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The afterlife (or life after death) is a generic term referring to a continuation of existence, typically spiritual and experiential, beyond this world, or after death. This article is about current generic and widely held or reported concepts of afterlife. See also: Underworld, for a comprehensive catalog of specific traditions about afterlife.
Afterlife as a beliefMany people believe in an afterlife. It is generally described as a non-verifiable and non-falsifiable belief within a religion, because it is generally accepted as beyond the experiential knowledge or casual accessibility of most people (see esoteric knowledge). As a result, the popular mind relies on various sources for concepts about afterlife, arranged below in presumed order of reliability:
While there is information available from all of the above sources, a preponderance of concoctions, speculations, and extrapolations have arguably historically characterized formal descriptions of afterlife. Religious traditions have historically formalized and codified ideas about afterlife in widely divergent forms. Though the onset of the information age is bringing to light increasing consistency and uniformity of beliefs about afterlife from across and without religious boundaries, most afterlife conceptions continue to follow traditional descriptions, often viewed as rationally weak by skeptics who -- particularly atheists and agnostics of a secular humanist mindset -- may hold that we entirely cease to exist. However, it should be pointed out that not all atheists and agnostics necessarily rule out the existence of an afterlife. For example, many Buddhists neither confirm nor deny the existence of the supernatural (gods, demons, heavens, hells, etc.), while simultaneously embracing the concept of rebirth. For those who do believe in an afterlife, the various conceptions about it differ in their answer to the following questions:
Afterlife as an individual existenceFor an afterlife to exist, there must be something that survives the body when death occurs. This something is usually believed to be extraphysical and is usually called soul or spirit. Afterlife as reward or punishmentOne notion of afterlife which is common to Judaism (see the afterlife and olam haba "world to come" ), most sects of Christianity, and Islam is that human souls go on for eternity to a place of happiness or torment, such as heaven, hell, or purgatory or limbo. Many religions hold that after death people get reward or punishment based on their deeds or faith. The Christian Bible, for example, contains the words of Jesus: "The measure you give will be the measure you get." (Mark 4:24). For many, belief in an afterlife is a consolation in connection with death of a beloved one or the prospect of one's own death. On the other hand, fear of hell etc. may make death worse. In the informal folk beliefs of many Christians, the souls of virtuous people ascend to Heaven and are converted into angels upon their deaths. However, a more literal reading of scripture suggests that the dead wait until the Last Judgment, which is followed by resurrection for the faithful. The Roman Catholic Church makes a sharp distinction between angels, who were created by God before the creation of humanity, and saints, who are virtuous people who have received immortality from the grace of God. In view of the eternity of afterlife, some consider regular life as relatively unimportant, except for determining whether or not afterlife follows, and/or what kind. It is just a provisional situation, and the metaphor of a tent as provisional housing facility is used as quoted below:
In what we know of Egyptian religion, afterlife is very important. The believer had to act well and know the rituals explained in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If the corpse was properly embalmed and entombed in a mastaba, the defunct would relive in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun god on its daily ride. If, during the psychomachia, the souls of the defunct was found faulty, the Devourer monster would eat them. Others, including some Universalists, believe in universalism which holds that all will eventually be rewarded regardless of what they have done or believed. Life after death is however in no way a universal belief, for example, Jehovah's Witnesses interpret Ecclesiastes 9:5 to preclude a living afterlife:
They believe that a resurrection in the flesh at some future date will be a reward and that death (non-existence) is a punishment. Afterlife as reincarnationAnother afterlife concept which is found among Hindus, Buddhists, and Wiccans is reincarnation, whether as humans, animals, or as spiritual beings. One consequence of the Hindu and Buddhist beliefs is that our current lives are also an afterlife, and both Hindus and Buddhists interpret events in our current life as being consequences of actions taken in previous lives. Some Neopagans believe in personal reincarnation, whereas some believe that the energy of one's soul reintegrates with a continuum of such energy which is recycled into other living things as they are born. Related studiesThe study of views of the afterlife is a concern of Eschatology, which deals with the soul, the resurrection of the dead, the messianic era, and the end of the world. The question of whether or not there is life after death is closely related to the mind-body problem, and like that problem is one of the classic problems of so-called rational psychology and hence of one (now largely outdated) notion of the scope of metaphysics. The later works of Emanuel Swedenborg present one of the most comprehensive and systematic descriptions of the spiritual world, including heaven and hell. CriticismWhile many people do believe in an afterlife, some don't. These people usually see proponents of an afterlife as hiding their fear of death, attributable to evolution (i.e. humans have a fear of death because if they didn't, the species would cease to proliferate). While in the past, such as Ancient Greek, people believed in many gods to explain thunder, the sun, and the ocean, all things unexplained at the time, these fears no longer exist. It stands to reason that people would like to believe in an eternity of joy, which is the common theme in many religions for the afterlife, rather than simply ceasing to exist. Based on the fact that most people accept that we did not exist prior to our birth, and that people have no concept of time during sleep, some atheists argue that the concept of an afterlife is illogical and unlikely. It has also been pointed out that for an afterlife to exist, one must accept that people have souls which begs the question of why humans would have souls, and not animals with high enough brain forms to have independent wills. In some cultures, animal afterlives are believed in and ghost stories about such animals exist. In Buddhism and Hinduism, animals are considered to be sentient. However, allowing animals to have souls raises the question of which animals have souls, which in turn raises the question of what qualifies as an animal, particularly at the microscopic level. If you allow any living thing to have a soul, then virii must be considered as a borderline case. If virii are considered to have souls, so must proteins, etcw/. This ultimately leaves three possibilities in consideration of the existence of souls:
Philosophical argumentsSome non-believers in an afterlife, influenced by positivism, have argued that claims of an afterlife are unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and therefore cognitively meaningless. Some have argued that, on the contrary, particular claims concerning the nature of the afterlife are verifiable and falsifiable: all one has to do to verify/falsify them is die. On the other hand, they argue, the belief in the absence of an afterlife can be attacked as vacuous on the grounds that the statement "I cease to exist" is unverifiable, unfalsifiable, and therefore by the same token cognitively meaningless. In particular, the concept of our own non-existence is inconceivable (what experience corresponds to your own non-existence? none.) See also
External links
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