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Science is arguably the modern world's most trusted source of insight and understanding.
So it can come as a surprise to learn that this great engine of knowledge stumbles when it comes to death. Scientists have yet to understand its purpose and origins.
You may presume that is only natural for creatures to get old, deteriorate and then die. The process is called senescence. Death, we think, must serve certain functions such as preventing overcrowding or making way for the next generation.
It is as if we are like washing machines and motor cars, with built-in obsolescence.
And yet, there is, so far, no good scientific explanation for death. There are even some creatures, such as Blanding's turtles, that hardly seem to senesce at all. A range of factors could have a bearing upon our dying and no scientist quite knows what is going on.
In other words, death is a mystery and a puzzle. And some philosophers have tried to turn that into a consolation.
In short, they have proposed that death is beyond us because it is the end. Death is simply the moment when your atoms cease to hold together. After that, you are no more. No wonder it is imponderable. Though also, the thought continues, if you are not there at your death, there is nothing to fear from it.
Any fear you may have must stem from imagining that you can look back on life after death and miss loved ones or long for more happy days. But you cannot, if death is literally the end.
Then again, there have always been plenty of people who do not believe death is the end. Over half of Britons today believe in an afterlife and around seven in 10 believe in a soul, according to British Religion in Numbers.
Such folk do not know that death is not the end. Rather, they are persuaded by the powerful intuition that the force called life which surges through us is not extinguished when the physical body dies.
Paradoxically, many gain such a sense when they have been close to someone who has died.
Interestingly, the religious traditions of the West, notably Judaism and Christianity, do not play down the reality of death. If you read the Old Testament, for example, not much hope is placed in life after death.
“Who can give God thanks in the grave?” asks the psalm. And Christians believe that Jesus definitely died on the cross.
The hope of an afterlife is not the hope of immortality, as if death is just a phase. Instead, in both Judaism and Christianity, it is the hope of resurrection – a kind of “remaking” of life on the other side of the grave.
The logic is that, if the afterlife were just more of the same life now, it would probably not be very attractive at all.
Wherever you stand on these issues, death faces us all as a puzzle. We live in a time full of different ideas about death and what may or may not happen afterwards.
Testing these ideas out for yourself is interesting and also has the helpful by-product of being a means to contemplate your passing away – or should that be passing on?
If you would like any confidential help and advice, call 0843 751 4656 or go to co-operativelegalservices.co.uk
Visit The School of Life, an organisation devoted to good ideas for everyday life, at theschooloflife.com
**British Religion in Numbers
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