The Silent Symphony: A Metaphor for the Afterlife
As an atheist, I'm often asked about my thoughts on what happens after death. To explore this concept, I turn to religious teachings as a starting point.
Many religious beliefs suggest that after death, our physical bodies are left behind while our consciousness moves on to an eternity of reward or punishment. Setting aside the ideas of reward or punishment, I tried to understand what it means to move on without our physical presence.
To illustrate this, I've created a metaphor: the concert.
Imagine attending a concert in a 400-year-old concert hall, where a local orchestra is performing a beautiful rendition of classical pieces. The music, played on both traditional and electronic instruments, fills the hall. As you take in the performance, you also notice the hall's imperfections: cracks in the ceiling and the musty smell, mingling with the scent of a half-eaten bag of vinegar potato chips nearby. The orchestra isn't perfect either – you hear an off-key note from one of the violinists, perhaps played by your own daughter.
During the performance, your attention drifts to the hall's incredible architecture, admiring the carved columns and woodwork on the chairs. After about ninety minutes, the concert ends, and the house lights reveal a combination of old and new light fixtures. You see a diverse audience, some leaving their seats while others discuss the performance. Orchestra members mingle with the crowd or pack up their instruments.
This memorable experience – the sights, sounds, and smells – marks your daughter's final performance before moving away with her husband.
Now, let's consider the "death" of the concert and what remains in its "afterlife."
The concert hall vanishes, along with the smell of vinegar, the audience members, the seats, and the instruments. The light fixtures disappear, leaving no trace of light behind. Most notably, there is no sound – no instruments, no conversation, and no musical notes.
In the afterlife, the music continues, but how?
The music now exists in silence and darkness, stripped of all the elements that made it memorable and alive. Similarly, if you believe in an afterlife, you leave behind everything that makes you human – your connection to the physical world.
In the afterlife, you become music without sound and art without sight. You are reduced to mere information, like the notes of a song on a piece of paper.
Physics teaches us that at the fundamental level, our information is all that remains. Is this a version of the afterlife you would anticipate?
