Is Life Eternal?

One day it dawned on me that according to what I was taught in Sunday School my life is Eternal. Even when my body dies "I" will continue to exist for eternity till infinity.  The way I interpreted it no matter what I did on Earth, I would still exist eternally.  If I was "Good" I would live eternally happy, and if I was "Bad" I would live eternally miserable.  My behavior had nothing to do with the fact that my "life" was eternal. That was a spiritual fact.  Simply stated it was up to me to interpret the rules to experience a better eternal vacation once I chucked off this mortal coil. 

Life without end is easy to visualize because I can't conceive of existence without my current consciousness. In philosophical terms, it is impossible to exist without consciousness because I only know I exist because I am conscious of it. It is not a play on words it is an existential truth.

So if I am living a life that is eternal when did that eternity start? I was told by that same Sunday School teacher that my life started at the moment I was born. The moment I was separated from my mothers womb, the eternity clock started ticking.  The older I got the more that didn't make sense. 

The fact is, eternity can't start. Eternity is "without beginning and without end".  If eternity starts, then there is a moment when eternity did not exist and that is impossible.  Even the allegoric interpretation of "The Beginning" in the Bible indicates that some form of intelligence was around before anything physical existed. Eternal Life/consciousness of some kind was there to observe the inception of the physical. 

Lately there is an opinion that "life" (eternal Life) begins at the moment of conception. There is no doubt that physical life begins at that moment, we can observe this scientifically. But is it self supporting life, capable of independent existence earlier than about 7 months of development? No. To be clear we are talking about the physical shell that is not self sufficient before that time, but what about "Life" eternal.  When does that "begin"?  It can't.  But IF you accept this theory that Eternal Life/ Infinity starts at human conception we have to readjust what we consider deity.

Who or what is the creator of eternal life if it begins at human conception? We have two options: the human female egg or the human male sperm. It seems that one of these small cells is capable of "creating the eternal, infinite clock that will never end." Their chemical combination is so powerful as to create not just human life but eternal life as well. Yet neither sperm nor egg is immortal.  Nor do they have life of their own outside the human body. This would seem to break, not only the spiritual rule of eternity but the laws of thermal dynamics as well.  

The Bible is full of parables.  I suggest one of my own here.  I have a car.  I love my car, it is not like any other car. Although similar to others it is mine and I identify with it and have made it my own. In fact people who know me well can see this particular car and say... "That's Jay's car."  I control everything that the car does.  I can make it go fast, go slow, stop, go, I can drive it safely or I can use it to create hazards and danger. The car is just a vehicle I control.  

If there was a super race of Aliens looking on Earth from so far away that the smallest thing they could observe was a car, they would think cars are independent intelligence beings. They would think the earth was populated by these metallic beings. These cars would be observed to go here and there controlled by reason and moved with logic. If they were really observant they would notice my car. It would move in a pattern and path that was strictly under some independent individual  control. To them that car would be me.   

Several years ago these Aliens would see the metallic me sitting on the street when another drunken metallic being smashed into me. The metallic me is so badly damaged it would never move on its own again. Other metallic beings would haul me off to some junk yard to rot in silence and stillness. To the Aliens they would have observed the death of what they knew as metallic Jay Johnson. 

On a micro level I was not killed only my car was totaled. I got a very generous insurance check and decided to purchase another car specially ordered from the factory.  The Aliens could observe my new car being assembled, shipped and delivered to my door.  Soon the new shiny metallic being would begin to move on its own.  The Aliens would have observed what they thought was birth. In reality the metallic beings have nothing to do with conscious birth, death or life nor are they any part of the human race except existing for a time as a tool.  

It is a metaphor, a parable. I am not a car, a car is not me. By the same reason I am not a body and a body is not me. Most religious philosophies agree with that last sentence. 

I have been the "animator/driver" of several cars in my life time. I existed before those cars were manufactured  and I existed after they were wrecked and scraped. 

If the car I ordered was scraped before I took delivery, I would simple order another and that vehicle would become my car. Destroying my car does not destroy me. 

Life never began and it will never end. If it has no ending as most religions teach, then it can not have a beginning. It can change form, it can assume a different shape it can originate new identities of itself but there is no human chemical reaction that creates eternity. 

Only my opinion, I am sure yours is different.

As you were,

Jay