(i) People dreamed, i.e., in sleep, they seemed to leave their bodies and to enter another realm where they could meet, i.e., dream about, the dead.
(ii) It seemed to follow that each person is not a living body but a soul that leaves its body temporarily in sleep and permanently in death.
(iii) However, in the earliest conceptions (Hades, Sheol, Hel), the dead were merely conscious of not being alive. Thus, this hereafter was not desirable and would be better avoided if possible.
(iv) When it was believed that departed souls entered new bodies, this was not regarded as a good thing. Reincarnation was a continuation of suffering and the purpose of spiritual practice was to end it.
(v) When society divided into richer and poorer classes, social divisions were merely projected into the hereafter, e.g., heroes to Valhalla; everyone else still to Hel.
(vi) In a later conception, it was thought that, in the hereafter, there would be a social reversal and the just would be rewarded.
(vii) Now that we understand dreams as the activities of sleeping brains, we are able to question the idea of souls as entities distinct from bodies.
If this is how it happened, then we should not think that belief in a hereafter was originally:
"...a fairy tale, designed to soften the horrifying truth that was our mortality."
-Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol (London, 2009), Chapter 107, p. 391 -
- but nor should we believe that there is a hereafter, let alone that it can be scientifically proved by weighing a body immediately before and after death, as Brown suggests.
Lewis defended Christian belief. Anderson and Stirling treat Christianity with respect. Brown promotes New Ageism.
12 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
MY view is that a clearer conception of afterlife came only gradually, as the revelation given to mankind first thru the Jews and then reaching its culmination with Christ and Christianity unfolded itself. We do see a "progress" from the Sheol of the ancient Jews to the teaching in the NT (and its further developing by the Catholic Church) about Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. After all, by the time Christ was walking among men, many Jews already believed in a clearly defined Heaven and Hell. Which Christ reaffirmed in various texts of Matthew and Mark.
I'm not entirely sure if what you said in your next to last paragraph refers entirely to what Dan Brown said. I certainly do believe there is a hereafter and that we should believe it is real. Yes, it was absurd of Dan Brown to claim that could be "scientifically" proven before or after death by weighing the body. He seems to have held to Theosophical or New Age beliefs.
Sean
Sean,
I referred both to hereafter belief in general and to Brown in particular.
Paul.
Sean,
I think that (i) and (ii) above summarize a plausible account of the origin of belief in a hereafter.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Plausible, IF we had not been granted what I believe was divine assistance, as stated in the first paragraph of my first comment above.
Also, without asserting divine revelation, both Plato and Aristotle worked out elaborate arguments for believing in the immortality of the human soul.
Sean
Sean,
Plato's PHAEDO presents 4 arguments for immortality and replies to 2 objections. I knew that one exam question would be about one of the arguments and that another would be about one of the objections so I preprepared 6 answers for these 2 questions. 3 of the arguments assume the reality of the Platonic Ideas, which I reject.
Aristotle said that the soul is the form of the body which suggests that the soul ends when the body does.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I too don't believe in the reality of Platonic "Ideal Forms," if that is the correct term. That is, I don't believe, a la Charles Williams novel THE PLACE OF THE LION, that there is an Ideal Lion. And I would need to reread PHAEDO before I could either accept or reject his arguments for the soul's immortality.
And I think Aristotelians/Scholastics argue for the for the "form" of the body called the soul surviving the body's death.
Sean
Sean,
Certainly Scholastics would have done but they accepted immortality as a doctrine anyway.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul! But Scholastic philosophers argued for the immortality of the soul on grounds separate and apart from what they believed as Christians.
Sean
A good deal can be explained by the fact that humans, like all animals, fear death; but unlike other animals, we're more or less continuously aware of its approach.
Animals live, unless sick or immediately threatened, in an eternal now. Humans can't.
Mr Stirling,
There is a "sub/trans" distinction. The animal eternal now is below the level of human reflective consciousness. In meditation, we can get a glimpse of an eternal now transcending our usual mental states.
Paul.
Sean,
People who believe in immortality find arguments for it. Others don't.
Paul.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
That's an interesting way of putting how animals "sense" things, one I had never thought of before. I had thought animals could only "feel" things like hunger, cold or heat, flight/flight in moments of danger, or the urge to reproduce, etc.
Sean
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