The belief I will question is that which states that at death we disintegrate and become nothing, and there is nothing else to say.
There are two problems with this view.
1) It defines death as a limit between things, but it doesn't have anything to say of these things. The athesist holding such a view point still knows nothing about life or death. They hold instead to the limit between life and "nothing" (whatever that is). Holding such a view adds nothing to our knowledge of the world. This view point is really then just a repackaging of the far more honest agnostic viewpoint which is "I don't have evidence to know". The weakness of the view is that holders believe they actually know somthing!
2) The other problem is to do with materialism. What happens when an object "dies". Say some ice melts. So where is the ice? Worse if the ice was in the shape of a swan where is the swan?
The materialist can grasp the answer to the first. The ice is only apparent. In reality there is just energy and this doesn't change. "Apparent systems" however are characterised by entropy. A question I once grasped for in chemistry (and not only failed to get an answer to but failed even to communicate the question) was this... why are changes in phase discrete? The answer is simply that solid and liquid represent systems characterised by physical rotation of molecules and liquid and gas by the overcoming of electrostatic charges. There are two digital questions here.
| Can the molecules rotate? | |||
| YES | NO | ||
| Do the average molecule momentums | YES | GAS | - |
| escape the electrostatic charge field? | NO | LIQUID | SOLID |
And you don't get a hybrid slurry of ice/liquid because the ice system actually spawns a spontaneous liquid system that has to physically move away from the ice system. This way ice and water remain discrete. (OK there is liquid crystal but its only another discrete phase). And here I already have problems with the materialistic view point (exactly the same problems that I have with the evolutionists) that the main assumption of entropy is the system/environment distinction and yet in reality its only a fleeting temporary boundary not dissimilar to a national boundary or even the marking on a football pitch. Leave it for a while and it is simply forgotten! Doesn't sound very material to me! If they say that universal entropy is increasing this is ONLY true WHILE the boundaries have been drawn out. Ice and water do not absolutely exist - they are simply boundaries that are assumed during observation and analysis. They are conditional in every sense. They cease to exist when the game ends. It is true that England won the 1966 World Cup at Wembley. I was at Wembley last month to see ACDC. There were no markings cos the game had changed that day. There was not even the same stadium - it has been rebuilt. But when we think of 1966 we reset the conditions and reimagine the "rules" that enabled England to beat Germany in extra time. It just takes us to "forget" the rules, or a sudden bump on the head, and we suddenly can't understand what balls going into nets means. To say we "won" is even more tenuous then!
Ludwig Boltzmann didn't commit suicide because somehow increasing entropy leads logically to "nothing" he committed suicide simply because of the "idea" of entropy. It was just the implication for him of accepting rules and imagining that entities really do exist! Isn't this the same as poverty and class systems - that the "rich" are not really rich but simply a state distinguished from the environment. Watching human interactions with glasses that polarise these two states means that the decreasing of the entropy of the apparent "rich" classes indeed looks like increasing the entropy of the "poor" - but only when imagining these distinct groups. In reality they are not different - there is no entropy outside such analysis!
And this brings me neatly onto the swan! The swan disappears also along with the ice. But actually just like the ice is never really existed either. It is just a swan given a series of rules about language and the world. The rules that decide that a particular animal is a "swan" can be used on the ice. But the ice isn't any more a swan in Reality than a "real" swan: only in a mind which plays the game of identifying "types" of animal and bird. As evolution will tell us there is no Platonic archetype of Swan (unless you believe in Creationism) - i.e. a model upon which all Swans are made reference to ensuring that they are all truely the same - and that "swans" vary endlessly according to gene population flows as do all birds and animals. It is Life if anything that is the constant as is - by implication - Death.
So we've handled the arrival of two types of Nothing - the ending of a "make believe" form (the Swan) and the ending of a "real" form (the Ice) and see that actually they are bed fellows. Yet neither corresponds to Death as it is for a Human! So the materialist so far hasn't understood anything about Death. With the ice and the swan we can say they have ended because we have some idea what they were - altho it seems a superficial idea. But to say a "human" has ended puts us into even murkier water. Is a human simply another form like "ice" or a "swan"? "Alva Gosson" is even murkier. I am neither ice, nor a swan but a particular swan called "Alva". If "Ice" ceasing to be, and a "swan" ceasing to be are both rather trivial then how much more trivial is a "particular" swan ending?
But the Existentialist complains loudly and says there is nothing is names and essences, only in existences. And I agree. Actually that which is crudely disgarded with the name "Alva Gosson" is what is really alive - the rest is just empty names, fleeting ideas and rules that can be forgotten in a moment. But without these essences where is the atheist and the materialist? They have had their entire ontology (belief in what exists) swept away! How do you talk about existences without reference to "types of things", or "what things are" or even "things" at all!!! In that lies the rub! As Humans we are not ultimately concerned with what?, or where? or when? or even which? or how? or even who? When we are married in our deepest moment of love we are no longer concerned with these trivia we simply are there and so is our partner - as Susan Vega in Language from Solitiude Standing so eloquently puts it:
It would be rushing in
Instead here we are
In a silence more eloquent
Than any word could ever be
These words are too solid
They don't move fast enough
To catch the blur in the brain
That flies by and is gone
Gone
Gone
Gone
Yet as I found out the hard way even love does not put us outside the grasp of Death - and by implication it does not therefore encompass the whole of Life - at least not this type of love. True Love that of which is spoken by the prophets et al., this as far as I can see, is the boundary that transcends Death. A Life that is more profound that the mortal life/death that even we mortals can't grasp properly.
The key to this Love seems to be NULL or Nothing. Yet I hope it can be seen this is a creature more vivid and extraordinary than the dull lifeless concept of the atheist and materialist. This NULL avoids all context and definition for it is beyond ALL "things" but it is at once With "all things" because it has no point of reference with mundane mortal things at all. I wouldn't even try to position NULL in the world or universe that we commonly speak of - who cares about position anyway - it is only relative! By definition you can't map NULL or grasp it with the mind - it is rather than NULL maps and grasps you! ! Speaking like this I may as well use the name of G-d but there is the ancient problem that even naming G-d misrepresents His status of Absolute NULL. Think how much baggage comes with the name of God and you realise that this name is just a rubbish dump for Histories ignorance and prejudice. They say in the old books that we should respect this NULL - that seems to be as far as most can go. Buddhism goes further but not without multiplying the misunderstandings. If Absolute NULL is not to be spoken of then how much more Enlightenment - the acceptance of Absolute NULL! When we hear Dawkins or Dennett or their army of progedies speaking of God it looks no more sophisticated than a child shouting at his fears in the dark - there is nothing there to shout at guys but what is in your heads!
So when we speak of Death or Life we are seeking something like Absolute NULL - that against which all things remain unchanged - the Ground Zero of the Mind and All Existences - a Ground Zero that is both above and below us and beside us, far away and near because to have even a particular conception is to fall back into mundane thinking and take sides and accept rules.
So Atheists how dare you speak of Death or Life and even begin to use the word of Nothing as though you know what Nothing and Something is! (Word of warning to myself and this page of text also)
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