Faith

Recently I lost a little soul who was very close to me and it brought me to the obvious question - what next?

I don’t have the type of faith that leads me to believe that there is a better place waiting for us after death. I would like to have that deep seated belief that nothing can shake but the truth is I don’t and never have.

I love the idea that after death we all move onto a place where we will get to see the people we have lost. I want this to happen, I want to be re-united with my Gran and to get a chance to know my Grandfathers, one that I never met and one who I remember only as a big man. I guess as my life goes on there will be more and more people to add to this list and more reasons to hope that I will see them again.

At the moment I am most missing my little dog, my near constant companion for the last eleven years. I watched her go to sleep in my arms and I did it for all the right reasons but I'm still not sure if it was really right. Who gave me the power to decide if she should live or die? I want to believe that sometime I will see her again and that she will understand what I did. If there is a heaven, a better place then she deserves to be there, probably most dogs do.

Deep down I’m a scientist, I can’t just accept this idea without a hypothesis to prove or disprove. When I speak to people who have faith they know they are right so they don’t need proof. I want to believe but I can’t without knowing. I can’t know so I can’t believe.

I do believe in God but I don’t do religion. I think that the universe contains more than we could ever know or understand. I think that there may be higher powers (a God or gods) that have at some stage influenced us, but if this is the case much of it has been twisted by people hungry for power and control over others. I think it is human arrogance that leads us to believe we could understand the will of a God or gods. I think people take what is there and use it for their own purposes, adding strength by saying it is "the will of God".

At the base of all religions are some lovely stories trying to teach us how we should live. As far as this goes it is great, we all need guidance on what is right and wrong, how to respect each other and how to cope with difficult times. How do we know the stories came from beings that were more advanced than us, they could just be stories written by clever and insightful men and women. Maybe heaven was invented so that people would accept poverty and hardship here because of the promise of something better later. Nothing in the religious texts proves they came from God, not to me anyway.

I have read accounts of life after death experiences, people who died for a short time and had “out of body experiences”. The often repeated images of hovering over your body, seeing a light and even seeing family members on the other side. It sounds good, and maybe I should accept this as proof but the mind is a wonderful and complex thing. At the point of death the brain is firing rapidly and could easily be producing images, hallucinations. If you have heard these stories, seen them in movies or have some knowledge of religion these images could be recreated in your own conscious at the point of death. I hope this is not the case, I hope that it is really the light from a better, cleaner, purer place and that your friends and family are there to welcome you.

Something I am fascinated with is psychics, people with the ability to speak to the dead. I don’t understand this and it seems that there should be an explanation. I have watched the TV shows where a guy stands up and gives people messages. Some are vague and the things said could apply to a lot of people but others are so specific and seem to really know things they shouldn’t. John Edward I find particularly interesting, he has often told people things they didn’t know and he is so insistent. The audience member then goes home and speaks to other members of the family and it turns out he was right. That rules out one of my theories that he was somehow reading their minds (hey I’m talking about speaking to the dead here, why is mind reading less believable). So that leaves me with the idea that they have really good researchers. Maybe if I had the experience myself and was left thinking there is no way he could know that I would believe it was a message from “the other side”. See I want to believe this to!

So can I take the evidence here and use it to give me faith that there is something after death. If I had faith I wouldn’t need this evidence to prove anything because I would just know. The fact that I need the evidence means I don’t have faith.

I can’t know so I can’t believe but what I can do is hope.