What is existence?

Science doesn’t have all the answers. Some questions shouldn’t even be asked even if they could be answered. What was urban legend, fantasy & science fiction 100 years ago has in many cases found footing in science fact. Death can be viewed from a medical perspective, a religious perspective, a scientific perspective and a meta-physical or Philosophical perspective. Lets go where other’s answers haven’t gone yet. What is life & what is death? These different perspectives all answer that question differently. Science hasn’t fully answered the question “What is existence” or the question “What is consciousness.” There is clinical death, the absence of heart beat, respiration and brain wave activity. There is biological death, religious death, etc and corresponding views to what constitutes life. You can be clinically dead have an autopsy, be embalmed and buried a few years yet not be dead in a biological sense. Even in the grave microbiological life continues even after the formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, methanol, solvents have been pumped into your body. Proteins in hair and nails continue to grow and likely some gut bacteria still live. We all have colonies of bacteria that are “us”. These little plants don’t need sunlight to live and they can survive the harsh 0g, radiation, heat & cold & vacuum of space. They may go dormant if conditions are severe enough but they are not dead. Bacteria has been recovered from earth junk left behind on the moon for over 5 years. Bacteria has been found growing on the exterior of the international space station. So parts of your body likely survive a long time. Don’t Scientists harvest viable DNA of animals “dead” for centuries? Well DNA is like “pre-life” or building blocks/code of your organic material while bacteria is living cells. Science hasn’t been able to definitively prove where consciousness resides in a human body. It’s reasonable to assume it resides in the brain and central nervous system, yet it remains unproven. Like religious nomenclature for the human soul, no scientific proof has ever been collected (yet) to establish its location or qualities. I believe in the soul, and in life after death. Lets change tact here and consider that first of all death is a part of life. It may be the last part of life, ie “the last thing on earth you want to do.” but it is life’s transition into dead that we’re examining. The hypothetical immortal who “lives forever” is more likely to “exist forever”. Life is a property of the organic creatures who are “born” and who “die”. Where do our immortal souls come from? If they are immortal, then they existed in an infinite state before we were born. At death an immortal soul continues to exist in an infinite state. Writers have long made death out to be something evil because it is mysterious to many and the unknown to us all, so far. Death really doesn’t qualify as “the unknown” to me because of what we do know. Death is the birthright of the living. We get an expiration date assigned to us the millisecond we are alive. Death is incorruptible in that it treats us all the same and no one can buy their way out of death with money or power. No matter your race, gender, or station in life, death makes us all equal. No rich/famous/powerful/Saint is better than any poor/unknown/weak/sinner at the time of death. What else “in life” is that fair & equal? Now once you get past death into dead and judgement and eternity/infinity all bets are off. Into that realm the Religious and Hollywood writers good/evil=heaven/hell thing exists as a believe or disbelieve matter of faith. I have faith life after death exists, but it is faith not logic or philosophy that I hang my belief upon. The world has many many mysteries and that is a good thing. Where would human imagination be if we didn’t have any awe of the unknown? You don’t need science to teach you to understand GOD or how he works in order to know God. Our human understanding of everything in existence in the universe is based on “the word.” The word? The word or words are just symbols that represent all real and imaginary things. Numbers are a type of words and Math is a language of numbers. Some sheepherder got tired of remembering if all his flock was there so he started keeping a pebble for each sheep. When he got tired of a pocket of several hundred pebbles he learned to notch a stick or stamp a symbol into we clay. Since language was born mans entire relationship with the universe has been objectified (named) and quantified(described) by words & symbols. Everything including Infinite/finite. life/death/God/Devil, Good/Bad. Light/Dark. Earth/Sky/ etc. Hot gave birth to the word idea of cold. Wide created narrow, tall created short and near enabled the concept of old. Our creation stories has the infinite creator use the word to create. Let there be light, and there was light. God didn’t need man to create a word for him to exist. God existed and created long before the first stars were born. Our “names” for God in all their variety don’t even come close to naming, expressing, describing what God is or isn’t. God certainly isn’t going to limit his manifestations or being based upon mans guttural sounds and grunts made manifest on a piece of paper. The “books” full of “words” don’t get you into heaven or paradise. I’m not suggesting the God isn’t “alive” in our hearts eternally. I’m not suggesting that God or the teachings aren’t true. To the contrary, I’m suggesting that the complexity of the Universe and God are so far above what we can grasp with our minds and write in words, that our true relationship with the almighty and his prophets must come from faith, not understanding, from the heart and not from the mind. If you believe in the unknown, the mystery, the unexplained, then reach out in awe with your faith and touch the face of God.

It may seem a strange thing to become closer to God and Creation by embracing a large diffuse mass of belief found in the acceptance of the totality of God, rather than a small tightly defined specific set of verse(s) or rules supplemented by historical stories. It is liberating to be free of strict interpretive bonds that are set in academic perspective and context. Sometimes these interpretive sets involve the examination of the base word from antiquity in Aramaic or Hebrew that were centuries later translated into Greek or Latin, then into German and subsequently into English. That requires a large amount of translation over many centuries and cultures in which the subtle variations in context & perspective alter the true meanings. It is an argument in Islam that the language of Mohamed (Arabic) who transcribed the Koran from the Archangel Gabriel as the only true first & last “word of Allah.” supplanting all other texts. It is an argument yet changes within Arabic do occur over time. Translations of the Holey Koran by the most devout Islamic scholars exist. Even Islamic groups like the Sunni & Sufi variants are bound together under the Tawid concept. It is difficult to have a religion practiced in 49 different nations all have total & absolute continuity between each cultures identities especially over the passage of centuries. To be certain the fundamentals are well defined and cohesive. Yet even Islam which is more than just a religion shows divisions. Islam’s political manifestations while generally bound in Shira Law isn’t uniform.

Monotheistical religions greatly share a historical tie to the man known as Abraham. Despite this one common origin where one man, talked to the one true God, humanity still seems hell bent on killing one another over these slight differentiations.

A strange phenomenon is that a student of Judaism, Islam & Christianity who can overlook the minor differences and contradictions to Love & find a true deep personal relationship with “The One True God” and “The Prophets” who is also obeys the commandments & prays in accordance with the accepted ceremonial dictates, is likely to be judged to be a heretic by all three faiths.

I submit that all religions are institutional creations of man inspired by mans faith in God. There seems a distinct difference between God/Allah/Eywa and the “religions” established in their name(s). All religions seem adamant that you, a person are incapable of finding salvation from the one true God as an independent individual without the involvement of one of their institutions.

On a practical note “That which is real, is controlled by time.” pause,,,pause. Think about that. What does “real” mean? Real means NOW. That which was falls into “memory” that is past tense, over with, and may or may not currently exist in the moment. Lets say “This house is real. ” In the moment, it being tangible “the house & all its physical attributes, IS Real. That doesn’t imply it will exist “in the future” or “forever” in a tangible way. The Legend of the house or photo’s or paintings have some permanence as artifacts of that structure but “they are NOT the house” or not real. The “future” isn’t real until it becomes the present. The “future” is just theoretical conjecture based on our reasonable expectations of what it should be. You can plan for the unreal future and you can remember the past but “these things” cannot be real or tangible. The unreal doesn’t have to be imaginary or even “un-true.” Hey look I didn’t invent this Universe of words nor can I explain the persistent contradictions. What is….. Why is….. When is….. Where is…???? Having the correct questions are at least as important as having the correct answers.