Straddling Divergent Belief Systems

Dragon Mood? -- intrigued

If you call yourself a Christian, then do you immediately reject the idea of reincarnation? Is it a concept that is so foreign to you as to make it unimaginable? Unbelievable?

This article, written by Robert Lanza, M.D., touches on the tantalizing theories and inevitable tension between quantum physics and our ideas of living and dying. Here's an excerpt:

We think we die and rot into the ground, and thus must squeeze everything in before it's too late. If life -- yours, mine -- is a just a one-time deal, then we're as likely to be screwed as pampered. But experiments suggest this view of the world may be wrong.

The results of quantum physics confirm that observations can't be predicted absolutely. Instead, there's a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that there are an infinite number of universes (the "multiverse"). Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. The old mechanical -- "we're just a bunch of atoms" −- view of life loses its grip in these scenarios.

Biocentrism extends this idea, suggesting that life is a flowering and adventure that transcends our ordinary linear way of thinking. Although our individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the "me'' feeling is just energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest principles of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. When we die, we do so not in the random billiard ball matrix but in the inescapable life matrix. Life has a non-linear dimensionality −- it's like a perennial flower that returns to bloom in the multiverse.

A series of landmark experiments show that measurements an observer makes can influence events that have already happened in the past. One experiment (Science 315, 966, 2007) confirmed that flipping a switch could retroactively change a result that had happened before the switch was flipped. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it'll be you who will experience the outcomes −- the universes −- that will result.

I see a chasm between belief systems here, and one that I'm straddling uncomfortably, like a cartoon character with one leg on the dock and the other on a boat pulling away. I believe Jesus will accompany me across the river Jordan to "the other side" while at the same time I believe that my essence, my energy will go on after my death. How can I make sense of it all? Rationalize it and balance it and make some cohesive explanation? Oh dear!