According to the General Social Survey’s cumulative data collected from 1973 to 2006 in the United States, 80% of people believed in life after death. Of that group, 78.9% believed that the afterlife would be a spiritual life involving the mind and not the body. There are two problems with the magical numbers I just used to dazzled you. First, it’s very important to remember that statistics can be bent to say whatever you want. (That second sampling size isn’t big enough to fully convince me.) Secondly, individual beliefs and definitions of the “soul” will differ. But for argument’s sake, let’s just stick to generalities. These stats back up my gut feeling that most people believe they have a spiritual essence that will far outlast their physical bodies.
So let’s do some math. (Real math not the statistical kind.) Let’s say that you have a generous life span of 100 years. Now compare that to the age of the earth. If we were to use the most conservative timescale (Christians under cut scientist by a landslide), the earth is about 6000 years old. Even in this tiny scale your bodily form exists for less than 2% of the time. If you think a baby-aged planet is ludicrous, the earth is 4.54 billion years old. On this scale, Methuselah who according to the Bible lived 969 years was only around for 0.00002% of the time.
So the real question is, if you believe you have a eternal soul, what are you doing to prep it for the vast majority of its existence? Most translations of this verse really drive home the point of the “body as a living sacrifice” and “spiritual act of worship.” Both entities are working together at a short-term loss (by earthly standards) to equal a long term gain (by spiritual standards). How would your daily actions change if you focused on your spirit’s long term well-being instead of the fleeting status of that mammal flesh that carries it around?
If you knew that 50% of statistics are made up on the spot:
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