RE: Immortality

Death
1. People die eventually. Death is when a person's physical body stops functioning, and their life on Earth in their current physical form ends. The medical term for death is when the brain activity stops.
2. There are different ideas about how we live on after death.
  1. Through a legacy
    1. Some people believe that immortality can be achieved through the legacy that the individual leaves behind. This legacy could be a work of art, music, literature or architecture, a scientific discovery or invention, or some charitable work. However once that legacy is gone, such as a building they designed being demolished, the person is not longer remembered through that legacy.
  2. Through the memory of others
    1. Some people survive in the memory of family and friends, who probably have photographs, keepsakes and fond recollections of the person. However, when the last person who remembers them dies, then the memory dies with them.
Types of Immortality
1. Resurrection
  1. Some people think immortality is achieved through resurrection. Resurrection is the belief that the person is raised from the dead in some form. This could be either in a physical form or as an immortal soul.
2. Reincarnation
  1. Other people believe that humans achieve immortality through reincarnation. This is the belief that after death, the person's soul is transferred into a new body at birth, which may be totally different from that of the previous life. The aim is that, through each lifetime, the soul will improve itself, until it achieves perfection. When it is perfect, the soul will not be reborn but will enter a state of bliss. The law of karma judges the quality of each life lived.
3. Rebirth
  1. Buddhists prefer to use the term rebirth rather than reincarnation. This is because they don't believe in a soul. The Buddha taught that it's not an individual soul but an ever-changing individual character that moves from rebirth to rebirth.
Problems
1. Problems with Resurrection
  1. We know that the body decays after death , so one problem is what form the body raised will take. If there is no soul, then how can a person be resurrected?
    1. One suggestion is that people are given a new, immortal body when they are resurrected. The body still looks the same as the person who died and has his/her memories, but is an immortal body that will not age or decay.
    2. Some religious believers say that the body decays, but each person has an immortal soul that continues after death. When they die their physical body decays, but the soul is resurrected to an afterlife.
      1. A problem with this is there is no evidence that a soul exists but believers say that the soul is made of a different substance from the physical body that cannot be seen or detected by medical equipment
      2. Another problem is identification. If people are not recognised because of their physical form, can it still be the same person?
2. Problems with Reincarnation and Rebirth
  1. The main problem is that if you no longer have the same body, you have not survived death, meaning you haven't achieved immortality.
  2. To be reborn is not the aim because that would me total loss of identity.
Evidence
1. Most religions teach that Go has revealed himself through the scriptural accounts and believers use this to support their belief in life after death. Religious believers accept that the teachings within the scriptures are true so they believe whatever is written about life after death.
  1. e.g The Bible says 'Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die'.
2. Ghosts
  1. Some people believe that ghosts are genuine manifestations of dead people rather than hallucinations, because often, more than one people see them.
3. Channelling
  1. Channelling involves communication between the living and those who have died and are in the spirit world. Many of the mediums that claim to be able to contact the dead have passed on messages from departed spirits that contain accurate information, which was previously unknown to the medium.
4. Near Death Experiences
  1. Advances in modern technology have resulted in more people who have been declared clinically dead being resuscitated. While 'dead' some patients describe experiences that are very similar. The most common feature is being drawn down a tunnel towards a light.
Arguments Against Immortality
1. Lack of proof
  1. The major problem is that there is not certainty that anyone has actually come back from the dead, or has contacted the dead through a medium.
  2. Bodies decay in the grave or are burned. People can see for themselves that the bodies of dead people are not everlasting. They have proof that the physical forms of humans don't survive death.
  3. There are different understandings in scriptures of what life after death is like. Therefore these scriptures are unreliable and cannot be accepted as proof.
  4. Although there are many people who accept ghosts, channelling and NDEs as proof of immortality, there isn't enough proof to consider them as genuine evidence.
2. Science and Atheism
  1. Richard Dawkins (an atheist) rejects any concept of an immortal soul. He claims that the belief in a soul is the result of people refusing to accept there is no purpose to life. He believes each human is the product of evolution and people only survive by passing on the DNA to future generations.
  2. Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans, who can no longer be kept alive by modern medicine, until such time as resuscitation when a cure may be possible. But if the soul leaves the body straight away, how can the body live on?
  3. Since the late 1950s, satellites have ben sent into space. Today telescopes can see into the farthest galaxies and yet no evidence of souls going to heaven or even heaven itself! Surely if there was an afterlife we would have found visual evidence by now.
Dualism
1. What is dualism?
  1. Dualists argue that there are two distinct parts to a person: a mind (soul) and a body.
    1. Dualism goes along with the theory that the soul separates from the body and goes to an afterlife.
2. What is materialism
  1. A materialist believes that the minds are inseparable from our bodies. They reject any idea of a soul.

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