Resurrection

Back in February, I took a break from my train of thought at the time for a brief Valentine's Day interlude. If I was willing to take a break for a pseudo-holiday, I should be willing to do the same for a real one, so today, is our Easter break.

Easter is, without a doubt, the most Christian of all holidays that we (pretend to) celebrate. I mean, without Easter, there's no Christianity, pure and simple. You would think, and it still amazes me, that Easter isn't a bigger deal than it is ... for Christians, that is. Could it be that they really don't understand what the holiday is all about? Perhaps. It's a great kiddy holiday, though, even if you're an atheist: what's not to like about chocolate, in whatever form it comes in? Valentine's Day may mean chocolate for the sweetie, but at Easter, it's chocolate for the whole family (as well as those disgustingly artificial and chemically laden marshmallow chicks, but, hey, haven't I been harping on the fact that there's an upside and a downside to just about everything?).

What Easter has in common with just about every other major religion on the planet, is what most people just don't get. The focus, the theme of this particular holiday is life after death (put in most mundane terms) or eternal life (in a more spiritual and uplifting sense). Now, I don't want to go into detail about or have an argument about who has the better heaven. Every religion talks about what happens after we die and the common thread is that if you were "good" (whatever that means in the given religious context), what comes next is good, and if you were "bad" (and the same caveat applies here), what comes next is, well, literally, hell.

Who's right and who's wrong is not important. Whether anyone is right or anyone is wrong isn't important either. What is important is the fact that throughout the entire course of human history, recorded or archaeologically discovered, this has apparently been a subject that has been on our minds. The Neanderthals took great pains in burying their dead; the Egyptians made a civilization out of it; there hasn't been a time, place, or people who didn't try to come to terms with the fact that we're only here for so long and then ... . Yes, Easter is the holiday at which we think about death - as natural a part of life as there can be - as well as life, in particular life after death.

I believe that Easter is as good a time as anything to think about such things. Americans like to avoid the subject; other cultures apparently can't get enough of it. Regardless of where you personally stand on the issue, you need to come to terms with it anyway. You can believe that you can blow yourself up and awaken to six dozen virgins or that you'll walk streets of silver and live in houses of gold, or that you don't wake up at all and just rot in the ground. It really doesn't matter. All that's important is that you give it some thought.

Having said that, though, and in keeping with the current flow of posts (apart from this interlude), there is increasing interest in the topic by lots of people. One of the more interesting approaches, I would like to add, comes from the world of hard science, believe it or not. The philosopher of science Jim Beichler has written a number of articles and books on the subject. He has developed a theory of physics which he believes shows, scientifically, that individual consciousness survives death. He's part of a growing number of scientists who are refusing to be silenced by the "accepted wisdom" of the scientific community and are demonstrating in rigorous and scientifically acceptable ways that there's more in this area too than meets the eye, or we'd like to admit.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. If you're interested in Bleicher's ideas, you can find him on academia.edu. Open your mind. Expand your horizons. Take a new lease on life.