Q. I heard a scientist say our wish for life after death doesn’t make it real – death is death and then we are nothing. How do you counter this “dust to dust” belief or philosophy? He made me feel childish for wanting to believe in anything more after we die. (J.M.,WA)
Answer:
The Doubting Thomas Club
Join the Doubting Thomas club! It is hard to believe in things we can’t see, hear, or experience through our five senses. But, I’ve heard other unbelieving physicists point to the existence of extra dimensions, too, that we can’t see, touch or taste. “Go figure.” I guess it depends on their own peculiar understanding of particle physics.
Invisible Realities
Just because we can’t see or touch something doesn’t mean invisible, unseen things aren’t real. We know this from our physical world. Electricity is real although we can’t normally see it. Our entire Western world is built upon the availability of electricity. Atoms are real even though we can’t see them. We strive daily to get dictators to quit plotting to make atom bombs!
I suggest you read the following paragraph from Dr. Chuck Missler’s book, Cosmic Codes, carefully. You will never think the same materialistic way about who you are after you’ve read this:
A Matter of Software
By Dr. Chuck Missler
Cosmic Codes, pgs. 368-369
The broad familiarity with computers can provide us with another unusual insight. If you knew everything there is to know about every component, every circuit, every microchip, every item of hardware technology inside a modern personal computer, could you tell me anything about its behavior?
Hardware Just a Residence for Software
No. And why not? Because it is a matter of “Software,” not hardware. The hardware is simply an appropriate residence for the software. The software determines the computer’s characteristics, its behavior, and, within the limits of the hardware capabilities, its performance.
Blank Diskette
Most of us have encountered the common diskette, the little three-inch-square device that serves as a common medium of transmittal within the computer community. If we take a blank diskette and weigh it on a postal scale, it will weigh about 0.7 of an ounce.
Loaded Diskette
If we spend hundreds of dollars and load that diskette with over a million bytes of software, what will it then weigh? The same 0.7 of an ounce. Why?
Software has no Weight or Mass
Software has no mass. (Its embodiment may have weight, but the software doesn’t. It is simply codes, information). We can even send it through the airwaves from one point to another. It has no mass of its own.
The Real You is Software
If you and I were meeting face-to-face, I still would not be able to see the real “you.” I would only see the temporary residence you are occupying. The real you, your personality – call it soul, spirit, whatever – is not visible. It is software, not hardware. The codes – your history, your accumulated responses to the events of your life, your attitudes – are all simply informational, not physical. It is software only, and software has no mass.
The great insights of Dr. Einstein included the realization that time is a physical property. Time varies with mass, acceleration, and gravity. (We explored that in Chapter 3).
That which has no mass has no “time.” You are eternal. That is what the Bible has declared all along. And that, apparently, is the conclusion derivable from modern physics. You are eternal (whether you like it or not). In fact, that’s our ultimate challenge.
_______________________________________
Finally, another scientific discovery – this time from Quantum Physics – shocked me. Again, Dr. Missler’s explanation is helpful. This is taken from the Introduction to Learn the Bible in 24 Hours, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2002), pg. x:
Reality is not what it Used to Be
The field of particle physics has totally altered our conceptions of reality. Scientists now tell us that the universe is a digital simulation within a much large reality and consists of at least ten dimensions. Some investigators believe that much of what we call “paranormal phenomena” is simply transdimensional episodes within that larger reality. But we will see that all of this has been anticipated by the message of the Bible. We’ll discover that each of us is both a pawn and a prize in a cosmic warfare – a hyper-dimensional conflict between good and evil that will come to a climax soon.
…If God is good and created us, where did evil come from? Are demons simply super-hackers attempting to penetrate the gateways of the software we call “soul” and “spirit?”
…There is only one Book on earth, only one Book in the history of mankind that can answer those cosmic questions and demonstrate its transcendence over time and space. It has the audacity to hang its credibility and authenticity on its record of recording history before it happens. Only one Book holds the key to your eternal destiny: the ultimate love story, written in blood on a wooden cross erected in Judea some two thousand years ago.
___________________________________________
Yes, Virginia. There IS life after death.
Wishing there is no life after death and therefore no accountability before a Holy God, does not make it so, either!
___________________________________________