THE AFTERLIFE
If we understand that the only sure afterlife is in our genetic heritage and the heritage of our ideas and culture that we leave behind, then we should be concerned about the long term survival of humanity. Our lower triangles can only exist as long as human culture survives both physically and intellectually. Therefore, we should be very worried about those that would promote religion based "science" to school children or agitate for the inclusion of principles from their particular religion in civil law. They would like their lower triangles to obliterate all others. This must not be the case. Our afterlives depend upon it.
We should have a healthy concern about physical threats to the existence of life on Earth. Some secretly might be hoping for an all-out nuclear war or a comet impact because they think it will pave the way for the second coming of Jesus. The only thing such unthinkable events would accomplish is the obliteration of human life and civilization. Then our afterlives–our consciousness preserved in the minds of our descendants and in our writings, science, art, and values–will simply vanish from the universe for all time. With the end of the Cold War, a full nuclear exchange is less likely. A regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan or Israel and Iran, while devastating, will not erase all human life and culture. A disease pandemic could kill millions, or hundreds of millions, or even a billion. But, the diversity built into our gene pool will ensure the survival of enough of the population for the continuation of human civilization.
The scariest threats to long term human survival come from outer space. Space is a hostile and violent place in the extreme, and it seems that only through a very fortuitous series of accidents has our little planet arisen as an unusual oasis which shields its inhabitants from titanic forces and extreme conditions.
A comet or major asteroid impact could wipe out human life like the dinosaurs had been. According to astronomers, the next killer impact is not a matter of if, but when. The multi-million year evolution of our species and the multi-thousand year evolution of our culture have taken place in a window of time, brief in both geological and celestial terms. It has taken place between the last killer impact and the next. Perhaps we will develop the technology to send up rockets to deflect these space projectiles, but there are other threats as well.
Very long term, billions of years, the fact that the moon is slowly receding from the Earth will cause Earth’s rotation to become unstable, playing havoc with the planet’s weather. The cooling of Earth’s molten iron core will reduce the planet’s magnetic field which shields life on Earth from dangerous solar and interstellar radiation. This situation would make the ozone hole look very minor indeed. And finally, the sun, someday, will swell into a red giant, totally engulfing the inner solar system and incinerating the Earth.
So why should we spend any time thinking about disasters that are billions of years in the future? Well, we really should not worry about these things in any immediate way. We as individuals will be long gone. A billion years is such a long time that our remote descendants, who may look totally different than we do, will no doubt have developed the knowhow needed to survive. They will have this knowledge as long as humanity keeps inching forward, generation after generation, and avoids retrograde ideas, particularly religious fundamentalisms of all stripes. The adherents of these ideas would have humanity praying to fanciful personifications of divinity as the dooms-day comet hurtles toward Earth.
Instead, humanity must learn how to live and travel efficiently in space, Terra-form other worlds, and spread our seed throughout our little part of the Universe. And only by putting our eggs in many baskets will we ensure our afterlife: the perpetual existence of our genes, thoughts, and culture. Eons from now, on another world, the manifestations of our genes and our culture might be vastly different from what we know today, but we will still be part of these descendants, residing in some small corner of their upper triangles. Humanity is God, and Humanity must continue.
We should have a healthy concern about physical threats to the existence of life on Earth. Some secretly might be hoping for an all-out nuclear war or a comet impact because they think it will pave the way for the second coming of Jesus. The only thing such unthinkable events would accomplish is the obliteration of human life and civilization. Then our afterlives–our consciousness preserved in the minds of our descendants and in our writings, science, art, and values–will simply vanish from the universe for all time. With the end of the Cold War, a full nuclear exchange is less likely. A regional nuclear war between India and Pakistan or Israel and Iran, while devastating, will not erase all human life and culture. A disease pandemic could kill millions, or hundreds of millions, or even a billion. But, the diversity built into our gene pool will ensure the survival of enough of the population for the continuation of human civilization.
The scariest threats to long term human survival come from outer space. Space is a hostile and violent place in the extreme, and it seems that only through a very fortuitous series of accidents has our little planet arisen as an unusual oasis which shields its inhabitants from titanic forces and extreme conditions.
A comet or major asteroid impact could wipe out human life like the dinosaurs had been. According to astronomers, the next killer impact is not a matter of if, but when. The multi-million year evolution of our species and the multi-thousand year evolution of our culture have taken place in a window of time, brief in both geological and celestial terms. It has taken place between the last killer impact and the next. Perhaps we will develop the technology to send up rockets to deflect these space projectiles, but there are other threats as well.
Very long term, billions of years, the fact that the moon is slowly receding from the Earth will cause Earth’s rotation to become unstable, playing havoc with the planet’s weather. The cooling of Earth’s molten iron core will reduce the planet’s magnetic field which shields life on Earth from dangerous solar and interstellar radiation. This situation would make the ozone hole look very minor indeed. And finally, the sun, someday, will swell into a red giant, totally engulfing the inner solar system and incinerating the Earth.
So why should we spend any time thinking about disasters that are billions of years in the future? Well, we really should not worry about these things in any immediate way. We as individuals will be long gone. A billion years is such a long time that our remote descendants, who may look totally different than we do, will no doubt have developed the knowhow needed to survive. They will have this knowledge as long as humanity keeps inching forward, generation after generation, and avoids retrograde ideas, particularly religious fundamentalisms of all stripes. The adherents of these ideas would have humanity praying to fanciful personifications of divinity as the dooms-day comet hurtles toward Earth.
Instead, humanity must learn how to live and travel efficiently in space, Terra-form other worlds, and spread our seed throughout our little part of the Universe. And only by putting our eggs in many baskets will we ensure our afterlife: the perpetual existence of our genes, thoughts, and culture. Eons from now, on another world, the manifestations of our genes and our culture might be vastly different from what we know today, but we will still be part of these descendants, residing in some small corner of their upper triangles. Humanity is God, and Humanity must continue.