Why is it so tough to be an atheist?

Well, the debate about God has been a long and wordy one. Millions of logical arguments fall short of defeating one single word ‘faith’. Our daily experiences, daily haps and mishaps, inexplicable occurrences, now rapidly explicable natural and biological phenomena, fossil researches with solid proofs of natural evolution, scientific theories about the origin of the earth (in addition to the solar system and the universe as a whole), profoundly inexplicable natural symmetry (the balance of forces holding the universe in a revolving, periodical, harmonized symmetry), all these and many more keep us in wonderment about the possibility or impossibility of a creative design behind all this.

Given our varying situations in life we rush either to the Darwinistic evolution concept or the concept of creative design, both occupying their extreme positions! Most of the time with tidbits of scientific facts in our puzzled heads, taking cursory looks at the Darwin end to do justice to our modern educated selves, we blindly, helplessly move to the extremity of faith. The latter with its swiping injunctions of mysteries of life, with one solution pill called ‘belief’ makes life far less complex. It gives respite to the hassled logic-laden senses as well. It is a good addiction to this blind supposition. Religion indeed ‘is the opium of the masses’!

Let us first take the religionist theory. Drawing inspiration from the mythical clues (vaguely and always open to interpretation in convenient ways) in the yellowed and much hallowed pages of scriptures and holy books, it maintains that this beautiful planet dazzling with life and much more has been created by the Lord or the God Himself or an all potent entity for some Godly purpose. Believers maintain that the faith has to be unquestioning and blind and beyond the reach of all our senses, except one super-sense of ‘faith’. The belief cannot be made to stand in the witness box to be questioned by the pinning arguments of the so called atheists in a court presided over by an indifferent agnostic judge. Since we are not animals, we with our evolved brains possess the faculty of seeking the logical foundations to our blind ‘belief’. However very cleverly the act of mere questioning anything holy has been termed as heresy, a nice nipping in the bud, a nice way of bypassing all the arguments that might at a point leave ‘the defenders of faith’ at the dead end. It is considered sedition against the Omnipotent, as if the all absolute, the all Potent Potentate is an unsparing monarch demanding unflinching loyalty from the subjects without ever giving any clue about Himself. Since he has allowed us to evolve with an evolving brain, reasoning by the organ cannot be a taboo. A thing created by Him, or at least allowed by Him to take its present shape, doing what it is just supposed to naturally do cannot be a taboo and sacrilege. So we are allowed to follow the path of reason (gyan marga) to seek proofs leading to His existence or nonexistence. The institutionalized religion but seems to be a game stopper in this venture.

Religion with its tools of sin (and consequent loss and punishment) and pious deed (leading to profits and His blessings) seems insufficient in providing a logical backdrop to our actions, reactions and the outcomes if we drop the further conditionality of the past (previous birth with its unknown summary of good and bad deeds) and the future (with its yet to be list of gains, losses, punishments and rewards). These two unseen voids have enough space in them to eat any ‘what, when, why, how, where’ questioned by the present. If we just analyze the present we find glaring incongruities: mountainous efforts ending in molehills of achievements; tiny actions resulting in sky high rewards (like a lottery draw); a person born in a slum and dying in a still dirtier gutter; someone being born with a golden spoon and dying in a still more glittering palace; some nice fellow getting a disease inexplicably and suddenly; a wretched human being with his still more wretched deeds continuing to enjoy perfect health; sufferings and tears incessantly striking a life even though nobody has a word to justify the victim’s punishment of this nature; amazing and unjustified profiteering and consequent happiness showering upon somebody against whom many can point out hundreds of reasons to make him eligible for punishment instead of this blessed state. To cover up these mocking loopholes we have this account book of sins and pious deeds full of unknown statistics of the previous birth, the ones belonging to the present, and to be carried onto the next birth in future. These are but grossly hypothetical conditions to shut down the voices of protest against His justice (or injustice) by condemning unjustifiably suffering nice human beings for the unproved, unknowable misdeeds of the last birth and warning the unjustifiably fattening and prosperous piglet version of a human through punishments for his misdeeds in an unknowable, unproved next birth or afterlife. With these two open-ended eventualities at the extremes in the past and the next birth, we need not even question any state of affairs on the earth. These are the super dead-ends for any kind of logic or reasoning. It literally means to shut down the basic faculty of the questioning brains. Then we have other protective layers in religiondom: it is a series of immensely pacifying nouns like luck, fate, destiny! This series further patches up any remaining loopholes in the believers’ fabric. In religion with its indefinitely unfathomable dark seas of the past and the future, beyond our time span on earth, the boat of reasoning just falls short of any chance to reach the coast with any proof to the contrary.

If we accept the validity of the preordained law, guiding every activity (right from the littlest movement of a tiny sapling from among the millions of others like it), we need to accept that not a littlest step in our life is caused by our free will. We then become slaves and puppets in the hands of that invisible player doing puppetry with invisible, untouchable cords. But how much of puppetry is sufficient for the unseeable actor? Isn’t He ever bored of the play across billions of years?

Suppose we have to draw a card from a pack. What are the factors that define and control which card lands in our hands? The mathematics theory of probability (with its assumptions of limited number of players and elements) makes it look like a subtle nuance born of free will (of touch me, touch not others) of the static card and the free will (will I touch this or that one) of that hand controlled by the brain.

Religion says there is no chance factor in the phenomenon of an unknown card landing in the hand that just moved uncertainly. If it is accidental, the phenomenon becomes more important than the players (card, the hand, the brain). If the chance factor is assumed to be valid at all hierarchies (stretching up to the utmost question of our very existence and the existence and origin of the universe itself), we can vaguely surmise that the creation has been an infinitely mammoth chain of chance phenomena spreading out in a chain reaction constituting a series of accidents. But as a series of accidents, why does not it get annihilated? Why does not it abruptly end in a collapsing chaos born of a momentous slipup in the sustaining chain of infinite chances and the chosen causative chances (like the sudden emergence and bursting of a bubble)? Possibly it is a cosmic bubble born of some accidental coupling of chance phenomena and it will burst out without any reasonable causative factor, again a bigger destructive chance factor.

Why do we believe in God? Generally under the burden of circumstances we have to drop our reason to take shelter under the tree of faith and save our skins from the scorching sun of realities hammering down merciless hot rays. Reason is very heavy. Blind belief is very light. Under the bombardment of uncountable forces beyond our control, we are bound to feel left out in the race of life. We are supposed to get depressed about many whys and whats. The reasoning with its cold hard ramrod of objectivity is a poor comforter. It’s like a cactus in the path of a tired desert traveler. It has no water. It has no shade. It has just prickly unlikeable facts. So the tired traveler follows a mirage to reach an oasis, an oasis of blind make-believe faith where he gets shade, solace and cold water. A perfectly reasonable human being deprives himself of the luxury of all these weightless fruits of ignorance. Once the heavy sack of reason is dumped it becomes easy to glide through testing times. The simple elements involved in a God-believing head just pay a small-time lip service to the achingly grinding realities and the world beyond.

Fear is the reason why we cannot carry forever the atheistic load. The fear of uncertainty. The fear of loss, pain, disease, death. With so many negative possibilities it is difficult to carry a scientist’s brain all the time. The reason leaves you all alone in the dusty blizzards, the chancy falls, the accidental winds that may strike you, your possessions, your near and dear ones. We thus seek a divine guard. We are habituated to His presence, as a word, as a never seeable, just feelable (decided by us how to feel it) entity. This surreality is strongest of any proveable reality around us.

Every living cell is led by the natural instinct of survival undermined by a fear of mortality. From the savage times to the present civilized ones, the fear of the one beyond our comprehension (rather than the love and devotion of it) has been the driving force in institutionalizing our surrender through reverence and rituals. The nerves of the institutionalized religion throb with the lifeblood of fear. The strength and girth of our reason depends on how much capable or skilled we find ourselves in our fight against the unknown or the unknown forces. Lesser insecurity means stronger footing of the reason and the vice versa.

The world of believers teems with tools to appease the Almighty to save us from the unseen perils and fetch us boons and blessings. It is utmost selfish give and take relationship with God: give us your blessings and we will pay back in the form of reverence. The mountain of belief has too broad a base and too high to be broken down to pieces with the tiny hammer of reason. Religion has been a multi-pronged weapon all through the ages of our evolution. By the way, was there religion during the times of single celled amoeba in the primordial sea? Or the God was just happy without the pompous ritualistic show? Quite wonderfully, religion has been an all nice type judge between the exploiting classes as well as the exploited ones. It has maintained itself pretty well I must say. Both the exploiter and the exploited have received equal solace from it.

When no worldly human help is coming forth, the feeble flickering otherworldly light steadily burns inside that pitiable creature who drops his reason and falls on his knees to pray. It is the oasis stay for the worn out desert traveler. Reasonless, beyond earthly justice and injustice, smitten with a meek acceptance before the pleasantly hallucinating light, he becomes oblivious to the present’s pains. His heart mellows with genuine tears of repentance for those unknown, unproveable past birth misdeeds. He has bargained to get something in future. He has accepted his unidentifiable culpability in lieu of blessed and gainful future. It helps him in wading through the foaming and furious desert sandstorms. He constructs this strong, illogical, unreasonable check dam to cut down the furious lashes by the circumstances. It provides him strength, solace (this unseen brother, father, mother, patron in the unseen, unapproachable world) without being there, he being the only witness to his own prayers. He thus is able to take those steps that he won’t have taken otherwise in the absence of his never-to-be-seen friend. The idea and concept has gone so deep in our biology that even in its surreality it has acquired more concrete acceptance and shape than a stone pillar just by our side which we can touch and kick to verify.

Religion also is the dustbin of our wrongdoings and sins. Many of us take shortcuts to bypass the pious injunctions to follow the path of suitability, practicality and efficiency; getting those pin-prickings and chidings by the conscience. In lieu of hundreds of intentional and unintentional wrong-doings we try to counterbalance the negative karma through some willing unwilling charity, pilgrimage, prayer and even meditation.

There is no fixed religiosity. We adapt our faith to its suitability to our lifestyle. Our God is our own making. So rituals and the means of appeasing Him are even more directly manipulated by us. To meet diverse demands, we have hierarchy of Gods and Goddesses ranging from ancestor and corpse worshipping, animistic deities of the savages to the new corporately branded, more powerful, more beneficent, more cultured and cleaner Gods of the uppermost class.

If we take our reasoning to the extent of denying God’s existence, we need to contrive a whole new hypothesis to explain the glaring inexplicabilities tonking their heads against the firm, proven walls of science. Science has not been perfected. Till science gets perfected, the concept of God will remain relevant. Moving backwards on the path of evolution with its sequential linkages of cause and effect, passing through millions of interlinked causes and effects across the billions of years of time and infinite distances of space, we arrive at the final entity—the Big Bang, the so called first event to take place in the primordial vacuum from whence our notions of space and time flow outwards.  This is what our astro-physicists try to make us believe. How can but we assume a primary cause without no further preceding cause or causes?? A commoner like me is plagued by such neighing doubts. Just have a look at the vast and infinite fabric of the sky at night and you just marvel that no it just can’t be the simple handiwork of some suitably fallen chance on the event horizon which explained by the scientific parameters has resulted in the infinite network of astronomical (heavenly) bodies. A mere thought about the perfect balance of the forces in nature is sufficient to make one again fall prey to the hand of some Superiormost designer behind all this. The nearer you look around you, the more proofs you get to become an atheist. The farther you look, belief sneaks into your wondering eyes and puzzled mind.     

Just like we have tried scientifically to define the edges of the solar systems, is it possible to take our know-how to the outermost edges of the universe? Suppose we succeed in accomplishing this one day, what will lie ahead to explore. What beyond? Will we reach God then?! 

        

Astro-physics is based on the space-time model mostly based on the emanation of light travelling at the speed of 300,000 km/sec. With our rapidly improving telescopes we are peeping farther and farther into the space to retrieve the light travelling to us from the farthest possible body. Will we ever reach the farthest source of light—the last primordial flicker at the farthest most end? If we provide some representation to the God, I think this final object has to be the one!

Lost in our inability to either prove or disprove His true nature, we have contrived this immensely utilitarian hypothesis that like all other man-made systems has immense usage for the humanity both at the individual as well as collective levels. I don’t know what will be the nature of this argument once artificial intelligence starts its path of inevitable evolution further down the path of scientific progress when most of the natural functions (having a long and arduous trail across millions of years) will be replaced by metallic, mechanized short-cuts; when the artificial intelligence will learn to sustain itself without the control of its erstwhile master, the man. Possibly in his quest to know the truth and the consequent booms showered on him as a result of utilitarian science, man himself will one day become all powerful possessing super-intelligence. May be then the debate about God will come to an end as science will pluck out one mystery after the other; we will overcome one obstacle after another that during the previous generations had forced us to become helpless leaving us in a state of dumping our reason to surrender before the blind faith in some superpower; a time when the all powerful reason will become so strong that the vulnerable soft skin, warm blood and the heart’s mysterious sensations will turn obsolete; when we will harness the full potential of the brain’s billions and trillions of neurons to be further aided by the artificial intelligence to peek in every nook corner; may be then the present shape and size of God will become obsolete and outdated (like we condemn the savages for animism). During that era of cold, hard, steely reasoning, the man will himself achieve (in what form the species will be then we do not know) the Godly status and turn himself into an all powerful entity matching the supernatural hypothetical entities of now. Whatever hypotheses mankind has contrived across times, he has always surpassed it and proved yesterday’s fiction into tomorrow’s reality. Then may be the fiction of God will be made a reality by the man himself, making him capable of performing supreme feats that we presently ascribe to the Almighty. All along we have believed and prayed to the God to become as powerful as Him. Or the God of those times will still be a more powerful being because the concept of God is in our genes? It just might adapt to some new form!! 

Looking at the bloodied hands of Communism!

Darwin says all beings, across species, and the related phenomena across various natural processes, are propelled by the survival instinct among the constituting elements. In this tussle between the superior and the inferior, the nature evolves in its multitudinous forms comprising tragedies, ecstasies, pleasures and pains. It is basically a class struggle both at the intra- and inter-species level. Both in natural and human systems (we humans now operate now almost in exclusion of nature), the fittest ones adapting better to the plummeting circumstances are the ones to take a lead in either milking the resources or in laying the framework for the overall system to function.

The human system is a big behemoth, intriguingly evolving, following the parameters of the jungle in its human variants. There is basically a fight for individual and even collective interests. Of course to make us believe that the human society does not follow the raw principles of nature (like the lion eating the deer—unsinfully—to survive), we have interposed the institutions of religion, morality, ethics, concept of good and bad, sin and pious deeds, karma, etc. However, as per social selection (derivative of natural selection), the human society moves ahead over time defined by clash of interests at various levels in different fields. If we remove the differentiating layers and levels in the society; if we remove the hypothesis of sin out of this struggle—like we have removed from the struggle between lion and deer—the leftover will simply boil down to a struggle between the more skilled and the less skilled. Out of the numerous levels of interests (ranging from individual, family, religious, state, earth,….), one clash of interest is at the level of the upper and the lower class. From the start of the known history, human affairs have been shaped directly and indirectly by class struggles (between the upper and lower), among individuals within a particular class on the basis of their less or more suitability, and even among the individuals of different classes. Although with changing times, the fields of struggle have changed as well. This broad overarching struggle contains many sublevels to trickle down to the tiniest triumphs, humiliations, wins, losses, exploitations, etc.

The communists have been tonking their ideas-infested heads against this almost inevitable defining differential in the society that seems to be pushing the motley mix of minority’s triumph and the majority’s woes. As a counter to this, one might say that the Western liberal democracy might reverse the ratio. However, it comes at the cost of an invincible super state which with the purpose of safeguarding the majority’s interests has to be a still exploitative institution that mightn’t exploit its have-nots much but then it can very easily do so to the teeming millions in the third world.

Taking up cudgels from the famished majority’s side, the communists thus unite the working class interests to make it super-strong so that it can suddenly go berserk and break apart the centuries old system of exploitation and its supportive elements. For this reason the communist movements are called ‘revolution’. Earlier it was against the monarchy, nobility, aristocracy embaling in them what we call ‘luxury’ beautifully and intelligently supported by the religion. Religion, for its pious injunctions seems to be more effective in stopping a poor person from seeking alternatives than stopping the exploitation by the upper class. So the revolutionaries as atheists pluck out the sinews of long-held beliefs, convincing, providing solace and sympathy to the underclass. A Godless person is less accepting; carries immense prospects of imposing his will through covert and overt means. Hence religion is held culpable by the revolutionaries in the sense that it forces people—makes them habituated to their woes as the will of the divine forces beyond their control—to become adapted to their ill fate rather than putting the same time and energy in remedial measures. Religion, of course, for centuries has been good, sympathetic, solacing companion to the masses helping them in licking their wounds and swallow the sorrows. Thus the revolutionaries break its façade, terming it stagnant in its principles and in cohort with the exploitative classes. Religion too unfortunately demands its share of glitter and glamour that only the upper class can provide. After all, a poor person’s God is a lesser God. The religion of the poor with limited resources is even termed as animism.

Once the revolution led by the newly pious injunctions of classless society tears out (generally in a bloody manner) the ancient system, the interests of the former upper class are either hijacked by a dictator or an all powerful super-body—polit-bureau or the central committee—which in itself replaces the empty seat of godhood; a tiny blackhole type superforce to root out the still surviving differences of any type. Unfortunately, differences are bound to crop up somehow. So they keep on nipping the buds. This sudden rush of purgatory blood leaves bloody tales far more horrible than the ones committed by the former system over centuries. The tales of atrocities committed in just years outmatch the ones perpetrated across decades or even centuries. It is just like a helpless group of sufferers running away from the semi-lethal teeth of a wolf into the shelter of a hungry tiger with super-strong claws. In this religionless weeding out for the cause of the supreme ideal, the religious tools of mercy and pity do not exist to act as check dams. After all, religion has been constructed to function as a check dam to save a situation where ‘the lion eats the deer’ principle is allowed to operate in milder nastiness in the human society. In a Godless state all hell breaks loose. After many bloody strivings, the communists much to their chagrin find that the divisive curse of the selfish, individualistic interests still survives in one form or the other.

Capitalist, socialist, liberal democracies on the other hand are less glaring and more subtle in their deeds, because here the old exploitative forms have been redressed as modern principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. It is a subtle and white-blooded exercise: the old forces in their more acceptable avatars. It also promises to provide ample opportunities to the masses to struggle through the laswful checker work to move up the capitalist ladder to reach the class on the top. It believes in conversion rather than coup born of the clash of interests.

However hard the communist regime might try the class differentials will persist in one form or the other; simply because we are human beings, cast in so unique and numerous ways with billion ways of thinking; and not just same colour factory product.

PS: Something away from the main discussion in this topic! The reason why a democrat politician, an industrialist or a dictator occupies his/her influential position can be—among others off beat factors like luck, fate, destiny—that the said person is stronger in getting his conscience unchained from the restricting principles of good and bad in the game of survival. It boils down to: Who is more skillful? It is just a matter of more or less skills.

Was Colonialism really that bad??!!

Consider a small village typically set in Indian countryside. Have a look at the social structure. Look at the pathetic condition of the so called low class secluded pockets. You will find poor, unconfident, exploited people. Its reverse class, smartly perched on top of the social structure comprises more moneyed confident persons who given their contrastingly better position appear like exploiters. During ancient times when the classes, castes and categories were settling down, it was more of fighting in a lawless land to cement your position in the present and sow the seeds of better position for your progenies. Under the brutally impartial and indifferent gaze of nature, in the emerging social system some groups gained ascendency, others lagged behind. Some groups claimed more rights and fought for these. Others surrendered more and settled at lower positions. Across generations, these differences kept on being augmented with clearly defined social rules and restrictions, always in favour of those who had taken the lead generations ago. So at the end of the tunnel, if we just ignore the gradual process and look at the position of the people on both sides of the divide, we might, equipped with our sensitivities and modern human values, dub one as the exploiter and the other as the exploited. Reality has many angels, so are the ways and means of looking at a thing, phenomenon or process. Somebody, though at a risk of condemnation, might just summarize it as a natural game between the stronger and the weaker, like it happens in nature. After all social Darwinism has such parallelisms with the way we act, behave and manage in the social jungle: the human variant of survival, fight, loss and gain, like it happens in the natural forests.

Colonialism has drawn an exclusivist debate about its character and affects. Just like a particular community has come to excel at the village level, and this dominance of course comes at the cost of those at the lower rungs, in the international social system also bunches of seafaring, courageous, more enterprising, less God fearing, fitter physically and mentally people came to dominate. This is the law! We try to occupy the best possible position. Be it at the community that can maintain itself just at the village level, or the Westerners whose industrializing, exuberant selves sent them on rampage to occupy territories beyond seas. Do they become exploiters just because they gained more in a field that was open for all? Do we become the victim by default because we lost more given our inherent shortcomings? If a village level politically ambitious person manages to politically dominate a village only, does Modi become a political exploiter and a trampler on the rights of this village level politician because Modi given his better political acumen has acquired the highest political seat? We analyse and interpret colonialism more as victims and less as sound academicians accepting certain cold hard facts.   

   

In the Indian perspective, millions of pages about the dark face of colonialism have already been written. One page about the positives of colonialism, though not popular, has also been allowed for a change of literary taste. Even some bits of facts on this solitary page need no repetition. All it includes is codification of laws, railways, telegraph, waterways, system of modern education, system of administration, the ways and means of running a democracy, great hill stations, consolidation of Indian sovereignty in the North East, dispelling evils like Sati from the Indian society, etc. But what are these?! These are very small doings by the plundering hand, they say. But what will be left of modern India if these components are taken out? Imagine a Britishless India. The Mughal dynasty still continuing to rule for the next 200 years!! India at the most would have got a few more forts, grand mosques, luxurious palaces, and possibly a still grander Taj Mahal! But where would have been the modern India we are so proud of? When Major Hudson killed the sons of the last Mughal and they packed the poet King to Rangoon, it was no crime. Bloodshedding even among brothers has been the norm to capture thrones in pre Muslim as well as Muslim ruled India. Possibly they even did us a favour, the valiant Britishers, in finally extinguishing the old medieval lineage which had long outlived its past splendor and architectural glory. Given Hindu apathy, and the so called ‘peace loving nature’ we might still have been ruled by some titular head, some decapitated small time great great great grandson of the last Mughal. And the last of all, consider an India without the few positives of Colonialism mentioned shyly on the single page dedicated to its positive affects! Where would have we stood? Possibly like Iran, at the most!    

Faceless Gods by Sandeep Dahiya | Notion Press

It is a monumental work delving into the deeper meanings of religion, spirituality, faith, superstition and many more. Along with the main axis are the oiling elements of nationality, humanism, nomadic culture and many more. - See more at: https://notionpress.com/read/faceless-gods#sthash.Y5wFjrPw.dpuf







Faceless Gods by Sandeep Dahiya | Notion Press

Dr APJ Kalam

As Indians line up to pay homage to Dr APJ Kalam, not as Hindus, Muslims, Christians or Sikhs, not as rich or poor, not as this casteman or that, not as bigger or smaller, but as a single sad obliged entity, they pay a tribute to genuine Indianness. As politicians from divergent streams merge to a single block of much-obliged, head-bent down gentry, it proves that it is possible to overcome narrow parochial divisions that restrict our prospects of individual and collective growth. As millions of teary eyed Hindus fold their hands before the fatherly figure and millions of Muslims put their praying palms out for the peace of the departed soul, it gives a prospect that Hindus and Muslims can have a lot in common than they are having presently.

Visualize India without the assuring names like Agni, Prithvi, Brahmos, Nag, Trishul and of course the nuclear armaments, it instantly shows why we needed APJ Kalam. We can hold our dreams of becoming a developed nation because we have a semblance of security born of his military science achievements. We can more assuredly move on to the path of development because he has laid down a whole plan for us to follow. The Missile Man, The Most Popular President, The Big Dreamer, The 2020 Visionary, The Professor, The Speaker! He had many avatars, but just one dream. The dream of making India big by igniting minds, by firing the creativity and potential in youth, like he fired our leaps into the space through ballistic technology. It is difficult to analyze whether he was more of a scientist or a spiritualist. When the death sniffed out this bright light from amongst us, he was still dispelling darkness from our minds.

He touched Presidential seat with an unprecedented grace. Ironically, his ascension to the political seat was facilitated by the so called ‘danger to the secular fabric’ in the country. Still more ironically, his chances for a second term were nullified by the so called ‘safe keepers of secularism’ in this country. He deserved to be President again. But who can tame the genuine motives in earnest souls?! Dreams are no slaves to posts and positions. More luckily for the Indian youth, the ex-president kept on his path of igniting minds through his relentless lectures and public addresses. Few people do the things they love doing most even till their last moment. The tragic hand of death cannot snatch away the legacy the great man left when he collapsed on the lecture stage. Heartiest salutes to this Bharat Ratna! May almighty bestow him all peace in after life!