> And yet, I still believe in God. Why? It's
>something that I can't put a finger on. The
>term for it is apriori knowledge -- something
>that proceeds any sort of logical reasoning. I
>just finished a Phil 101 class where we read a
>very interesting excerpt of a book written by a
>guy named Halverson (sorry, I forget his first
>name and the book. Still have it around here
>somewhere, if anyone's really interested I can
>find it). Neat guy, he used the human sense of
>awe about the universe as proof that God was
>real. We have this sort of ingrained incredible
>wonder about the physical space that we live in,
>he reasoned that there was no way it was all
>some sort of cosmic accident.

I think the thought many people have (even myself, occaisionally) that "there must be more" is just another manifestation of the biological urge for survival. We have an ingrained instinct to survive. Only in very rare cases does any human ever take his/her own life, and in most all cases where it matters, we'll try our very very best to save our own skin. We might rationalize this as a fear of pain, or a fear of death, or any number of things. But what it comes down to is an instinct to survive.

This idea of an afterlife that is so universal is just an extension of that. We simply don't *want* to die, all our instincts cry out against the very idea. So we naturally have a morbid curiosity about death, and conclude that it can't really be the end to save our own sanity.

> I have an interesting thought here. For the
>longest time, I have felt like I just can't
>comprehend reality. I ask everyone who reads
>this to just sit and think about the nature of
>the universe. Just try and ponder a beginning
>to reality. Or, if you view it differently, a
>reality that simply always existed, but just in
>a different form. Try something a bit simpler:
>imagine death. Just try and comprehend your
>total non-existence. Everyone else on this
>planet can probably imagine a world without you
>in it, it should be easy for you to. And I
>don't mean an "It's a Wonderful Life" type of
>deal where you were never born, I mean imagine
>if suddenly you were no longer part of reality.

I don't find this so hard. It happens to me every single night when I go to bed. There is a long period of time, between the time I fall asleep to the time I start to dream (if I end up remembering them) where "I" simply cease to exist. Think about it tomorrow morning when you wake up. How long did it *really* feel like you were asleep? I know it never seems like six or eight hours to me. Somewhere in there "I" stopped existing for some time, or else I'd have some reckoning of the passage of time. I've often thought that dreams are what keep us from having a morbid fear of sleep. If we didn't dream, we wouldn't know we were sleeping rather than dead.

>
> At any rate, I'm falling asleep here.
>

You mean you're dieing. ;-)