We know there is life because we are alive.  We have seen deaths, and it is clear we won't live forever.  But this is my view.  Buddhists might disagree.  While I don't think there is any kind of afterlife, most religions promise or suggest that there is something after you die.  Aside for attempting to sway people into being better human beings, perhaps this final carrot at the end is why religion has done so well in the history of humanity.  Even if reality turns out to be my viewpoint, at least many religious-inclined individuals gain the benefit of some psychological relief about the coming inevitability. Hindu and Buddhism teach origins quite different from Islam and Christianity, but these two have rather similar beginnings because they developed in adjacent locales.  For Christians, in the beginning God created the heavens and Earth. Only on the fifth day did He bring forth life, in the seas and also flying creatures . Land animals and us came on Day 6.   Well, us mean

On Friday I posted  part 3 of  The Story of My Life .  This is the fourth and concluding portion, delving into what will come after I die. I am 99+% certain that death will bring me eternal gloom, or peace, depending on how I will end up feeling.  But I could be wrong, and most of my acquaintances have the belief that they will see me in Heaven.  Yet, with my current attitude, will this be possible? Let's begin with Christianity, which for  two millennia has been convinced that no one who refuses to believe in God and  The Bible  can go to heaven .  But eight years ago  Pope Francis  wrote an open letter with an ambiguous passage leading to speculation about the requirement of faith. Do only Christians go to Heaven? Classical evangelical doctrine holds that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ, and that those without such faith will be condemned to hell. A number of texts are typically cited in support of this position. But only 31% of the world population is Christia

I was sent this heartwarming story of Sephardi Jews who miraculously survived the Holocaust having a son who went on to lead an effort to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.  Maybe it's a natural inclination to treat all ethnicities and worshipping beliefs equal, or ignorance, but it occurred to me that at my advanced age I knew very little about the Jewish religion.   When I grew up in Hawaii, there was the dominant Caucasian sector, and everyone else as second-class citizens.  Being Japanese, there was also the matter of where Okinawans fit into this society.  My junior-year English-Social Studies teacher Mildred Kosaki and her husband had just returned from the Mainland, and she kept emphasizing the matter of Civil Rights, but we students just had no concept of Black-White relationships.  Nor were we aware that there was another group, Jews, in this national mix. Then I went away to college, when I remember a girlfriend asking me if I knew what a Jewish girl looked like.  I immediat