Purpose, Life After Death, God, the Answer?

This is a three part series about an email i received at work.

What is the purpose of Life? What happens after death? Who/What created the universe? Is there a God? What is Good and what is Bad? How to make good pancakes? How should one treat others? This article provides complete answers to all these questions (except the one regarding pancakes which is really tough), in a simple, easy-to-follow language. Let us begin with a description of several conventional (non)answers to these questions.

1. [Normal-guy]: Frankly, I don't care what the answers are. I have once in a while thought about these questions but I found thinking was hazardous to my health and so I stopped.

2. [Agnostic]: I don't know the answers and I doubt whether there are any answers. Thinkers have wondered about these questions for centuries but they seem to be hopelessly contradictory. I don't think anyone [including/especially the author] knows the answers. May be we will never know the answers.

3. [Charvaka (aka Materialist)]: Life is a chemical unit of no great significance in cosmic scale and Natural Sciences will eventually tell you what you can know. Questions like the ones listed above arise from one's inability to accept the insignificance of oneself in the universe. You are born, you live and you die -- and in the long run nothing really matters. In a shorter time scale, any set of answers you have for yourself is good/bad enough. I live as I please and sometimes I am happy, sometimes sad, sometimes regretful, sometimes hopeful -- all these are part of life and one should not attach any deep significance to anything.

4. [Einsteinian Intellectual]: There seems to exist some wonderful harmony in nature which I find hard to grasp as mere accident. To me this harmony is god [yes, yes, that is not saying anything because I have not defined either of the terms; but, what the heck, everyone talks imprecisely about these topics; at least, this sounds intellectual!]. Obviously, this god is not concerned with good/bad, reward/punishment, morals etc.....But something in me tells me to be nice to others, be human, kind ....I am not too consistent in it [I have pets I love, but I kill to eat] but I attempt to be. I try to be as helpful as possible because of an inner urge and I feel guilty when I can't/don't.

5. [Philosophy-reader]: God is Omniscient, Omnipresent and various other Omni I can't spell. That way it sounds more sophisticated than thinking of a God sitting in Heaven up there. I am quite confused as to what this Power is doing - if any! At best, I would like to think it operates in mysterious ways, which we will never know and maintain order....oh dear, that sounds hopelessly naive even to me but I don't want to give up the existence of a Supreme Power. As far as human dynamics goes, I am with the Einsteinian intellectual.

6. [Star Wars Fan]: As evolution proceeds, we go from manhood to super-manhood and such species can exist in other galaxies. It is even possible that they visited us in the past and are keeping an eye on us. We may be able to establish contact or even evolve to that state by processes which are beyond the understanding of present science and technology but nevertheless no more mysterious than, say, radio to a tribal man. Issues of morality belongs to ethics whose only purpose is to maintain order in the world. What works best is right.

7. [Simple Believer]: There exists a God who is the Creator of this universe and we have Souls which will outlive the body in death. By being good, moral and all that we could hope to get in touch with God even while living -- but at any rate, God will make us accountable for our actions. This could be while we live or after our death in heaven/hell or in the next incarnation. There are guys who get in touch with God in the past and they have told us all about it in Bible/Koran/Vedas and you better listen to these. God expects us to be moral, kind to others and brush our teeth twice each day.

[Note: Since this set encompasses most of the religions, obviously there are variations in the theme; some Gods expect us to brush the teeth only once a day. Such differences of opinion, of course, have led to major conflicts and wars.]

8. [Sophisticated Believer]: There is God-hood in each man but he does not know it. And this God-hood is the same in all and pervades through the universe [whatever that might mean!]. To realize this God-hood is the purpose of life. Depending on your temperament etc. it might be helpful to be kind, moral .... so that you can move towards that Self-Realization as fast as possible. The world you see is an Illusion and will disappear when you reach the Goal --- just as the dreams disappear on waking up. It may be possible to move towards this goal by different routes/techniques and guys like Patanjali/Buddha/Christ/Krishna/Mohammed etc. have given you some of the methods. All religions of the world are merely routes to this goal in essence and the differences/conflict are superficial and irrelevant.