st one thousand seven hundred years before Pascal lived a Greek philosopher named Plato. The well-known scholar Socrates, in Athens, taught Plato in 407 B.C. In Plato’s, Allegory of the Cave, he metaphorically conveys man’s life through death. Contrarily, Plato fails in knowing that man has already seen the light to which was written about. After living in the dark for a long period of time, man will not only blink and hinder the light to which blinds him, he will also venture to find an even brighter light. Man has always searched in new horizons, and overcoming the fascinating sights of the “upper world”, man will eventually grow weary of it. That brings in another “philosopher” mind, that of John Haynes Holmes. Living in America between the 19th and 20th Centuries, John Haynes Holmes was both a minister, and social activist. Plato and Holmes are inter-related because each draws upon taking the next step after life on Earth. Immortality was preached by the minister in 1929, but he is well known for his philosophical thoughts as much as his religious views. Man’s immortality is related to evolution, according to Holmes. Humans grow older and their “materials” that they live in weaken, while the soul only grows stronger. From a scientific standpoint, the energy released at death converts to an equally willing afterlife. Where Plato fails in his views on man, Holmes does not. Men have and will always search for knowledge, venturing to extremes to reach it. Immortality must be true in order to reach the “light”. Yet at the same time man thirsts for an even brighter light and life.A way of knowing if something is real is to conduct scientific experimentation. Because of scientific research over the centuries, this has lead to a better understanding of the always-debatable “flat Earth”, to how Earth revolves in the galaxy. Hawking begins by explaining how man has ...
