of life from Camus, the odds were that he would die sooner than me. I am 66, have had cancer, will die sooner than most of those reading this. So within that reality, someday I will certainly die. Even if everything everywhere is the same, I must eat an orange or I will die of scurvy. It is within these assumptions that I must live. I believe my wristwatch exists, and even when I am unconscious, it is ticking all the same. Time seems to move quickly or slowly, but it is time all the same my wristwatch proves it. That, too, is small consolation.Īll I can do is think with my mind. They've proven it in their labs! If the scientists are correct, everything everywhere is, in some sense, the same thing, in the same place-or it might as well be. This happens independently of time and space.
On the other hand, we have been puzzling over quantum mechanics, which suggests the possibility of instantaneous communication between two entangled particles, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe (not that the universe has ends). That whole discussion has been forging ahead on one hand. If I had but world enough, and time, I could spend time pondering a world without end. In that case, how can it be eternal? Eternity is only thinkable in a universe that contains time. To be in your grave and know it! Ah, but I am told, the afterlife does not involve time at all. I relate it to the horror of the hero of Poe's The Premature Burial. How sad if our freedom to think about the immensity of time and space could be defined by what someone informs us that we believe.īut certainly, some readers have informed me, it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. To explain myself, I turn to Walt Whitman: I am still working on understanding myself. It is too easy for others to pin one on me, and believe they understand me. What is the utility of arguing our "beliefs" about it? What about the awesome possibility that there was no Cause? What if everything.just happened? But that entity, or force, must by definition be outside space and time beyond all categories of thought, or non-thought transcending existence, or non-existence. I grant you that if the universe was Caused, there might have been a Causer. Not, at least, in the God that most people mean when they say God. I wrote an entry about the way I believe in God, which is to say that I do not. I discovered fractals and Strange Attractors. You would have the mathematical theory of infinity explained so that, while you will still be unable to conceive of infinity, you will understand the thinking involved. You would discover a defender of Intelligent Design so articulate that when he was away for a couple of days, the Darwinians began to fret and miss him.
No one will read all the comments except me, but if you did, you could learn all a layman should be expected to understand about the quantum level. How did I find a group of readers with so many metaphysicians? 3, has drawn nearly 1,900 comments, some of them longer than the entry, and it is still active. The thread beneath the evolution entry, posted Dec. Life, science, belief, gods, evolution, intelligent design, the afterlife, reincarnation, the nature of reality, what came before the Big Bang, what waits after final entropy, the nature of intelligence, the reality of the self, death, death, death. But you, my readers, have wanted to write about it. When I began this blog I thought if there was one thing I'd never write about, it would be religion. Then I began writing on the subject of evolution, that most consoling of all the sciences, and was engulfed in an unforeseen discussion about God, the afterlife, and religion. Everyone's life story is awaiting only the final page. In the beginning I found myself drawn toward writing about my life. Still, this blog has led me resolutely toward the contemplation of death. What you're really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don't really exist and I might be gone at any given second." Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that's not gonna happen. "Ask someone how they feel about death," he said, "and they'll tell you everyone's gonna die. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing.
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