It Just Won't Go Away

The law of conservation of energy is an empirical law of physics. If one disputes that human beings are forms of energy, then this law has no application to the discussion of life and death. If, however, one accepts that we are fundamentally energy, then it profoundly affects the way we perceive and understand death. Until the emergence of scientific empiricism, most matters were subject to speculation, indoctrination and dogma. Is there a God? Yes, because religion says there is. Can the existence of God be empirically proven? We are left with the highly abstract process of defining God, but as the first cosmonauts pronounced, no old man on a throne is to be found in the firmament. If there is such a thing as immortality for humans, it will be discovered in the context of the conservation of energy. That means the energy we house in the present existed prior to our birth and will continue on after our death. Beyond that, however, little more can be said because energy is not always sentient. Humans are sentient energy, capable of perceiving, interpreting, and forecasting thought in palpable ways, but as we consider the process of living to die it would seem at least prudent to consider the implications. Consider World War II. When all those people died, where did the energy go? Just because we don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that we should not pay attention to the question. The very quality of life that we enjoy or suffer may depend on it.