This is a story about preying on the weak...

I'm lucky enough to live in a secular society, so I'm not expecting a major backlash over what I'm about to say, but religion is still an emotive topic in some parts of the world, and amongst extremists.

As I thought about how this story should start, I considered word-play around the similarity between prey and pray. The friends I have who are overtly religious all seemed to find their God during periods of intense personal development, turmoil. The two things might be unconnected, but I somehow feel that they are not.

I myself reconsidered the existence of a deity, as death drew dangerously close. I don't think I would exactly have found myself praying for my soul, pleading for forgiveness or any of that bullshit, as I drew my final breath, but certain events in my life brought theological questions into sharp focus in my mind.

One of the most profoundly unsettling questions I have, is not "what happens when we die?" but actually, is it possible to die at all? The conclusion I reached, when I really was at death's door, was that it isn't actually possible to die... at least in any way that you can usefully perceive.

That sounds pretty nuts, right? However, the conclusion is actually borne out of real scientific empirical evidence. I won't go into the details, as I have already written at length about Quantum Eraser experiments and the problem of separating the scientists performing measurements from their experiments.

But what does it all mean in practice? Well, in actual fact, this line of thinking has brought me ever closer to Christian values than I would have ever thought possible. Do I mean Christian in the bible-bashing, ramming religion down people's throat sense? No, what I mean is Christian... as in, the teachings of Jesus Christ, not the out-of-context bullshit peddled by dogmatic religious thought leaders.

Let me give you an example: heaven and hell. We are all familiar with the concept of eternal damnation in a fiery underworld full of sin and deviancy. Well, it was through a fairly sinful path that I arrived at my understanding of what heaven and hell might look like, in a world where we don't actually die. But what the hell does that mean, we don't die?

You're going to die, but you won't be aware of it. You're going to see me die, but I won't be aware of it. We're going to see everybody die, except ourselves in fact... my interpretation of what I can see from the evidence, is that our own consciousness persists in some form or other, for eternity. This is the multiverse, and the many-minds theory.

If a consciousness lasts eternally, that means that you will be eternally haunted by your past actions. If you do 'sinful' deeds, then you will have an ever-increasing amount of guilt, and your life will be increasingly awful, until destruction has wrought havoc over the entire surface of the Earth. Eventually, you will have exhausted every resource at your disposal, and you will be presiding in immortality over the scorched and blackened surface of the planet, wrecked by your increasingly 'evil' behaviour. In essence, you will have created your own personal hell.

Equally, as an immortal living in a future shaped by your actions, you could preside over something that is the polar opposite of hell. With all eternity to refine and improve things, if you aspire to enhance the state of existence, then you will be able to create a kind of heaven.

What I've found, from personal experience, is that there is no heaven to be found at the bottom of a whiskey bottle or a crack pipe. The things that seem to offer heavenly euphoria or "floating on cloud 9" as some people say, are actually pathways that actually lead to misery and destruction. The short term quick-fixes eventually lead you to lie, cheat and steal.

Nobody preaches as loud as the converted former sinner, and so it is the case that if you examine the past of those who have found religion, you will very often find that there is very real repentance for a life of sin. We should remember this famous quote:

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner, is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future" -- Oscar Wilde

I believe it's over-simplistic to talk about right & wrong, good & evil, dark & light and saints & sinners though. We are a product of circumstances, not free will. I strongly believe that it's quite possible that time runs in both directions, and our memory is just a 'trick' that makes us think we are actually making decisions.

Let's examine what I just said in a little more detail. If time is running in the opposite direction, you know exactly what decisions you're going to make and your final destiny, but you have no memory of any decision that you made in the 'past' because your memory is being erased.

If you have no memory of things you did in the 'past' then you have the opposite belief system. Instead of believing that the future is unknowable and that you're in control of your destiny, you know that your destiny is fixed, but the past decisions that led you to your present existence are unknowable. The illusion of free will is shattered.

I don't believe it's actually possible to experience consciousness when the flow of time is reversed, so in theory, there is only one stream of consciousness that spans all time, and every conscious being, with time just zig-zagging its way backwards and forwards through all eternity. It seems, to me, probable that there is only ever one 'active' consciousness at any one time in a Universe, and every other being that ever existed for all time in that Universe is actually part of the same chain of conscious periods, where time runs 'forwards' as we perceive it.

Does your brain hurt yet? Look, it's really simple: you feel conscious, and that you have free will, and that you have memories that go back to early childhood... however, you're going to see everybody you know die, while you live for all eternity, and then bang! one day it seems to start all over again, but actually it's the same Universe, but you just don't remember the bit where time went into reverse, and you're now living another person's life in the same Universe as you'll inhabit for all time. Simples?

If you think I've gone totally potty, don't worry... I don't believe in that hypnotherapy mumbo jumbo where we can remember past lives. There's just no good scientific theory to support such a preposterous idea.

Also, by the way, there is no such thing as a space wizard who created the whole world in 6 days and then had a rest for a day. Sorry about that.

Go ahead and ask for whom the bell tolls... you're immortal so it's not going to be tolling for thee

Tags: #physics