Conclusion
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
There is absolutely no evidence of the existence of a life after death but there is a great deal of evidence that this belief is inherent in the human psyche, has utility to some powerful interests, is profoundly hoped for by many and is widely incorporated into our myths for these reasons.
Recent discoveries about the nature of a universe and about the human brain confirm the extreme improbability of the existence of a heaven, hell, purgatory, a soul or any continued life after death.
Just as there is no need for me to imagine that you are reading this; there is no need to imagine that there is no heaven, or hell; it is as certain as the existence of others in my universe; and from your perspective, this essay in yours.
The belief in a life after death is viewed in most secular western societies as a harmless cultural trifle that goes along with social church attendance.
But in some parts of the world and some western sub-cultures it has a serious impact on the lives of people who: live in poverty but spend valuable time, effort and what little money they have attempting to secure their immortal soul; become the victims of religious charlatans or cults; or sacrifice their lives and those of others in religious vendettas and terrorist bombings. And it is an unconscionable, obscene idea to advance or promulgate if it causes even one elderly or sick person to spend their last days in trembling fear of divine judgement or everlasting punishment.
The related ideas that a foetus has a soul, even before the development of a nervous system; or that only God should control conception, are also problematic as they are significant impediments to controlling overpopulation.
Overpopulation is the greatest crisis presently facing humanity. This crisis has been significantly exacerbated by religiously, and sometimes marketing, motivated sabotage to efforts to stop or slow population growth during the twentieth century. Overpopulation is now directly responsible for an estimated 25 to 40 people dying prematurely and agonisingly every minute, from widespread malnutrition and social breakdown in Africa and parts of Asia and South America. In a substantial part of the world, half the population is now under the age of 15, hardly conducive to social stability, productivity or good government; and in many one in five people die unpleasantly before reaching even this age. These deaths have long been predicted if population was not controlled, by scientists working in the field and bodies like the United Nations that set up the UN Population Fund in 1969. But the Vatican took an overt stand against the 1974 World Population Year and started a campaign to propagate its viewpoint on birth control; rejecting contraceptives, sterilisation and abortion. The official Catholic policy was to influence, through Catholic political power, the policy of nations ‘even where Catholics represent a minority of the population’. At the same time Muslim fundamentalists were denying women an education and consolidating their status and baby factories for Muslim men. It is not unreasonable to accuse those responsible for sabotage to population control and female education programmes in the early 1970’s, of premeditated mass murder in the 21st century.
We have already let ‘too much water under the bridge’ to contain this and no matter what we do now this dreadful death rate is bound to at least double. To mitigate this we urgently need to give women the means to control their own fertility and the education needed to put this into effect. I am still reeling from a poster opposing such measures that I saw in a church in Portugal. If the perpetrators and promulgators of such insidious nonsense persist they will be responsible for death on a scale that will make past religiously motivated genocides and holocausts look like insignificant practice runs.
In the developed and developing world it is overpopulation (not its symptoms such as increasing CO2 and methane levels) that is the root cause of impending anthropogenic climate change and resource depletion. We simply can’t keep increasing population without consequence.
In these ways a belief in ‘the life eternal’ is one of the worst of the wrong ideas a person can hold.
To quote John Lennon again:
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Richard McKie
2008-2015