Dog and bone...

We don’t have to welcome death, and we are certainly not required to follow the example of Islamic extremists by claiming to “love” it. Even if we don’t much care for the idea, this life is almost certainly the only one we have, and sacrificing it for an imaginary life yet to come is wishful thinking of the most deluded kind. We should be careful what we wish for, since forfeiting the present for a putative future may not represent a fair exchange. In one of Aesop’s fables a dog is carrying a bone across a river bridge. Looking down, he sees another dog with what looks like a bigger bone. He makes a grab for it, thereby losing both the real bone and its watery reflection. Because of his greed, the dog ends up with nothing. Though Muslims look forward to “grabbing” their posthumous life in paradise, is there any evidence, that isn’t merely anecdotal, for such an afterlife? Might the Islamic martyrs, like the dog in the fable, end up with nothing?