As soon as the lecture hall full of student's heard Dr. Zoric's last remark, the room went completely ballistic.
Some students were silent, still processing what he had just said, while others had already gotten angry — these were probably the students from a religious background.
Dr. Zoric's theory basically made a joke out of every religion out there with his wild conclusion, which was probably why the faces of all of the members of the experiment were censored, as there were sure to be many threats on their lives if not.
Religion was still a decently big thing in this day and age, especially when one considered the scale of the human race's influence now.
They spanned across the whole galaxy, with hundreds of billions of star systems being occupied, each with billions more people per habitable planet.
The population of humans in the federation had probably reached the quintillions by now.
There was at least 1 prominent religion on every planet, with some religions going even farther than that and influencing whole star systems or even several hundred light year regions of space.
Considering the trends of religion that were recorded in the ancient times of the 21st century, people became less and less religious as humans became smarter and advanced as a civilisation, and it was projected that it might even die out within the next few centuries after that.
The estimates weren't quite right, but they were along the right lines.
Religion did die down as humans learned more about the universe, but it quickly saw a humungous boom in growth with the advent of the Primordial Expanse.
This was due to two reasons; number one being the groundbreaking discovery of the 'soul', and the other being the system itself.
The discovery of the soul was obvious, as it was already deeply linked with religion for tens of millenia before that point, and the argument of 'no evidence' for the existence of god or the beyond became invalid, as there was evidence now.
However, the system itself was a little bit of a peculiar situation.
It quickly became clear what sort of influence the system had over not only the Primordial Expanse, but even humans as well as the universe.
Some students even burst out crying, presumably from either the fear of death, and now knowing that there was no 'eternal happiness' waiting for them on the other side, or perhaps it was because a loved one had recently died and they realised that they were really gone, forever, never able to meet them again.
Whatever the case, these students were left alone to silently sob to themselves as the rest of the students continued looking at Dr. Zoric for any sort of validation or answers.
Eventually, Alex, still sat in the front row, came out of the deep thinking state he had been in ever since Dr. Zoric first announced his theory.
"But sir, if you are right, and there really is no afterlife or anything like that once we die, then what is the point in us even having souls? Doesn't that sound counterintuitive? It still sounds a little wild to me that even though souls were officially confirmed to be real, this discovery also led to the theory that there is no afterlife... it's kind of ironic."
Dr. Zoric smiled when he heard Alex's question, as he was waiting for one of the students to point this small discrepancy in this theory out.
He just hadn't expected the student to bring this point up to be Alex, after all he still thought Alex was lying about his talent being related to souls, but the more he got to know him, the more he started to loosen up his rigid thoughts.
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*Ahem*
Dr. Zoric cleared his throat, then answered Alex.
"The simple answer to your question is — we simply don't know either."
The students were a little disappointed at Dr. Zoric's anticlimactic answer, but he wasn't finished yet.
"If we knew everything there was about souls, I sure as hell wouldn't be standing here teaching you guys, that's for sure. In fact, that's what you guys are here for."
The hall echoed with a few chuckles at Dr. Zoric's witty remark.
"Sure, 99% of the students who join this course are just here because your understanding of your soul will become much more important to you once you become a higher life form, but 1% of you will develop a deeper interest than that and take it even further, hopefully becoming a leading researcher in soul studies and succeeding where we, the previous generation, failed."