Download or read book The Near and Far Sides of Death written by James F. Siller and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2008-06-23 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those committed to the beliefs of Christianity perhaps more so for those of the Catholic faith the conception of Jesus is deemed an immaculate, non-sexual event. He was conceived within the womb of Mary through the Holy Spirit, whereupon Marys spouse and Jesus earthly father, Joseph, was faced with the issue of accepting his wifes fidelity in the entire matter. This loosely describes the divine conception of Jesus as derived from words found in The New Testament of The Bible, while it is hoped that hackles of certain readers will not be raised through words appearing in The Near and Far Sides of Death (NFSD) where similar claims are made. Namely, along with Jesus divine conception, we have been conceived in much the same manner, although under entirely different circumstances. In a very distant past, well before there were galaxies far, far away and prior to the bestowal of mortality on any cosmic being, the initial birth of everyone who has ever existed took place. This momentous occasion occurred about 14-billion years ago when we collectively emerged arm-in-arm with the entire universe, or more fittingly, the emergence was an energy-upon-energy arrangement. Such is the manner in which our lives actually began, although parties interested in researching the event will be hard pressed to find any form of intelligence or mortality within the enormous burst of radiant energy that signaled our arrival. In truth, the entire referenced era, plus several subsequent brief periods are non-reviewable. Following a colossal upheaval at time-zero of which we were a part dubbed the Big Bang our incipient mortality lay in a dormant, yet highly charged state that featured billions of years of cosmic development, or cosmic gestation as it were. This hard-sell proposal forms a major theme of the story, and though it appears well beyond the pale of rational belief, it becomes wholly credible after reviewing facts and discussion that are relevant to the topic. An excerpt from NFSD that is part of this relevant discussion appears below. It addresses the angst-ridden issue of abortion. Many of those in the clergy and laypersons alike believe that life begins at conception, when a sperm cell fertilizes a female ovum. At the moment of this one-on-one encounter within a female fallopian tube, some will openly endorse the existence and reality of life, even though only a genetic code exists that will later establish and identify a unique human form having intellectual propensities. Further, under these primal, entry-level conditions of development, life is granted the same validity, the same sacred status it receives during any post-natal stage. Based on the largest of pictures, which includes the characteristics of our cosmic world and the presumed nature of its creator, Im convinced the proper outlook is one in which conception becomes the first breath of mortality. The belief is upheld by the fact that palpable judgments regarding a scheduled beginning of life, or life under any terms, is established as a matter of human judgment, which is always subject to error and far too often, wrong. Does a person exist who is capable of rendering such lofty decisions? Life is a sacred gift and attempts to distinguish its base identity, let alone its scheduled reality, should be cautiously approached. In addition, an individual claiming to have properly defined the issue will be singled out as one capable of defining the appointed time when God intended life should exist. Would the creator of everything decree that life is established at some designated moment of pre-fetal, fetal, or post-fetal development, which parallels our conventional but limited visions of life? Isnt it possible that His would be a perspective of far broader scope, one in which life may have commenced during a recent past when our species awakened from an intellectual darkness? Probing the issue fur