Samuel Johnson once said, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” In May of 2001 I was told that I had lung cancer. I was also told that I had anywhere from six to 18 months to live. Six months later I was told I might last as long as two years, dying not later than fall of 2003. Surprise! Samuel Johnson was wrong. Denial is the normal mental state of someone being hanged in a fortnight, not concentration. 4 years later I still haven’t resolved any great mysteries of belief.

Sometimes I think that fundamentalists have it easy. I was raised as a Catholic, and most of my family still is Catholic. They don’t harbor doubts about life after death, or if they do they don’t share them. But while I was growing up Catholic, I kept wondering where the evidence was, and concluded that it was well hidden if it was there at all.

As a Unitarian, I have many choices. I could adopt the Universalist philosophy of universal salvation. An all-powerful God is also an all-forgiving God, and we will all wind up in heaven. That has its obvious attraction to someone who is going to be dead shortly.

But what is the path to eternal salvation? Is it faith or is it works? If it's works, then I'm probably in good shape. If it's faith, then I am in trouble. Faith is a willingness to believe in something without any supporting evidence. I worked on computers for over 30 years. Towards the end, I taught things like introduction to logic at the university level. I'm a firm believer that truth will be supported by data. That isn't conducive to a faith-based belief system. Even the question of life after death is supported at best by the skimpiest of evidence. And every piece of evidence can be explained away by an alternative set of causes. Yet now I find myself looking for a belief system that will get me through the last few months of my life and prepare myself for supposed life after death..

I knew that I’d have issues with dying, so I’m seeing a psychologist from time to time. He happens to believe in reincarnation. I’m sorry, but the bad news is that 99% of our ancestors were born and lived as peasants, and no one ever seems to come back claiming memories of being a peasant in a previous life. Not everyone could have been nobles, and until I start hearing of peasants coming back and remembering their past lives I will hold onto my doubts about reincarnation.

But do I need to decide what I believe right now, before dying? I think not.

Everyone dies, whether they believe in something or not. I think that I share the belief system of Benjamin Franklin as he shared it in a letter to a friend. In that letter, written a few weeks before his death, Benjamin Franklin commented on Jesus. "I have some doubts as to his divinity, though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble."