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The Possibility of Life After Death
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
What I shall call ‘the ordinary Christian view of life after death’, namely, the belief that after persons die, their souls go to some kind of spiritual abode (‘Heaven’, ‘Hell’ or ‘Purgatory’, depending on God's Judgement), has come in for a great deal of criticism in recent years. Opponents of the belief have been encouraged by the lack of evidence from the countless areas of scientific research and by the large numbers of philosophers (even Christian philosophers) who claim that a proper understanding of personal identity precludes any sort of hope of existence in a non-physical body.
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References
page 157 note 1 The movement is variously referred to in the Press as ‘cryogenics’ or ‘cryonics’. I shall use the term ‘Cryogenics’ with a capital ‘C’ to distinguish it from the branch of physics ‘(cryogenics’) which deals with the properties of substances at very low temperatures. There appears to be a great deal of popular interest in the movement, as demonstrated by a recent front-page article in the Evening Standard (London, 28 January 1972)Google Scholar: ‘275 Below! Dead Girl Frozen for “Life”’. (Note: the logical difficulties to be dealt with in this essay are reflected in the paper's pun on ‘life’.) Cf. also, e.g., The Times, 3 June 1967, p. 11Google Scholar, and the Daily Mirror, 17 January 1972, p. 31.Google Scholar
page 159 note 1 Flew, , Antony, , ‘Can a Man Witness His Own Funeral?’, Hibbert Journal, vol. LIV, 04 1956, p. 242.Google Scholar
page 160 note 1 It should be noted that if reports of non-bodily experiences can have any credibility at all, philosophers who say there could not be any kind of non-bodily personal identity would seem to be in serious trouble. For their position would rule out, as ‘logically impossible’, such reports because they indicate that persons can exist without having bodies.
page 160 note 2 Harvie, J. A., ‘The Immortality of the Soul’, Religious Studies, vol. V, no 2, December 1969, p. 216n.Google Scholar
page 161 note 1 Hick, , John, , Evil and the God of Love, London, Collins, 1966, pp. 316–18.Google Scholar
page 161 note 2 Cf. e.g. John 5: 24.
page 165 note 1 The ‘Gordon Davis case’, to which I am referring here, is reported in Soal, S G., ‘A Report of Some Communications Received Through Mrs. Blanche Cooper’, (sect. 4), Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. XXXV, pp. 56–589.
page 167 note 1 Locke, , John, , An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, abr. ed. by Pringle-Pattison, A. S., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1924, Book II, ch. 27, sect. 15, p. 193.Google Scholar