Post Mortem Existence

Post Mortem Existence

  • Submitted By: sheree124
  • Date Submitted: 02/02/2010 12:35 PM
  • Category: Philosophy
  • Words: 556
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 1

Evaluate the possibility of post-mortem existence.

Surrounding the topic of death there is one fact on which all philosophers agree, and that is that our life on earth will eventually one day come to an end but the question that raises issues amongst them is whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what is it like? It is obvious that life after death is a desirable one for us, for many reasons, varying from religious and philosophical to moral. One man who had a very religious view on life after death was Brown, he very much believed that there was life after death and said that “a loving and just God would surely not leave us with only the prospect of extinction”, and then went on to talk about how we have a loving relationship with God on earth, so why would he not want this to continue after death. Brown is one of many philosophers who voiced their opinion on this issue over time and below we shall philosophically evaluate the possibility of post-mortem existence.

For philosophers there were many difficulties that came with the prospect of life after death starting with the scientific. Bertrand Russell argued against post mortem existence, using the scientific evidence for death which is very much physical. He said,” I believe that when I die I shall rot and nothing of my ego shall survive”. In saying this Russell was basically saying that the clear evidence of the destruction of the body makes it logically impossible to speak of an afterlife, since it would involve a clear contradiction of everything that empirical evidence appears to support. Dawkins is another scholar who would have agreed with Russell.

We could then go on to look at L.A.D psychologically. Freud claimed that L.A.D was “a psychological crutch to help us face up to death, an afterlife is a place where people long for heaven were all their problems are solved”. This is a good point, as in this Freud was basically saying that we as humans fear punishment and death, and...

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