If the Universe existed as described by Atheists, then the universe
would be Godless, and we would be leading soulless lives which end with
filling up a coffin as fertilizer and no future at the end of our
individual existence. But emotionally, most people cannot accept that.
We need to believe in some sort of future after our lives end, some
sense of hope that children who have died will get another chance at
life (or a free ticket at the Pearly Gates), and that the lessons
learned in this life can be used in the next life, whether that be in
Heaven, Hell, or back on Earth for another crack at it. But pure Atheism
offers none of these options, Christianity only two of them, and
Paganism only the third option. Buddhism offers a semblance of the three
options by requiring souls to repeatedly return to successive lives
until all the lessons of the Pilgrimage have been learned and then
transmigration of the soul allows the person to advance to Nirvana, a
heaven-like plane in which the spirit no longer needs to return to human
existence. But Buddhism is unpalatable for most people as one of its
core beliefs is non-existence of the self--that notion of individual
personhood that we hold so near and dear to our culture. (However, this
begs the question of whether or not it is appropriate to choose a
religion based on how palatable its core beliefs are.) But what if
Buddhism turns out to be the one that's correct? Watch all the
frustrated pagans anxiously trying to cling to their personalities as
they depart this mortal coil and drift into the wispy realm of
unself-based pilgrimage, and all the self-righteous Christians trying in
vain to enter Heaven only to be pushed back into the queue for another
try at life without the aid of their hard-won memories, like a diabetic
Jerry Garcia waking up from a coma only to need to relearn everything
from scratch including his own name and how to play guitar. So for a
religion to become popular, it must assume an afterlife, a Heaven in
which each individual's sense of personhood is glorified and praised, as
if God is personally high-fiving you for making it thru this messy and
painful existence, and offers you a permanent residence atop fluffy
clouds where the music of lyres is gently wafting on the breezes, and
you'll never have to hear Yitzhak Rabin's name spoken aloud ever again.
It doesn't matter what we feel in our bones to be true, it matters what
we want, the goal that we want to earn, and then we spend the waning
years of our lives hoping we were right. The notion of souls provides
us with a belief in a future, that somehow we continue to exist when the
body dies. But most belief systems do not specify how much of the self
is contained in the soul.
We need to start with the conditional
statement that if there are individual souls, then there is a God. I
will show why this is necessarily true, even if you don't believe in the
Bible's Yahweh or Jehovah or the Koran's Allah. If we assume that
there are souls which inhabit people, yet denounce the existence of a
moral sovereignty, then we would have to accept that the strongest and
most advanced soul should at least bear the moniker of a god. So, if
there's no God and no god, it's because there are no souls. If we all
have souls, then one of them gets the job of being god--if only for a
day, until some other soul becomes stronger or more advanced and takes
the crown to wear it for a day. Therefore, if there are individual
souls, then there is a god.
But in this belief system, there are
no individual souls. (That's the unpalatable core belief here.) God is
the sum of all spiritual content in the Universe--that's what
"omnipresent" means. There can't be any spiritual content in the
Universe which us non-God; if there was, then God would not be
omnipresent. It's why He chose the name Yahweh--it translates as "I am
who am," which is more appropriately translated as "I am who is," which
means that if anybody exists, it's God. What we perceive as our
individual souls is simply a facet, or segment, of God's soul, which I
will call a tendril. Each individual's spiritual content is a tendril
of God's unified and omnipresent soul, participating with your body in
life and sharing your consciousness with you. I am going to posit that
there is a thing which I will call a Quantum Circumstance, whether it be
a particle or a collected bundle of waveform energy, which attracts a
Tendril of God's soul to participate in life with a person, and develops
a consciousness in that person's brain. By emitting a unique frequency
vibration, it attracts a tendril of God's soul to participate with it
in the existence of a sentient lifeform. Quantum Circumstances can only
exist in this reality by inhabiting a sentient lifeform, which is why
their existence can't be proven. (Nobody will be permitted to put a
person in a particle accelerator to smash their Quantum Circumstance to
bits so that it leaves a bubble trail in a gas chamber as it careens
away from their now soulless body.) The Quantum Circumstance inhabits
the person's body, and is attached to the tendril of God's soul. This
tendril participates with each life that the Quantum Circumstance
inhabits, and the QC acts as a connector between the body, the tendril
of God's soul, and the consciousness that grows in that person's brain.
The Quantum Circumstance is a type of particle that only exists in this
Reality in its participation with a living sentient being--a person.
In a sense, it is nothing more than a connecting link between the
Tendril of God's soul, the living body, and the consciousness that is
developed by that living body's brain. Remember: Consciousness persists,
but is not owned. When the body dies, the consciousness continues to
exist, but is separated from the body, and fades slowly over time. The
Quantum Circumstance vibrates at a unique frequency, so the the Tendril
of God's soul and the consciousness knows to connect to that body
instead of just anybody's body. However, unlike the consciousness, the
Tendril of God's soul maintains its connection to that individual QC for
all eternity.
This explains reincarnation and past-life
memories. During life, the Quantum Circumstance connects the Tendril of
God's soul to the living body, and provides a home for the consciousness
which grows in that person's brain, by emitting that unique frequency
vibration that the consciousness recognizes as its own. When the body
dies, the consciousness loses contact with the Quantum Circumstance as
it leaves the body, but the Quantum circumstance retains its connection
to the Tendril of God's soul. When the Quantum Circumstance inhabits a
newborn life, then this new body begins to develop a new consciousness.
However, the consciousness from the previous life--if it is still
viable--can attach to the new body's Quantum Circumstance and share its
memories with the new consciousness.
This idea also explains the
mystery of observer-created reality. If all Reality is in actuality
God's soul, and we are all nothing but Tendrils of God's soul, then
Reality (at the subatomic level) knows when we (the living
consciousnesses whose spiritual content is actually a tendril of God's
soul) are looking at it/Him. This idea also explains the notion of
soulmates, since the Quantum Circumstances are subject to the rules of
Quantum Mechanics. If two Quantum Circumstances are entangled, then the
persons that they inhabit would have an unbreakable and instantaneous
connection, no matter how far apart they are.
If God is not the
moral sovereignty of the Universe, then how does this "Crowd of Souls"
govern the moral component of spiritual existence? These are Quantum
Circumstances which have completed their pilgrimage, transmigrated to a
state in which they no longer need to participate with a lifeform in
order to maintain their connection to their Tendril of God's soul. They
retain their connection to the last consciousness they developed, and
can sustain it so that it can stay viable without a living body. They
are not omnipotent but they can influence the actions of physical
reality at a personal and individual level. This is why miracles
sometimes happen but not always when we ask for them. It isn't a failing
of faith-based prayer, or lacking devotion, it's just that the "Crowd
of Souls" were busy elsewhere, or couldn't manifest enough energy to
make it happen differently than fate should dictate. When bad things
happen to good people, it isn't because God decided to smite some poor
soul with an undeserved affliction (or even death) for some unknown and
unrelated sin, it's just because the "Crowd of Souls" were unavailable
to prevent it.
Conclusion
As emotional and sentient beings,
we can't accept that at the end of this life that we are just done, we
did the best we could, no chance to go back and fix the messes we just
made, no reward for having tried our best, no chance to try again if we
failed at something in this life, no opportunity to even be held
accountable for our actions, or that we just stop existing at the moment
of our death.
Religion fulfills two basic emotional needs:
Redemptive Salvation, and Non-Terminal Existentialism. The first need
is caused by the assessment that we are not required to do great things
with our heightened abilities, and that our existence as sentient beings
is pointless unless we manufacture a point to it. The natural tendency
in this assessment is to conclude that we do not deserve to be blessed
with the consciousness we bear, the gifts of the tools that we have
wrought with our hands, and the ability to experience pleasures beyond
our physical means. Religion has taught us that the moral sovereignty
of the Universe which we call God had given us these traits so that we
can renounce them for some higher spiritual purpose, if only for the
sake of having a purpose beyond the hedonistic joy of participating with
our human talents. (Of course, some religions utilize the argument
towards opposite ends, that God has given us these talents so that we
can employ them towards a prescribed (or perhaps hidden) agenda, which
those churches usually describe as belonging to the Greater Good, or a
higher calling.) The second need is caused by that horrifying paradox of
our awareness that existence is both more than what we perceive and
experience, and also nothing more than what we perceive and experience.
The assessment that all the things discovered in our Redemptive
Salvation crisis will come to nought when we die, all our experiences
will pass from memory, and all our achievements will have to be
reconquered by those who come after us, is quelled by the belief that in
heaven we will retain all our human talents and be at peace with them,
that we will remember all our human accomplishments and be celebrated
for them, but mostly, that we will transcend the need to care about
them, and more eagerly accept the need to forget them.
