It's all well and good to come up with "theories" (guesses) about what happens when we die, but in the end, as humans, we really don't have any reason to suppose that anything happens at all but simply... death.
When we say that a fire "dies", we mean that it has ceased existing. We don't believe it has "gone to a better place". The same goes for when a conflict dies... or when hope dies... or any number of things I could name. "Dying", to us humans, seems generally to mean a simple cease of existence. But why are we unable to apply the word in that sense to ourselves? Why are we the exception? The answer, frankly, is easy to find, simply by trying to think about one's own death. True oblivion is not something that the human mind can wrap itself around. The mind cannot imagine an end to thought itself. It's easy to accept that a fire has gone out and no longer exists... but it's much harder... and MUCH scarier... to try and imagine life itself snuffed out, brief candle that it is.
Life is the only frame of reference for thinking about things that we have. Robbed of that, we have nothing left to understand. That, I think, is why the idea of an afterlife, of eternal life, is comforting to some.
It isn't to me. Why? Maybe I'll explain briefly.
Let's take the Christian idea of heaven. Assume for the sake of argument that, when you died, you made it in. What then? What do you find there?
A lot of people would expect to find their loved ones there. But back up. There's another half to the Christian afterlife. What if your loved ones... all, or even just a couple of them... just didn't make it in? What if some of the people you loved so dearly are now in hell, to stay there for all eternity?
Can paradise really be paradise for you, knowing that? If it were me... it would eat away at me. It would be comparable to hell, knowing that someone I loved would be suffering for all eternity.
Can God make you forget? Possibly. But is that a good thing? Hardly. It would mean you'd... well, forgotten about them. How horrible is that? If there is one thing worse than death, it is being forgotten.
And if you were the type of person who just didn't care... well... would you even deserve to be in heaven in the first place?
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