1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe
Appendix C Musical Compositions
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All religions hold one single belief in common: we can be immortal. Therefore, we need to explore the early history of this idea and perhaps resolve the conflict between the doctrine of immortality and TTOMTE. We might even understand where religions came from in the first place.
Hinduism, the oldest religion still in existence, started sometime between five and ten thousand years ago. However, cave art and burial sites hint that early people had some spiritual ideas perhaps thirty-five to fifty thousand years ago, so we have to go back even earlier. Since we have no way to know what ancient humans actually thought, we'll have to rely on guessing based on a little logic, which won't be the first time we've played this game.
Creatures exhibited desire for immortality the moment they started moving around to eat and not get eaten, with pain being one of the first things driving them to live. Wanting to survive became part of their (our) DNA, a good thing too. Where would we be if the earlier creatures liked committing suicide? Animals without a survival instinct did not last at all. Those with it survived, and the stronger the desire, the more a creature fought to live forever.
At first, a member of a species (at the microbe level) hardly noticed others died, and death within a group didn't mean anything personal. An animal didn't even consider it was part of the same species or that it was going to die like the others. The later animals and birds did start missing their kin, especially a close family member, but still, they didn't take it personally.
Then one hundred thousand years ago, our awareness evolved into self awareness. We wanted to live forever too and thought we could, but the evidence didn't look too good. We saw we were kind of like everybody else, so what happened to them might happen to us.
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