Who will you be when you no longer are

Who Will You Be When You No Longer Are?

[Warning! There is a risk that as you read the following notes, you may misunderstand the discussion and think that we are suggesting that there is no "reason to live". That is not what we are saying at all! In fact we are saying the opposite, we have abundant hope that if you search for the reason to live you will find it. As you read these notes you must not become discouraged or depressed. If you are or become discouraged, if you disagree with anything that is said, or if you simply don't believe what we are saying is "useful" to you, please finish reading all the notes. Even if you agree with what is being said, and think you understand what we are talking about, please read every section. If you are to find the true reason for living it is necessary that you understand what is discussed in the last notes. We are convinced that after you read these notes and complete your journey through your heart, mind, and soul, you will find in yourself the reason for living. Anyone who is, or becomes, seriously depressed should always seek immediate medical help. If you find yourself distressed or depressed by our conclusions please read the Note – Distress & Depression at the end of our notes.]

If in fact you do exercise meaningful freedom of choice, what good is it to be a unique human being if at your death you cease to exist? If you do not continue to exist in some form after death, what good are all the experiences, decisions, triumphs, defeats, all the moments of your life? If you do not survive the grave, if you return to the state of being that preceded your birth, then I suggest to you that nothing in fact does matter. While over the ages men and women have sought to perpetuate themselves through their children, their place in history, their role in society, and through intricate philosophical webs of existentialism and other essays on physical man's importance, the fact of physical death remains. If each generation's death means the end of those individuals, then we are all faced with an endless cycle of creation and destruction, the meaning of which, if any, is beyond comprehension.

If there is anything in life we can count on occurring without fail, it is physical death. The successful bank president, the champion athlete, the housewife, the famous, the unknown, every human being, you, I, die. While all acknowledge the certainty of their eventual demise, few think about death until they are faced with it. The simple fact of death is not news to anyone, yet the reality of its impending occurrence is ignored by virtually every living person. The very nature of human life denies death and shrouds it in the cloak of future events, events that are not yet real and need not be dealt with in the present. Living is too important and time consuming to be concerned with mortality. The fact that you are moving steadily toward your death is most likely, and literally, to be the last thing on your mind.

Observing the inevitable death of every creature that inhabits the earth, we may have a recurrent feeling that death is the end. On the other hand, it is virtually inconceivable to us that all we are, all we have been, all we will be, will be rendered void in that moment of death. It goes against human nature to visualize the effective destruction of our past, present, and future, which accompanies death without existence beyond death. Yet if each human being does cease to exist, then all human beings are, or in the case of generations yet unborn will be, waiting their turn to cease existing. If each and every human being ceases to be, then the feeling of continuity that pervades the human race is false (please note, we will explain later why we do not believe that life is in fact destroyed by physical death).

In their arguments for humanism, existentialism, etc., philosophers have spent lifetimes trying to construct a difference between the apparent continuity of humankind, and the periodic death of individual humans. Most of us think of our ancestors as a link to the past, and our children as a link to the future, yet if we do not survive the grave each generation dies an isolated death that mocks any assertion that humankind has a continuing existence apart from its individual members. If each person's death results in their no longer existing, then no manner of historical recording, social progression, or other remembrance in the minds of those whose time to die is yet to come, can in any way affect, preserve, or make any difference whatsoever to those who no longer are. No one will survive to remember. If each of us ceases to be, then your life has no meaning and your choices make no difference.

We admit that this logic seems counter intuitive, and even wrong, but if we are willing to dissociate ourselves from the incredible biologic urge for self-preservation, both of the individual and the species, and are willing to apply purely objective reasoning, the logical conclusion, while discomforting, is perhaps inevitable (there is at least one possible logical loophole we will discuss below that might give permanent meaning and value to a finite physical life). This is a very difficult conclusion to accept, it goes against our intuitive feelings about the continuity of human life, and against our assumptions that individual physical lives have some kind of meaning and value. Yet if we are little more than doomed animals, our intuitive feeling of meaning and value would not be surprising. From the very beginning, to assure survival of any species, evolution would certainly have instilled in living creatures the feeling that there is a reason for them to exist, a reason for them to crawl out of the ocean and build cities. If there is no life after death, and our lives are in fact consumed by "nothing", it is no wonder that our genetic heritage argues so strongly against that possibility.

Because it is so difficult to accept, we will consider our conclusion in more detail. It is logical to assume that if each person's consciousness is the product of their physical bodies, then individual physical consciousness exists only during that person’s physical life on earth. If each of our physical lives proceeds from birth to death, then the consequence of each person's death necessarily follows their death. Who can be affected by that death? Certainly those who survive may be affected, but here is the "problem", the death cannot be of any consequence to the purely physical human being who no longer exists! The moment before the death of a human being perhaps it can be said that their impending death affects that being, but the very moment after the person dies, he or she is no longer around to be affected!

Let us assume, for example, that a comet collides with the Earth at some time in the future before humans have colonized space. Assume further that all life on Earth is annihilated by the collision. It is very hard to accept, but if consciousness is nothing more than a physical phenomena, if there is no non-physical continuation of life after death, the most logical, I believe the only logical, conclusion is that the complete annihilation of humankind is of absolutely no consequence to humankind! While the words may sound bizarre and counter intuitive, in fact they are not. The moment after the total destruction of humankind it can be said with some certainty that the destruction of humankind had no effect whatsoever on humankind, simply because humankind no longer exists to be affected.

If you accept that time has direction (we believe that even absent a “fundamental time”, all events follow a causal, sequential, chain), then cause and effect, action and consequence, occur in a fixed order, the former always "preceding" the latter. Keeping that in mind, the idea that after the total destruction of humankind there would be no one left to be affected should not seem as bizarre. Assuming that one event will always precede another event in order of occurrence, if the event that is called the death of a human being is equivalent to the physical annihilation of that human being, the consequence of that event necessarily follows the event. If there is a causal sequence to events, then the annihilation cannot be of any consequence to a human being who no longer exists. Again, the moment before the destruction of humankind perhaps it could be said that the impending destruction affects humankind, but the very moment after humankind is destroyed there is absolutely no humankind left to be affected. Assume that the comet annihilates humankind at 12:00 noon, the consequence of that destruction occurs at 12:00 noon PLUS a moment in time, and at 12:00 noon plus the moment in time there is no humankind left to be affected. Indeed, there is no humankind around that is conscious of the fact that the comet struck the earth!

The same logic applies to the history of individuals not visited by a catastrophic event. If you believe that each human being is nothing more than an individual physical entity, and therefore that there is no life after death, then at the time of their death each human being experiences the identical individual annihilation that all humankind would experience together if the earth and its inhabitants were simultaneously "destroyed". If a human being dies at 12:00 noon, and there is no life after death, at 12:01 they are not "around" to be affected by their death. If an individual named Bill dies at 12:00 noon, at 12:01 Bill no longer exists to be affected by his death. If Bill is a physical entity that does not survive death, after 12:00 noon (i.e. - after completion of the sequence of causal events that precede Bill's death) you could search the entire universe for Bill and you would not find him (some readers are probably thinking that Bill continues to exist as his world-line even after his physical death, we will discuss that later). Bill's death occurs at precisely 12:00 noon. Not minutes, or even moments, later. If there is no life after death, the very moment after the event known as Bill's death, Bill no longer exists. After 12:00 noon Bill cannot be affected by anything, including his death.

The logic goes even further. If you do not believe that human consciousness continues to exist after physical death, then death not only annihilates each individual's present and future, but also annihilates their past. Most people would agree that for an object to have a present and a future the object must exist. Yet many would make the distinction that while an object cannot have a present and a future if it does not exist, it somehow can have a past. It is clear that the present and future of an object are bound to the existence of the object, but so to is the object's past. Much of the problem lies in the popular usage of the words past, present, and future both to describe that which is part of an object (a "past" that belongs to the object, like a person’s memories that “belong” to the living individual from birth to death), and to describe the existence of the object from a third party's view (a “past” which is a chronological description of the object, like a photo album containing pictures of an individual who has died).

It is a misconception to equate the fact that there is a "history" of all beings or objects that is set in the "past", with the statement that a being or object that no longer exists has a "past". The first idea simply states that the being or object existed over a finite period that is apparent to those who currently exist. The extension of the concept of such a history to the idea that somehow the object or being that no longer exists still possesses a "past" confuses the distinction these two words can convey. Once an object or being no longer exists it obviously has no present or future, similarly the object has no past. While it may be difficult to accept, a mountain that no longer exists has no past, present, or future for the simple reason that there is no such mountain. There is a current history of a mountain that once existed, but there is no mountain we can point to and describe the "past" of. This is far more than semantics. A person who lived a thousand years ago had a historic life that those who are alive can be conscious of, but the person no longer has a past that is their past, which they can be conscious of.

The English language lacks the words that would make it easy to convey the difference between a “history” set in the past that is the sum of all lifetimes, and a “past” that is unique to and dependent on the existence of an individual life. Perhaps humankind has avoided the initially discomforting possibility of "finite pasts" by not distinguishing them from the infinite. Perhaps the majority simply do not accept the possibility of the perpetual annihilation of human beings.

There are many arguments that purport to counter this logic, including assertions that a person's life before physical death has “existential” meaning in and of itself, yet all the alternative arguments are set in the time before death, within the causal sequence of events that precede death. Every humanistic theory is based on the biophysics of existence before physical death. We believe that none of the arguments adequately address the period after death (perhaps with the possible exception suggested by modern physics that is discussed below), and therefore none answer the question of how a person who no longer exists can have a past, present, or future?

If death is the end of your existence, should you be frightened by the certainty of your destruction? If indeed you cease to exist, you need not fear death, for after your death you will feel neither pain, nor pleasure, nor peace, nor torment. "You" will no longer exist, therefore "you" will feel nothing. The resulting void is just that, a complete and total void. There is nothing to fear, for there will be no one to experience anything negative. There is nothing to look forward to, for there will be no one to experience anything positive. The only way you can visualize what is usually called a "nihilistic" death is to picture yourself after death as being in the same state you were in before birth (of course you were not really in any state at all). Trying to project yourself into the void that precedes life helps you understand the void that may follow death. This ultimate void would in a single moment consume your past, present, and future. No matter what philosophers may tell us, such a fate, while it would offer no hope, would leave nothing to be feared.

Admittedly, our conclusions about physical death are totally opposite to our "common sense" understanding of life. Virtually everyone is certain, for example, that if they are eleven years old now, they have already experienced their tenth year of life, and nothing can take from them the past experience of being ten years old. It is this assumption, that our past somehow exists forever, that is at the heart of all humanistic belief systems. Indeed, belief in some kind of physical persistence of a human being's past is the only rational argument for the universal humanistic conclusion that even if physical death is the end, living a "good life" gives meaning and value to human existence. However there is a deep, deep, problem with the humanist's view.

"Humanistic" philosophers seem to accept that human consciousness is purely physical in nature, and acknowledge the end of consciousness at physical death. Yet almost all modern humanist philosophers tell us that a finite life can have meaning and value. The problem lies in failure to accept the rational and logical consequences for each human being if individual consciousness ceases to exist on the physical death of the mind and body. All of the humanist philosophers either ignore or misunderstand what the future holds for us after physical death if we are nothing more than physical beings.

Philosophers often speak of the void that would follow such a death as the abyss, the unknown, the approaching void, etc. All of these suggest that we are on a journey to a "place" which lies at the end of our physical lifetimes. If on our death we cease to exist, this idea that we are traveling to our ultimate destiny is false. What the philosophers are doing is giving substance to nothing. We are not traveling to an abyss, the void, or the unknown, for these words suggest that we are moving toward something. I recognize the seeming absurdity of the language, yet if on our death we cease to exist, then "nothing" totally consumes us.

This is the heart of the problem, we cannot in any way whatsoever understand or visualize "nothing". The moment we attempt to comprehend or visualize "nothing", the comprehension or visualization interjects something into "nothing", preventing us from reaching our goal. When we define "nothing" we give it the quality of being definable, a quality that can only be given to that which is more than "nothing". Nothing might be thought of as the total absence of physical reality, yet even this assigns a definition to the indefinable. The moment we think about "nothing" we make it an object that can be thought about, we make it an object that can only be more than "nothing". The only way we can answer the question "what is nothing?" is to answer it by not asking it, for if we ask the question we destroy the answer. Most people fail to recognize the fact that "something" simply cannot comprehend "nothing". If we are no more than physical beings, and if “nothing” follows our physical death, then at the moment of our physical death, "nothing".

What does science have to say about all this? We need to recognize that the very difficult conclusions we reach in this section are not necessarily supported by conventional interpretations of general relativity and quantum mechanics. The current understanding that human being’s have of the physical universe is fundamentally incomplete. Early concepts of space and time as absolute metaphysical entities would seem to be fully consistent with our analysis. However, modern physics tells us that the universe is much more complex than it was once thought to be. At the start of the third millennium, it is generally accepted that we exist in some kind of four dimensional “space-time”. The mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who helped formalize the math of space-time, said "…henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, have vanished into the merest shadows and only a kind of blend of the two exists in its own right."

Space-time is essentially the history of the entire universe, containing every "event" that ever happens. A "world-line" is the history of an object / observer in "space-time". Each point on the world-line of a human being is generally thought to be a real physical event that represents a unique sequential moment in the life of that individual, from birth to death. Conventional wisdom is that the world-line of a human being is the "human being", so that human life is in some sense a permanent part of space-time. If this is so, perhaps we have a permanent physical past that is etched in the fabric of space-time.

To see why we do not believe that science provides us with a physical past, we need to look at three interpretations of cosmologic theories. The first possible interpretation, the one that we strongly favor, brings into question the very nature of space-time. At first glance, the concept of a permanent physical space-time seems to imply that human beings have a physical past, present, and future. Most people assume that the math of space-time describes a permanent physical reality that surrounds us, a very real, very physical, space-time in which we exist. This may not be the case.

The limited number of physicists who understand the incredibly difficult math, realize that the theory of general relativity tells us that the universe may be completely described without using a "fundamental temporal variable", without even defining what we call "time". The time we measure on a stopwatch that we use to clock a foot race is derived from comparing the motion of the runner from the starting line to the finish line with the motion of the hand rotating around the face of the watch. The time on the stopwatch is not, as Newton thought, a fundamental quantity in nature, rather it is a comparison of the motion of the person running down the track relative to the motion of the hands of the stopwatch. Therefore, we may be justified in concluding that "time" is derived from relative motion, but that relative motion does not necessarily require the passage of time. It may be true that “fundamental time” simply does not exist.

This is a shocking idea for human beings who are confronted with the ticking away of years, days, hours, and seconds. Even so, if you think about it, a year is nothing more than the relative motion of the earth going around the sun, a day is the relative motion of the earth rotating around its axis, an hour is a fraction of the motion we call a day measured by a quartz "moving" in a watch, a second is very close to the relative motion of a beating heart, etc. Certainly we experience the passage of what we call "time", yet what we feel is not "fundamental", it is "derived" from the progression of a sequence of events. We don't expect to convince you in a few paragraphs that time is an illusion, it took years of reading and thought for us to reach that conclusion, but we do want you to recognize that there is a strong possibility that "fundamental" time does not exist. If this is a correct interpretation of general relativity, it can lead to the conclusion that there is no temporality of any kind associated with our universe (please see Physics Meets Philosophy at the Planck Scale for more details).

There are extremely serious objections to this line of thought. In its most popular forms, the other 20th century revolution in physics, quantum mechanics, incorporates a fundamental temporal variable. Some scientists believe that general relativity will be found to be incomplete, and that quantum mechanics tells us that time does in fact exist. Other physicists agree that the universe lacks a fundamental temporal variable by which the universe evolves, yet they also believe that in some very real sense the universe exhibits fundamental "temporality". None-the-less, there are a few respected physicists who believe that we should accept what general relativity is telling us, that there is no fundamental temporal variable in the universe, and find a way to modify quantum mechanics to eliminate both "time" and "temporality" from quantum theory. Given the success of general relativity in predicting experimental results, we strongly believe that this is the correct approach. We are convinced that if and when physicists discover a broad model that incorporates both relativity and quantum theories, what is usually called a theory of quantum gravity, it will not have any kind of fundamental temporal variable associated with it, and we will find that the universe is fundamentally "atemporal" in nature.

If we do in fact live in an "atemporal" universe, one extremely speculative result might be that physical events in our lives either exist, or do not exist. The statement that a point on a world-line exists in the universe may be false, true, false, with no sense that “false” is “before” or “after” true! If so, then it may be quite literally true that your tenth birthday does not exist, does exist, does not exist in the universe. Perhaps you believe that your tenth birthday is a permanent part of your past only because it is part of your current memories, not because it exists in some kind of permanent physical space-time. We need to emphasize that this is a very speculative idea that at the beginning of the third millennium is considered nothing more than science fiction by most, perhaps all, physicists.

If we live in an essentially "atemporal" universe, and there is no non-physical existence after death, we are convinced that physical death consumes each human being's physical past, present, and future. This is very difficult to understand and accept, yet the idea that there is no fundamental temporality, and that this fact leads to the annihilation of our physical past, intuitively appears to us to be the correct interpretation of our physical universe. When you finish reading this you may have questions about some of our conclusions, especially about the very complex relativistic and quantum science behind this part of our notes. You may want to look at the extensive links we provide on our website Spacetime, Einstein's Relativity, Quantum Gravity, and the Existence of Time, and perhaps look at the comments accompanying our book that we release from time to time, where we try to present a broader picture of the foundation and logic that supports the conclusions.

The reason that we end up relying on intuition, and cannot be more certain that our conclusions are correct, is simply because no one knows what physics will look like if and when relativity and quantum theories are united. Furthermore, there is no way to tell how long it will take to find answers to the basic questions raised by modern physics. Indeed, it is quite possible that we will never know the answers to many of our most fundamental questions. We believe that the universe is essentially atemporal, and that physical death annihilates our physical (but not any non-physical) past, present, and future, but we may be wrong!

OK, let's say that you are unwilling to even think about "time" not existing, would the existence of "time" restore a meaningful physical past to your life? The second possibility we will look at is based on the fact that most popular interpretations of modern physics suggest that the physical existence of each human being somehow persists in space-time in the form of the individual's "world-line”. Classical interpretations often say that an object is the entire world-line of that object, or that a human being is his or her entire world-line, but they do not really explain what is meant by this. They do, however, almost universally conclude that each event in a human being's life exists as an event in space-time, so that if we could observe the point on a world-line that is the tenth birthday of someone who is now eleven years old, we would see that person experiencing their tenth birthday. We would not see a "copy", or a "repeat", of the particular day, we would see the person's tenth birthday as it is occurring, period!

It would seem that this interpretation of space-time theories leaves us without tools for building a rational model of a universe that contains a "conscious" world-line that is the "me" reading this text. Rather it tells us that there is, and always will be, a set of unique "me's" that somehow exist in space-time at every single event on my world-line. We might want to say that I am the "sum" of all the points, yet the assertion that a human being is his or her entire world-line, from birth to death, does not appear to be consistent with the general consensus that every event along a world-line has a singular existence that cannot be preferred over any other event on that world-line.

Classic interpretations imply that each individual exists as discrete human consciousness in the billions of discrete events located at every point along that individual's world-line. Some physicists describe this by saying that there are many "now's", others say there are billions of approximate "isomorphs" of "me", many claim there are billions of other worlds in which various versions of "me" co-exist, etc. It seems reasonable to conclude that modern physics tells us that if time exists, literally billions of discrete, very real, versions of each of us occupy space-time!

This may seem like science fiction, yet surveys of theoretical physicists and cosmologists confirm that most believe we must adopt some form of many-worlds, multiple existence, theory (please see 100 Years of the Quantum ). Remember, this is currently accepted as the most promising approach to the problems of space-time, and not merely a speculative idea. If there is a "me" that exists on my world-line for every event in my physical life, or if there really are an infinite number of parallel universes in which I exist, then there is no singular "me". Rather there are billions of isolated "me's" either lying along my world-line, or stuck somewhere in totally isolated universes.

If the scientists are correct, it would seem to be impossible to find meaning and value for a singular "me" in the collective existence of each of the billions of instances of individual consciousness, no single one of which is the "me" who can live a meaningful life. All of the popular interpretations of relativistic and quantum theories seem to lead us to the same metaphysical conclusion, if you do not have a single permanent existence, your life has no meaning and your choices make no difference to “you”, simply because there is no single physical "you" that exists before or after physical death (please remember, we believe that life has meaning and value).

There is a third possibility, that the intuitive feeling human beings have that their physical past cannot change or be lost is based on some real, yet unknown, physical model of our universe. The intuitive feeling is very strong that our physical life makes a positive or negative contribution to human existence, and that our physical life is a permanent part of the physical universe. Perhaps there is some single physical consciousness that incorporates all of the events along our world-line, and that preserves our physical past, present, and future. We cannot rule out this possibility, if for no other reason than the fact that it is theoretically impossible to prove a negative. In other words, we might be able to prove that physical consciousness after death exists in the universe by observing it, but we can never prove that physical consciousness after death does not exist because we have not observed it (we will discuss this limitation in some detail a bit later).

The third possibility seems to require the existence of a physical consciousness that is not bound to events on a world-line. Yet it seems intuitively true that if consciousness of past events can be lost when memories fade or are damaged, then physical consciousness has not incorporated those past events into a permanent singular “me”. Einstein only briefly addressed this matter when he said “An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise…. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.”

It seems that if we are to believe that there may be some kind of singular physical (rather than non-physical) consciousness that survives physical death, then we must accept that there is some unique physical consciousness that is "me", that somehow incorporates all of the conscious events of my life, and that is not dependent on the continuing physical existence of my biologic body. While current interpretations of popular theories do not rule out the possibility of a perpetual individual physical consciousness, there is no known method that is both rational and realistic to construct a physical (as opposed to a non-physical) model that preserves the singular human physical consciousness of an individual after the physical death of that person. Modern theories suggest the possibility that multiple instances of a physical “me” exist in space-time, but they do not offer even a clue as to how to unite all of those instances into a single physical “me” whose consciousness spans space-time. Indeed, current interpretations of quantum superposition seem to deny the possibility of a “single” physical reality in which a unique “me” might exist.

I can visualize and accept a “non-physical consciousness” that survives physical death, yet I am unable to have any confidence in the existence of a singular “physical consciousness” that survives the physical death of a human being. I may be wrong, yet I can say that after many years of thought I am convinced that any attempt to construct a model of permanent physical consciousness does far more damage to the centuries of accumulated scientific knowledge, than does the acceptance of the possibility that a permanent non-physical consciousness may exist.

We have concluded that no current, or reasonably foreseeable, rational theory provides us with a singular physical consciousness that continues to exist after physical death, so that a single physical "me" continues to exist after my death in my physical “past”. We have said that if we do not have a singular physical or non-physical consciousness that continues to exist after physical death, then those who believe in nihilism are probably correct, and some type of "nihilistic" void awaits all of us. It may be a true void, like the void that preceded our birth, or it may be a very strange void where billions of "me" merely co-exist. Whatever physical form it might take, it would seem to satisfy the definition of a "meaningless" void.

A moment's comment on those who believe they may be able to physically perpetuate themselves through cryogenics, cloning, etc. If, we live in a constantly expanding universe, our universe will eventually return to a state of uniformly high entropy, so that the cosmos will become a hostile environment in which physical life cannot be sustained. If, on the other hand, theories that predict endless cycles of expansion and contraction of our universe are correct, nothing physical can survive beyond the next collapse of the universe a few billion years from today. While a physical end to all biologic creatures may seem absurdly far away, your great, great, great (to the 100th. power), grand-clone would find it frightfully real when the time came for their physical demise, a distant time from now which like all imaginable time is but a second in eternity. There is simply no cosmologic model that we know of that offers any hope for a perpetual, physical, human existence.

Even if in some unknown manner multiple clones could survive in an ever-expanding universe, the idea that they are perpetual extensions of their donor seems less than credible, perhaps so, perhaps not. Such a perpetual presence seems to be more like an endless path of meaningless individual moments than a continuous meaningful existence. Furthermore, if there is no life after death, it would make no difference if an individual (cloned or otherwise) continued to exist, or "died" in one hundred years or in one billion years, because "death" would annihilate the individual's past, present, and future.

If physical death annihilates all individual consciousness then there is no reason whatsoever to embrace cryogenics, cloning, strong artificial intelligence, or any other means of extending physical life. Since an individual's death would carry with it no possible consequence to that individual, there is no logical reason whatsoever for the living individual to avoid the "consequences" of death. If an individual no longer exists after death, that individual has no reason at all to feel anything positive, negative, or otherwise about death (or for that matter anything at all about life). Again please note, we do not believe that physical death annihilates individual consciousness, and we strongly believe that life does have meaning and value.

What should our response be to all of this? We strongly believe that there is absolutely no reason not to live for the possibility that life has meaning and value. We think we are right about the transitory nature of physical consciousness, but we may be wrong. If our conclusions are wrong, perhaps we do in fact have a physical consciousness that survives physical death. If we are wrong, we may have a perpetual physical existence that gives meaning and value to our physical lives, even if there is no non-physical life after death. We will not pursue this possibility, yet you should recognize that it exists.

If we are right, if our physical consciousness does not survive physical death, our death may mark the end of our existence. Yet if our physical consciousness dies, it is still quite possible that we will not face a "nihilistic" death. Perhaps we have a non-physical consciousness that survives physical death, and that gives meaning and value to our lives. We will consider this possibility in more detail as we continue our search for a reason for living.

Beyond the human desire for meaning in life, we would suggest that the logical consequence of what philosophers call a nihilistic death, "requires" the search for alternatives to nihilism. Those who believe that the nihilistic void is approaching are, by the very nature of their humanity, required to search for something to believe in other than the void. While it appears to be impossible to scientifically prove that life has meaning and value, it is equally impossible to prove that life has no meaning and value. No matter what the person who believes that life is meaningless may believe to be true at any particular time in their life, the possibility always exists that he or she may eventually find true meaning and value in their life.

The following may take several readings and a great deal of effort to understand. The limits of human comprehension make it extremely difficult to understand the fact that if there is a nihilistic void after physical death, then there is absolutely no reason at all to consider the “nothing” that may follow physical life. “Nothing” cannot affect our physical lives, either positively or negatively. It cannot be a part of our existence, it cannot be a part of our thoughts, it is nothing. The possibility of nothing, and the fact that its non-existence renders it totally neutral, frees us to live as positive a life as we possibly can without any thought whatsoever about the physical consequences of physical death, with the belief that there may be existential meaning in our physical life and/or that there may be a non-physical life after our death. The possibility of meaning in our daily lives, and the freedom of “nothing” if we are wrong, is all that is required for us to live the best life we can.

It is very important to recognize that nihilism can never lead to suicide, for nihilism tells us that if we do in fact live in a nihilistic world, nothing that happens in our lives, no matter how "badly" we may feel about it at the time, has any "real" consequence at all. It tells us that if a nihilistic fate awaits us, what we perceive to be the very worst events in our lives are no better, or worse, than any other events. The possibility of "nothing" leaves you absolutely free to live a life filled with both pain and joy, knowing that if you live in a meaningless world the "pain" will be as if it never was, but that if life has meaning then you may find purpose in your life now and perhaps joy in a non-physical life after death. Terminating life does not bring peace, rather it destroys the possibility of a good physical life now, and perhaps of a good non-physical life after death. I am absolutely convinced that the philosophical neutrality that nihilism demands, means that nihilism never suggests or supports suicide as an option for any human being.

If you believe that suicide is an option, you totally misunderstand what you have read, you do not comprehend what it means to say that “nothing” may consume your past, present, and future. If in fact there is nothing after physical death, then if you live one minute, or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 more years, on your physical death all of the horrors you may suffer are as if they never were. This is not the same as saying that we find “peace” in a nihilistic death, we find “nothing”. If you do not understand the difference then you must carefully reread and rethink the idea of “nothing” until you understand that it eliminates suicide as a choice.

There is no reason to be a "nihilist", no reason to believe that life ends at death. If nihilism is correct, if life does end at death, it makes no difference whatsoever if we believe it is correct, or not. If we believe nihilism is correct, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would follow death. If we believe nihilism is not correct, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would follow death. If we do not believe anything at all about nihilism, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would follow death. Yet if nihilism is not correct, belief and/or faith in that which offers a reason for living may well be essential to our existence. If because we believe nihilism is correct we accept the void, and we are wrong, then we have doomed ourselves. If we recognize that the humanistic belief that there is no life after death leads to the nihilistic conclusion that the "void" will consume past, present, and future, then to escape the quicksand of nihilistic time we must search for alternatives that provide a reason for living.

Furthermore, since it is absolutely clear that we may not live in a nihilistic world, and that nihilism may be wrong, there can never be any reason to terminate our life, risk the negative consequences, and abandon the possible positive consequences of living a meaningful life. We are a small part of the whole. Unless the answer is revealed to us by the whole, we can never know during our physical lives what really happens when our physical life ends. Life may have physical or non-physical meaning and value that we do not, and perhaps cannot until our physical death, recognize and understand.

There is no reason at all to reject the possibility that each of us has some kind of permanent physical or non-physical consciousness. There is absolutely no logical reason whatsoever to reject the possibility that nihilism may be false! There is no reason whatsoever not to search for an alternative to nihilism, to explore the possibility of a permanent physical or non-physical consciousness, to search for a reason for living. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever not to live for the possibility, however remote you may believe it to be, that life has meaning and value. [Again, if you find yourself distressed or depressed by our conclusions please read the Note – Distress & Depression.]

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