Why do men believe in an afterlife? By Rizwan Zahid

 Why do men believe in an afterlife? By Rizwan Zahid

Humans are very interesting as well as very confusing creatures: When they don’t find peace in the present, they create a delusional and utopian future in which they see themselves intensely happy. Happiness is the core purpose of human existence, and human progress is solely dependent upon happiness.  If progress is against the realm of happiness, we don’t call it progress, or even imagine it as progress but rather deny it. We, humans, believe in life after death for three reasons. 

1. Justice

2. Eternity

3. Absolute Happiness.

This world is full of injustices created by humans, so the sole purpose of an afterlife is to maintain justice. There’s a quote that says, “If you fool me once, strike me once; fool me twice, strike me three times.” 

Sometimes, bad things happen to good people.  Sometimes, good things happen to bad people. It’s not that some cosmic reality set the rules, so if you behave in a pleasant way, you will be rewarded properly. The question arises of why an all-knowing creator created such a world full of miseries and suffering when this creator could avoid it in the first place?

If life is meaningless, why not just end it? Actually, that’s not the way:  Compare it with an interesting movie. We watch it until the end.  Yet, we know at some point it will ended, but we watch it because it is "interesting,” the same as life.  We live it, because it is interesting, and the point is that we live only once, which makes it so mysterious. To believe in and afterlife, one has hope to live once again not for specific duration but for eternity, without any suffering. 

Man is in a constant struggle for perfection, because we link perfection with absolute happiness, not knowing that happiness is merely a chemical reaction that takes place inside our brain. For this perfection, he created a world outside of this real world. 

And either it exists or not.  It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that in this moment, it exists.  This is real, and one should enjoy it with great enthusiasm and jubilation. Because life and death isn’t your choice, but to live is.  Marilyn Monroe once said the following: 

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”