Attitudes To A Hereafter

 Poul Anderson, "The Problem of Pain" IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 103-134.

Peter Berg, a Christian, thinks:

"It makes no sense that God, Who created what is because in His goodness he wished to share existence, would shape a soul only to break it and throw it away." (p. 122)

Is death a breaking and throwing away or a completion, as suggested by Aycharaych later in this same future history? I am extremely skeptical of a hereafter and Poul Anderson was agnostic but here he is able to express exactly how some people do think on this issue.

Here is another response. When the Ythrian Ehherrian's daughter has just died, he is asked whether he believes that the spirit outlives the body and snaps:

"'How could it?...Why should it?'" (ibid.)

If a private journal is destroyed, are its contents recorded elsewhere? If a flame is extinguished, does it continue to burn elsewhere?

Earlier, Berg said:

"''Way back before space travel, the Church decided Jesus had come only to Earth, to man. If other intelligent races need salvation - and obviously a lot of them do! - God will have made His suitable arrangements for them.'" (p. 110)

So how come, later, a Wodenite, Axor, is converted and ordained in the Jerusalem Catholic Church? Well, there are different branches of the Church. Also, Axor does look for evidence of divine revelation among other species.

This post has compared the attitudes of a human being, a Chereionite, an Ythrian and a Wodenite.