AFTERLIFE
From Philosopedia.org
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AFTERLIFE
The Egyptians were among the first known to invent the concept of an afterlife, as exemplified by their burial customs and rites. The concept was taken up later by the ancient Hebrews.
Paul Johnson’s The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage (1996) speculates that the first hell in people’s minds may have been on Jerusalem’s south side, where the city’s garbage burned day and night and resulted in unpleasant aromas. James E. Alock’s “Pseudoscience and the Soul” (Essence 5:1) suggests a reason individuals search for “proof” of an afterlife: “Intellectually capable of foreseeing that they will one day die, yet emotionally too frail to accept that physical death may indeed be the end of their existence, human beings have long clung to the idea that life continues beyond the grave.”
Epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism is a theological theory that human beings do not survive the death of their bodies in any form whatsoever.
Freethinkers and Afterlife
Freethinkers generally hold that the mythology of an afterlife, which serves as a denial of death, provides little comfort either for the survivors or for the dying. {PE; OCP}
Speculations About Afterlife
Camille Sweeney collected some people’s ideas about the afterlife (The New York Times Magazine, 7 December 1997), which 74% of all Americans, according to the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, believe in:
- • I don’t believe in an afterlife. I don’t even believe in this life. I’m completely unspiritual. If there is an afterlife, I guess I’d use it to return phone calls. — Fran Lebowitz, writer
- • I want to be ground up and have my assistants mix my ashes in a vat of oil paint and medium that they’ll disperse into 10 little jars. Then they’ll distribute the mixture to my 10 favorite painters, who’ll use the mixture, me in the paint, to make art that’ll hang in a group show–held in my honor. That’ll be my afterlife, a group show. — Ross Bleckner, artist
- • The afterlife’s going to be a life of activity. We won’t be sitting around on clouds strumming on harps all day–although, come to think of it, that would be pretty strenuous. Heaven’s going to look like a big city by a lake, something like Chicago, not at all like Manhattan. — Andrew M. Greeley, author, ordained Roman Catholic priest
- • I hope something does happen. Anything. Any kind of consciousness. My fear is that nothing will. I don’t believe in reincarnation–there’s no control in that, and I’m much too ambitious. And a hereafter? I’m not sure what a Heaven would be like, but Hell, Hell might be interesting–a lot like the news business. — Geraldo Rivera, talk-show host, who lists himself as a Jew in Who’s Who in America
- • If, at the end, we rejoice in what we did right and regret what we did wrong and wish we could do it all over and better, we earn peacefulness. That’s Heaven. Not caring how we lived is to accept oblivion. That’s Hell. — Ex-Governor Mario Cuomo, New York State, a Catholic
- • My hereafter is here. I am where I’m going, for I am mulch. It’s a great comfort to know that in my mulch-hood I may nourish a row of parsnips. — Frank McCourt, writer
- • I used to believe there was an afterlife, that we’ll all be reincarnated. Then I had my kids and realized that they’re my afterlife. They are how a little bit of me is going to survive. My brother still believes in reincarnation. He’s going to be born over and over and over again. He really hopes it happens. Not me. He’s still trying to get it right, and I’m trying to get it over with. — Tommy Smothers, comedian
(See entry for Heaven.)
