Understanding Religion, Part III: Life After Death

Part I: The History of Mankind

Part II: Comparative Mythology

This article is purely the view of the author, and not AnonHQ.

In the final segment of this report, we focus on life after death starting first with the devil, and finishing up with the newer scientific ideas of life after death obtained through discoveries in quantum physics. In Part I, we discussed the history of man, and in Part II, comparative mythology.

This three-part report, which began as a personal project, will focus on religion from a neutral (non-denominational) standpoint, using only evidence that is source-based. Much of the information provided below will not be easy for some to accept, however the information has always been available. It simply isn’t “mainstream” information, and the average person doesn’t know there’s anything to research in the first place.

Part III: Life After Death

The Devil

The Christian deity known as the devil is probably one of the most feared in the world. The fear of this being is enough to shape a person’s entire life, and this is especially tragic considering this malevolent entity never existed until the New Testament was written.

It should be clarified that the story of the serpent in the Garden of Eden is not interpreted by all Christian theologians as being “the devil,” and that the existence of the devil is not directly implied until the New Testament (Revelation 12:9) with the story of the fallen angel. According to scholars at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, the original Hebrew text in the fourteenth chapter of the Old Testament book of Isiah was not about a fallen angel, but a fallen Babylonian king named Nebuchadnezzar, who during his life, persecuted the children of Israel. As to why a devil was created by the Church, there are two theories, the first being to appease man’s ego (we’ve all heard different variations of the saying, “the devil made me do it”), and the second being to give the Church more control over man—now they had a threat to hold over the populace.

There is no Hebrew word for “devil,” which is actually a translation of the Greek word “diabolos,” and the Hebrew word “Satan” means adversary or foe (source). The name “Lucifer” is actually Latin, and is another name for the goddess and planet, Venus, meaning “light-bringer” or “morning star.” It did not make its debut as the name for the Christian devil until the King James Version of the bible was written, and this was due to a misinterpretation of the Hebrew words “helel shachar” which mean “morning star,” and is what the prophet Isiah called the previously mentioned Babylonian King in the original text of the Old Testament. This misreading after the text was changed in the New Testament resulted in Venus’s name being attributed to the now “fallen angel.”

Demons

The word “demon” comes from the Greek “daimōn,” or Latin variation, “daemon,” which means “replete with knowledge.” Daemons, like humans and most ancient gods, could be either good or bad, and many were described as being benevolent (good and/or charitable)—even protectors. It was during the early Roman Empire that Christians, who feared the Pagan statues that paid tribute to the Roman gods, began to refer to daemons as malevolent “demons.” They viewed the statues as being inhabited by these so-called demons, and over the centuries this caused a deviation from traditional opinion as Christianity began to take a firmer hold, (Lane Fox, 1989, p. 137).

Aside from the misinterpretation of the name, many beings that are now considered demons were once gods, a lot of which were associated with things that were considered good, such as fertility and harvest. Taking the demon, Dagon, as an example; this deity was once an East Semitic Mesopotamian fertility god. There are even some religious sects who now consider the Norse god, Loki, to be a demon.

Hell

Like the devil, the Christian principles of hell came into existence in the New Testament. Many myths and religions have some version of that which we now call hell, and in the Old Testament, it was referred to as “Sheol,” or a “place of the dead,” where there was no activity, and everyone, whether good or bad, ended up eventually, (Unger, 1981, p. 467). Augustine of Hippo (November 354 – August 430), a Christian theologian and philosopher, was influential in developing Western Christianity, and helped to formulate the doctrine of original sin. Since Augustine’s influence, Christians have believed that upon death their souls would be permitted to rest peacefully, while the damned would be subjected to torment until the resurrection, (Hoekema, 1994, p. 92).

A New Scientific Approach

So now that we’ve broken religion down a little bit, what is there to believe in? There are many who believe we need to start looking to science for our answers. According to futurist and theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, there are different levels of civilization; type I civilizations which are planetary, type II civilizations which are stellar, and type III civilizations which are galactic. We (humans of the 21^st century) are a type 0 (that’s zero) civilization because we still rely on fossil fuels for energy. The internet is a type I telephone system, so as you can see—though we are on the verge of becoming a type I civilization—we still have a long road to travel before we will truly understand science, but there are a few things we do know.

The First Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the law of conservation of energy, states that energy is neither created nor destroyed—all energy that exists in the universe has existed from the beginning, and will exist until the end. Most people learned in grade-school that our bodies are powered by, and hold energy. This energy is constantly restored by the freely flowing electrons that our bodies obtain from chemicals such as oxygen, sodium, potassium, calcium, etc. Anyone who’s ever shuffled across the carpet in their slippers to shock their little sister has, whether they realized it or not, scientifically verified that our bodies retain an electrical charge. Since we know energy is never destroyed, we know that the energy which powers our bodies does not cease to exist either. The real question at this point is; what is consciousness, and do we retain it with our energy after death?

In a report by Collective-Evolution:

“Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vortices of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating. Matter, at its tiniest observable level, is energy, and human consciousness is connected to it, human consciousness can influence its behavior and even re-structure it.”

It’s important to quickly discuss dimensions, or more specifically, the fact that the mainstream science community is now acknowledging their existence. We are 3^rd dimensional beings that currently live in the 4^th dimension which consists of longitude, latitude and altitude (in other words; length, width, and depth/height). When you add “time” to the other three dimensions, this gives us the four dimensions we currently exist in. This also means we can only see things in 3D or lower, which is why we are unable to simply peer into the 5^th and higher dimensions, of which scientists claim there are as many as eleven (some say as many as twenty-one).

Dr. Robert Lanza, one of the most prominent scientists in the field of stem cell biology, and one of Time’s 100 most influential people, claims quantum theory proves that death does not exist, that it is an illusion that arises in the minds of people because they identify themselves with their bodies, and that consciousness exists outside of the constraints of time and space.

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.” – Bill Hicks

According to Lanza, our consciousness moves to another universe (or dimension) upon death, and this does make a bit of sense when one considers the Quantum Double Slit Experiment in which scientists found that, as mentioned above, consciousness can shape the nature of physical reality.

Conclusion

The point to take away from this report, while it may not be pleasant to declare, is that religion, whether it be Christianity or Islam or any other, is man-made, often borrowed from pagan myth and tradition, and it has been manipulated over the centuries to serve the needs of the few while gaining control of the many. It often instills fear, restricts imagination, and forces large populations of people to adhere to one way of thinking. This is evident with our current media and the Muslim-scare sweeping the nation.

With every century, our understanding of the world around us continues to expand. At one point, we thought the world was flat, and to state otherwise was considered blasphemy by the Church. We look at some of our ancient ancestor’s primitive traditions, from worshipping the sun, to sacrifices, and we “thank god” we live in a modern, developed society where people are now rational and intelligent.

And yet, we are still torturing, raping, and murdering each other in the names of multiple “true” gods who are meant to represent kindness and love. Spirituality can exist without religion, and religion does not need to exist for there to be a life after death. There are many good morals and values to be taken from our ancestor’s beliefs, but before we charge into battle with our “good books” in our hands, we need to understand exactly what it is we are, or are not, fighting for.

Here are some sides of modern religion to be taken into consideration as well:

This Article (Understanding religion, Part III: Life After Death) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.

Sources:

American Chemical Society (2016). Chemistry in Context, (7^th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

Burkert, Walter (1985). Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hoekema, Anthony A (1994). The Bible and the Future. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans.

Lane Fox, Robin (1989). Pagans and Christians. New York, NY: Knopf.

Massey, Gerald (1907). Ancient Egypt, the light of the world. London: T. Fisher Unwin.

Robinson, George (2001). Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs and Rituals. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2012). Western Civilization (8^th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth.

The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

Thury, Eva M. (2013). Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths (3^rd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Unger, Merrill F. (1981). Unger’s Bible Dictionary. Chicago: Moody Bible Institute.