Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell Book

An imperfect book with some valuable insights.


Two stars for the introductory chapters on death. These are awesome perspective! Life gets meaning because it's finite.

One star for Spong's atheistic argument against religion. One of priesthood makes the case that some of the things we do in the name of The Lord, are just plain silly when you get right down to it. Worse, they cause harm. Unlike some other fabulous books from the atheist perspective (The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, etc.), this one _actually_ has a chance of being picked up by the religious and not thrown immediately down in a big huff.

Spong loses two stars for the remaining 1/3rd of the book, where he goes right off the rails by coming back to religion (while simultaneously rejecting it...he gets very confusing), only a clumsily bastardized form of it that's one shake spiritualism and one shake Gospel (only, properly, as he interprets it). He totally falls down here by failing to recognize (or give up) that you don't need religion for some of the underlying ideas in that last portion to be valid.

By rejiggering religion and holding up the taped remains of the Bible he'd previously shredded, he's only succeeding in giving the same kind of vapid indefensible backing to ideas that just _might_ deserve some real, honest consideration. By re-invoking religion in support of his grand spiritualist vision, he leaves adherents vulnerable to the same types of coercion and defrauding to which they were just previously vulnerable before they tossed aside their Bibles. I got the distinct sense here that Spong didn't have a coherent sense of where he was going or what he was doing with his ideas. He was thinking about it fresh on paper (maybe he wanted to write it out fast lest it not be written at all, he is a rather elderly man, after all).

In the end, I don't buy his concepts. Eternal Life: TRUE!*

* eternal life = experience of the unique one-ness of the universal ground of all being which surrounds us and penetrates us and binds us to the tree, the rock, the land, the ship. Use what you've learned, save you it can. (Okay, I jest here, but what claptrap!)

The required redefinition of life and eternity become almost a joke just to make the book's title work. I get the sense Spong himself doesn't really even buy it completely or it'd be easier for him to communicate.

What I do buy is the notion that we are eternal in the sense that while we live, we produce impacts that affect others, no matter what our station in life. We are affected, have the lives we have, in part do to the actions of long dead humanity, mostly nameless and faceless and totally unknown, some known to history, some select few personally close friends and relatives. We in turn each create ripples through our lives that impact others, starting with the people who are close to us, and via strings of impacts one person to the next, our impact is felt directly or indirectly, large or infinitesimal, upon the rest of humanity.

So our eternal life is the lasting impact we have by striving to live as best we are able. It's not really a mystery. You can think deeply and think about how our self-conscious experience, emerging from the same basic matter that makes up the rest of the universe, might be one way for the universe to "know" about itself. Yeah, that has a certain satisfaction, a certain aesthetic to it.

We don't need a carefully rehashed version of Christian dogma to support it. It's self evident, once you've experienced enough life and gained enough knowledge.

Kudos (but no stars) for the epilogue, where Spong deals with the question of euthanasia and the right to die. In addition to being an atheist, I'm also a libertarian. I believe I own myself. My consciousness lives here in this body. It homesteads it, it's the only thing that can. Therefore, my body is its rightful property. I can choose to use my property any way I see fit, barring interference with the rights of others to use their property.

I can sell it, I can lease it out, I can conserve it, I can remodel and fortify it. I can choose to dispose of it as well, when it becomes obvious that it can no longer suit me, and no more good can come from its continued operation.

If a government interferes with your ability to use your property as you desire, then it's really not yours, it's theirs, and they're just letting you have some conditional access. Of all the things people choose to be offended by, for me, it's this notion that the Government is the real owner of things and even ourselves, that is truly offensive.

On the right to choose to end one's life then, my characterization is stark. Spong's is beautiful and proper.

I feel like I have traveled beyond this book. Even it's atheistic arguments are primitive compared to others I've read or have just now started reading about.

However, for anyone dealing right now with death, it's opening chapters lend very comforting perspective from someone who has seen and experienced so much death. I highly recommend them.

For others, principally religious individuals who have been trained or otherwise learned to reject anything atheistic, Spong's words may have gentle authority enough to get you to let your guard down a bit, without comedown or condescension, just long enough to let you do some serious thinking.

You might be surprised at your reaction. You might be further surprised to realize that casting aside some or all of that religion won't cause the world to end, or demons to enrapture you, or evil to enter your heart. You might be surprised to realize your life become suddenly all the more valuable to you, once you know fully well how wonderful a gift you have, and what you can loose out on by squandering it.