– 1 –

We humans are fragile. To perish, we don’t even need wars, oppression, crises, or catastrophes – though the world has plenty of those as well. It is enough to walk in the cold, catch a rare kind of flu, and within days, we are gone. Humans are not merely mortal; we are absurdly and suddenly mortal. The candle of our life can be extinguished by a mere breeze.

Yes, we are also surprisingly resilient, able to recover from heavy blows – until one day, we cannot.

Yes, in the developed countries most people reach old age. Certain things can make us slightly less mortal: wealth, power, influence, physical prowess.

But even when we seem to have distanced ourselves far enough from death, the mere thought of it can poison the joy of living. Perhaps youth ends when the first crack appears in that happy sense of invincibility; when we grasp the reality, even more – the inevitability of our end.

From that moment on, the awareness of our mortality never fades. We must live through years and decades knowing that this earthly story of ours – be it good or bad, joyful or sorrowful – will always end in failure, in ultimate defeat.

Why, then, do anything at all, if everything is destined to crumble? How can we have any peace, when a single sneeze from a random passerby could wipe us off the face of the earth?

– 2 –

Facing this grim monolith looming on the horizon, people begin to seek answers. Many place their hopes in science: it should extend our lifespan to a hundred, perhaps hundred and fifty years, while in the future it will effectively grant us immortality.

That would certainly be nice; few would refuse such an offer. But where are the limits of this hope?

Let’s imagine that progress has given us everything we ever wished for. We can live not for 150 or 500 years, but forever. We no longer age or fall ill; somehow, the decay of the brain, circulatory system and so on has been reversed.

But even that fantastic assumption would not abolish death, only delay it. If you live long enough, sooner or later some lethal accident will befall you.

Death would become rare, striking at random, as if selectively – and thus perhaps even more terrifying. The sense of mortality may remain, even intensify, and you would have to live with it for centuries.

Very well. Let’s go further and suppose science has achieved even more: you can preserve your consciousness and live for millions of years, changing bodies even after being pulverized into atoms. Highly improbable, but for the sake of a thought experiment let’s allow it.

Are you safe now? Still no. You will perish along with the planet or at the heat death of the universe. Moreover, ask yourself honestly: is our mind truly fit to live the life we live now for millions, or even billions of years?

We cannot fully perceive or grasp periods of time so vast. And yet, intuitively we sense that after five or ten thousand years of life, every possible experience will have been lived through; everything will become so wearisome and stale, that existence itself will turn into an unending torment, worse than hell without any fire.

Now, a mind forced to live millions of years would most likely just collapse. It would not even require suffering, nor the “white void of the Jaunt”. Simple, ordinary existence in endlessly linear time would alone make it unbearable.

– 3 –

It leads to the conclusion that one of two things must be true.

Either we humans are not made for eternity and are finite by nature, with a rather short expiration date – though everything in us rebels against such a possibility.

Or we, together with the space and time itself, are destined for some transfiguration. Then we could live endlessly, and yet joyfully.

This dichotomy, in its piercing clarity, always emerges when we contemplate life, death and eternity. Again and again, it always comes to a choice between two.

Either life is unimportant: it is an accident, a lucky roll of the dice in the indifferent clockwork of the universe. The cosmos is overwhelmingly dead. Enormous spheres of stone, gas and ice revolve along their cyclopean orbits; waves and particles perform their quaint mathematical dance for no one. And none of this suggests that we have any right or any reason to hope for anything at all.

Both we and everyone we love will once vanish forever and without return.

Or it is death that is unimportant. Then it is not a point, but only a comma in our story. Then our life is not fragile, but eternal and indestructible. There exists some grand design into which our fates are woven, and its fulfillment is yet to unfold.

Then we shall once be able to meet again all those we have lost along this long and winding road.

In different shades, but always the same, spinning before the mind’s eye like a razor-sharp crystal, this dichotomy unceasingly and sternly demands a choice. Either a strange hope that almost defies – or perhaps transcends reason. Or a proud, stoic despair.

There is also a third way, of course – to ignore; to avoid thinking about it for as long as possible. Many, if not most, cling to this. But it will not work forever, sooner or later we have to decide.

– 4 –

I personally am not very impressed by the promises of transhumanism, for the reasons explained above. It would be good to live longer, say two or three hundred years, and I can only cheer on the efforts to achieve it. But ultimately, earthly experiences and joys are limited, and linear immortality would not mend that in any way – on the contrary, may well exacerbate it.

Maybe science will triumph over senility, maybe not – but it will certainly not triumph over finitude.

That does not mean that death is somehow good. Death is our “last enemy to be destroyed”. But the right path must lie in overcoming, not evading it.

Materialism terrifies me. We cannot prove it true or false, it remains a matter of faith. It may indeed be that the universe is as it claims, and we are nothing more than combinations of atoms with an accidental ability of self-awareness.

But if that were true, to me that would be the very pinnacle of despair, the end of all hope. I know for certain that I could not remain sane, were I to profess this grim credo.

That is why I see no alternative to a theistic hope. Only an omnipotent and loving God can preserve us from death and annihilation, even if they were to be our natural end. Only he can transform us and the universe, so that the infinity, not the linear but the transcendent one, becomes livable for us.

“For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the second law of thermodynamics”.

Is that a guarantee? No. But it is a way that offers metaphysical optimism. I have searched wide and far, and nowhere have I found a hope greater. Such hope is for those for whom the entire world is not enough.

– 5 –

This choice does not solve all problems. Theism raises a whole array of new and challenging questions: what are the attributes of God? how can we reach and commune with him? why does evil exist?

Studying religions becomes a necessity: what if one of them is correct? And if a certain religion seems right – how to separate its noble and living core from useless historical accretions?

Yet all these questions, though difficult, are good ones. Let me be allowed to say that if anything on this earth is worth contemplating, it is they. If anything is worth arguing about, it is they. They are crucial.

It is our stance toward such questions, when it is clear and well-reasoned, tempered in doubt and debate, that makes us homo sapiens in the fullest sense.

May the merciful God help us not to shrink from the challenge of mortality, but to ask the right questions, find the right answers, in hope believe against hope, and by it tread the path that leads to the life everlasting.