Sebastian Junger is a fine writer, and I encourage you to explore his work. His books include: The Perfect Storm, War, Tribe, and Freedom. My discussion of War is here: https://www.margueritereads.com/home/war-by-sebastian-junger?rq=junger. He immerses himself into his subjects, puts himself into harm’s way again and again, in a search for understanding and truth. In his latest book, harm came to him, unbidden, as he experienced a ruptured abdominal aneurysm, and was brought back from the edge of death by capable doctors. During that event, he encountered his deceased father, offering an invitation to proceed into an unfamiliar, beckoning darkness. He resisted, his physicians worked mightily, and brought him back to life.

Junger reveals that his father was an atheist and physicist, while his mother was a bit of a woo-woo believer, not tied to any distinct philosophy, but open to any particular belief. Junger’s book is an extended essay to find what science, applied (medicine) and theoretical (physics) has to offer to explain if there is life after death. He carefully examines evidence of Near Death Experiences (NDEs), of both micro and macro level physics, and of the biology of the brain, all seeking some explanation. He is fixated on finding a tangible solution to this problem of knowing. What he finally seems to land on is that love is somehow the most important thing, to love and be loved. I think he has at least part of the solution.

While I am a person of deep faith, Catholic faith, and rest in the deep certainty that God is real, has lovingly created us, endowed us with an intelligence and yearning to know and love Him, and we should choose Him and strive to be with Him forever after this life is ended, I am not an apologist, that is, one who has studied philosophy and theology and can explain the reasoning that leads to the conclusions I accept and believe. I have the gift of faith, which is greater than my gift of intellectual understanding. So, I can offer Junger, and others who are left with an incomplete understanding, writers and thinkers who have a far better ability to explain this, including St. Thomas Acquinas, GK Chesterton, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI. Their ideas on the subject are neatly provided by Joe Herschmeyer, in his Shameless Popery podcast, found here: https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/how-science-proves-gods-existence. The entire argument can be read or listened to there. Here is a brief conclusion:

“…this is a simple enough, I think, straightforward argument that if the universe is intelligible, if science works, if science is true, if science is able to study the world and make true and accurate predictions about it, that is only true because the universe is intelligible, and we have mind capable of knowing, which are only explicable ultimately on a theistic worldview. They’re only explicable ultimately if there is some kind of divine intelligence that governs the entire world, because a merely chaotic process doesn’t get you intelligibility in the universe, or intelligibility in the human mind.”

Be sure to read the podcast episode to follow how Joe gets to this conclusion, and see if it makes sense to you. In more poetic, beautiful language, Joe quotes Pope John Paul II:

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth. And God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth, in a word, to know himself. So that by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”

Explore life’s meaning with Junger’s book, but know that it is only the very small first step in a lifetime’s quest of learning, searching, and knowing, something your Creator made you to do.