RELIGIOUS ARGUMENTS FOR LIFE AFTER DEATH


All major world religions have teachings about life after death. Does this widespread belief constitute good evidence? Common arguments from tradition suggest that these beliefs have “stood the test of time” or represent “ancient wisdom” in short supply in modern life. But is this reverence for the past misplaced? These beliefs emerged during superstitious eras along with all kinds of other beliefs (moral, social, political, scientific) that are rejected by people living in advanced societies today. For example, they thought that blood relations, ancestry, clan and tribe defined moral obligation rather than abstract principles of justice. They believed in rigidly defined gender roles and accorded women far fewer rights than men. They believed in rigidly defined class structures, sometimes built into their religion, as in the caste system in Hinduism. They believed in authoritarian forms of government - usually rule by a hereditary monarchy and aristocracy. The thought that disease was caused by evil spirits and believed in magical spells, curses, bad omens and so on. We can find many of these beliefs still extant in isolated aboriginal tribes and in the developing world. So, if people in the past were wrong about morality, gender equality, human rights, government and science, why should we expect that they were right about God and the afterlife?

Early concepts of life after death were very physicalistic. Since the dead were generally buried, the abode of the dead was thought to be under the earth. Early Mesopotamian and Greek accounts often portrayed the afterlife as a gloomy place with only dust to eat and where the dead lament their state, moping about and passing the time by playing table games, as if they were in prison, complete with a gatekeeper to prevent escape. Everyone went to the same place, regardless of their station in life or whether their deeds were good or evil. People left food and drink offerings so the spirits of the dead would have something more palpable to eat than dirt. In Egypt, wealthy people were often buried with their favorite possessions (or servants!) to take with them to the afterlife. The body was mummified because of the belief that the afterlife was some sort of pseudo-physical existence that required the preservation of their physical bodies.

In ancient Judaism, there was no belief in an afterlife at all. Adam was formed from the dust of the earth and is told by God, “By the sweat of your brow you shall produce food to eat until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:19) Later, there is the concept that there is some vestige of the person that sleeps in the earth through all eternity, unless someone breaks God’s Law and holds a seance, as King Saul is portrayed doing when he asks the Medium of Endor to bring up the prophet Samuel for advice in his war against the Philistines. (1 Samuel 28:3-24). Samuel’s first words are “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”

Later the idea of physical resurrection of the body and judgement emerges, along with a belief in an afterlife of heavenly reward or one of punishment in everlasting fire. These developments are likely a borrowing from the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, after the Persians defeated the Babylonian conquerors who occupied Israel. Other influences in the development of the idea of resurrection in later Judaism seem to be a misinterpretation of the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37, a prophesy restoration of the nation of Israel, and not as a literal event, and concerns about the justice of God of the sort found in the Book of Ecclesiastes. If there is no afterlife to reward the righteous and punish the evildoer, then how can God be just?

In the entire Old Testament, there are only a few scattered verses which support the idea of resurrection, and they are very late developments. When Alexander conquered the Persians, many Jews adopted the Greek belief in an immortal soul, separate from the body and combined it with belief in a last judgement and physical resurrection. Then, when Christianity came on the scene as a reform movement within Judaism, it inherited these beliefs, which are held by nearly all Jews and Christians today.

The New Testament claims that between death and the resurrection, believers are with Jesus in Heaven, while unbelievers suffer in a place of torment. Where is Heaven? Up there. After Jesus’ resurrection, the Book of the Acts (1:9) says that he rose up into the the sky and disappeared behind a cloud. Now we know that above us is only the vacuum of space and other planets, stars and galaxies. An an old Soviet propaganda billboard used to show a cosmonaut floating in space with the caption “No God up here!” But rather than abandon these beliefs as the vestige of a pre-scientific age, the modern temptation is to revise them just enough to make them seem consistent with modern science. Virtual no one living in a modern, technological society believes that Hell is under the earth; they understand that the earth is a spherical and beneath the earth’s crust is merely solid rock, magma and a iron-nickel core. Modern people reject the original Biblical cosmology, with Heaven above and Hell below in favor of a more sophisticated belief in “another dimension” where disembodied souls are justly rewarded or punished. However, if you put any authority in these texts, it seems illegitimate to ignore the intent of the original authors, who meant what they said quite literally, and revise the teachings to make them more plausible. This is especially if you believe these teachings to be divinely revealed or inspired.

The very idea that ideas about the afterlife evolved over time with the cultures in which they resided should make us suspicious of them. It seems that these beliefs changed as peoples’ beliefs about the world became more sophisticated, moving from a more physicalistic to a more spiritual concept of the afterlife. As peoples’ belief in an abstract concept of justice emerged, they also needed their god or gods to appropriately and impartially reward and punish people, and concepts of the afterlife developed which fulfilled this requirement. Instead of a gloomy, shadowy vestige of earthy life where everyone went, the idea of a good place and a bad place developed. Of course the fact that belief in life after death fulfills a social function doesn’t mean that the belief is not based in reality, but it should give us pause in considering the idea. Finally, the evolution of the concept of the afterlife in the Bible and intertestamental Judaism, including adoption of Persian and Greek ideas, cast doubt on the claim that the Bible is the revealed Word of God and can give us confidence in belief in the afterlife. Modern revisions of these ideas may lead us to say, “Well, of course Heaven isn’t up in the sky, but there is a Heaven,” but to the degree we reject the original form of these teachings, we delegitimize the Biblical texts. It should be noted that other world religions, such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism show a similar evolution of belief in their sacred texts.