There's been a lot of excellent science shows on television, many available on DVD and/or on YouTube. Carl Sagan's Cosmos immediately comes to mind and MythBusters while highly entertaining has a lot of solid science content too. However, IMHO, the cream of the crop, the best of the best, has been the Through the Wormhole series hosted by actor Morgan Freeman. Each of the episodes examines one of those nebulous Big Questions. Here are the questions asked on topics associated with theology, and my personal opinions on each. 

 

SEASON ONE: Is There A Creator?

 

If by that one means an infallible supernatural deity or deities and a creator of so-called Intelligent Design, the answer is "No", IMHO. However, if we exist in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, then that had to have been created, but a creation by a fallible flesh-and-blood entity who didn't quite dot all of the "I's" and cross all of the "T's", thus leaving us with a rather anomalous cosmos (quantum physics anyone?). A mortal that's all too human (or maybe extraterrestrial), our Supreme Programmer, helps explain my overriding observation of the cosmos that "there is something screwy somewhere", again because our Supreme Programmer is a fallible software programmer and has made more than just a couple of oops in our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.

 

SEASON TWO: Is There Life After Death?

 

Nope. You get one go, and when you snuff it, that's it, the bucket's well and truly kicked! Your consciousness (and subconscious) – collectively termed ‘the mind' does not survive your death. But, and there's always a but…

 

There can be if we exist in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe. Terminate Joe Citizen's life software subroutine; run Joe Citizen's afterlife software subroutine. Otherwise, I'm afraid the answer is "no". If you assume an afterlife, you are probably also assuming that you will have possession of all of your five senses, and the ability to process input from those senses and also have your intellect (memories, creativity, emotions, IQ, etc.) intact. Unfortunately, that requires an afterlife where matter and energy exist and your existence will also be grounded in matter and energy. That means, something of your essence, what makes you, you, has to be also grounded in matter and energy and survive your biological death. There's no evidence that that happens. The entirety of you when you die stays grounded and intact. Your neural network doesn't detach itself from your deceased body and waft away to La-LaLand. 

 

If what makes you, you is entirely nebulous and has no actual substance and structure, like a ‘soul' (whatever that is it is certainly not composed of matter and energy) then even if that nothingness survives your biological death (which is a pretty nebulous concept in itself), it would not be physical and thus not able to process any stimuli in wherever your afterlife is, and in any case how nothingness can store and process memories, creativity, emotions, IQ, etc. is far beyond the realm of what's rational.

 

You really may don't want to die, but you really don't want an eternal afterlife either, so be careful of what you wish for. I mean you'd be bored to ‘death' after the first million years with billions and trillions of years yet to come and that's just the beginning! Sounds a bit more like a hell to me! But since your afterlife must take place within the Universe, somewhere, what happens to your afterlife when the Universe finally hits its heat death or collapses back on itself in a Big Brunch (the opposite of the Big Bang). Regardless, it's curtains for your afterlife. It's also clear that your body, when it dies, doesn't go to an afterlife. If you go to an afterlife, it's your mind, your consciousness, the essence of what makes you, you that has to make the journey. But what kind of afterlife would that be for a one day old infant or for a 110 year old with severe dementia or for someone middle aged who was an ex-boxer or ex-gridiron player whose head and brain had been so pummeled as to now leave him just a fraction above a vegetative state. The same might apply to someone who had been starved of oxygen for a lengthy time, like a near drowning victim. What if your afterlife were pretty much the same as your life with a nine-to-five job, a rotten boss, bearing a heavy email galore and unproductive and worthless meetings burden, lots of bills, taxes and a lawn to mow, plus those in-laws and horrible relatives. Add to that mix now a supreme deity that's cracking the whip at all hours. Now think back to pre-life. Wasn't it peaceful and tranquil and tax free? What if your post-death were the same as your pre-life, wouldn't that be ‘heavenly', and as an added bonus, it's all somebody else's problem now.    

 

SEASON THREE: Can We Eliminate Evil?

 

No, evil cannot be eradicated. Firstly, "evil" is not an absolute thing but resides in the mind of the beholder and there are lots of shades of gray as anyone in the legal system will testify to. What's evil today might have been acceptable thousands of years ago. You certainly cannot define evil based on ancient religious texts. What one culture considers evil, another culture might be less inclined. Then there's the difference between evil thoughts and evil actions but you can't go to jail for what you're thinking. What's evil for an individual might not be considered evil for that individual's government. One needs a uniform definition of evil that everyone would absolutely agree upon. That done, if you eliminate evil, evil being some action that everyone agrees is evil, via whatever process you can envision (education, legislation, drugs, implants, mind control, brain surgery, etc.) you basically have made everyone the exact same.

 

SEASON THREE: Did We Invent God?

 

Yes, albeit it's perfectly logical that what we term God, or the gods, or deities, is all based on a perfectly understandable misunderstanding or perhaps deliberate misinformation or disinformation. The gods (or God) were in reality not supernatural deities but extraterrestrials given supernatural status, since any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to those who are unable to comprehend that technology (Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law). On the other hand, if ET didn't exist, humans, human societies and cultures would probably have had to invent deities in order to explain what to them was otherwise unexplainable – like thunder and lightning, the rainbow, solar and lunar eclipses, comets, supernovae, and other ‘anomalies'. 

 

SEASON FOUR: Did God Create Evolution?

 

God, or the gods, did not create evolution since there are no supernatural deities. Evolution by natural selection needs no supernatural guiding hand. There is a very naturalistic explanation in place. If there was a God, He could have created biological evolution, but using Occam's Razor, there's no need to add unnecessary assumptions. However, evolution via artificial selection is of course guided by intelligence(s). When it comes to terrestrial evolution, specifically the evolution of Homo sapiens from primate stock, it's possible, even likely that ET had some guiding say in that. Finally, if we live in a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, then the flesh-and-blood mortal Supreme Programmer would have had to create and put relevant software in place that would have allowed the concept of evolution, both biological and cultural, to take place.