Who believes death is the absolute end? You die. They put your in a hole in the ground or they burn you to ash and that's it, that's all she wrote? There is no bright light, no tunnel, no voices ringing in your dead ears, no out-of-body experiences, no watching the family and friends mourn and weep before you're swept off on the wings of angels to purgatory or Heavenly bliss or Hell-fire and damnation? There's nothing. Just full stop. The End.

Who believes that? You're dead and you rot like any other piece of dead meat? All you are is dead meat decomposing, or if your remains are ash in an urn nothing remains once you're scattered to the four winds. There is no soul, no god [or God], no afterlife, nothing that follows death except the absolute silence of non-being. A body that once performed all its bodily functions now lies dead forever and ever. Everything is over and ended. Everything. No joyful reunions in the afterlife, no mysteries uncovered, no great questions answered. Who believes that?

Is it even a function of belief? Is it simply fact? The only way anybody exists after they die is in the memories of their survivors, in photographs, in accounts, in their own testimonials, letters, art works, things they built or did or said, things they performed, recorded, bequeathed to posterity. You die, then that's the end of you. You don't go to Heaven or Hell or any place in between, and all this religious stuff is only bunkum to control you while you live. There are no rewards or punishments, the most evil butcher shares the same fate as the most saintly: both are dead organisms with nowhere to go and no way of going there. Does anyone believe that?

And there are no ghosts either, no poltergeists, spirits, fairies, goblins, paranormalities, no presences of any kind that don't have an organic explanation. All that is the product of the imagination of the living. There is no dod. There is no devil. There's only other people, good people, bad people, healthy people, sick people, intelligent people, idiotic people, gifted people and fucked-up nutjobs, all kinds of people who have one thing in common -- they'll all die and be no more. They'll all vanish and somehow become a part of the earth that once sustained them. But none of them will rise again at the end of days. There is no end of days. Plus, every single one of you reading this will be dead and gone a hundred years from now. Do you believe that?

If you believe all that, then do you also believe there is no proof of anything spiritual? All of the evidence over all the centuries is hogwash. Faith is just a 5-letter word. It means nothing. It's another lie people tell themselves. So, folks spend their entire lives doing good, praying, making sacrifices, helping others, living the summum bonum life only to become nothing at the end of it all. All the preparations were for nought. Then, on the other side, all the evil bastards out to kill and maim and hurt and abuse and exploit and fuck over as many people as they can, they too become nothing at the end of all and they get no punishment for their crimes: The same end awaits both. Doesn't matter what you believe or argue to the contrary. You can't prove any of it. Is that what you believe?

If life has a purpose at all it must surely lie elsewhere, where we've not been looking, but not in preparing for death, maybe only in advancing some portion of our essence, being that building cell towards something collective, organic, holistic, not an individual at all, though you might believe and argue otherwise, just one human speck in a vast human splotch that begins and ends on this one small planet hurtling through space. You don't explore the infinite cosmos after you die. How could you? Rather, you die back into the womb of the very planet that begot you in the first place. That's it, finito, finitude, finality, conclusion, completion of your terrestrial purpose and the end of all your questions that you mistook for something greater, grander than yourself, divinity, transcendence, a soul, god, satan, an afterlife. All of it just shit. Lies you told yourself, or that others forced you to believe. Is that it? Einstein, Shakespeare, Darwin meet the same end in death as Hitler, Manson, Stalin. Is that the way of the world? I'm only asking here.