ARGUMENT FOR THE LIFE HEREAFTER

Argument for the Life Hereafter ~ 179 ~ Why does death occur? About two hundred explanations have been put forward as to its causes. Organic decay in the body; the exhaustion of constituents; the atrophying of veins; the replacement of dynamic albumens by less dynamic ones; the wearing out of the tissues; the secretion of poison by intestinal bacteria, which is spread throughout the body, and so on. The concept of bodily decay would appear to be correct. Machines, shoes, garments and all such material things do wear out with the passage of time. There is, ostensibly, the possibility of our body wearing out too, sooner or later, just as a garment does. But science only partially supports this view of bodily decay, for the human body is very different from a garment, a machine or a piece of rock. It should be likened, rather to, a river which has been flowing for thousands and thousands of years and continues to flow in the same fashion even today. Can we really say that a river becomes old or stagnates? An American chemist, Dr. Carl Linus Pauling (b. 1901), recipient of two Noble Prizes, one of Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962, has pointed out that,