Life After Death
Uploaded by Admin on Apr 25, 2000
The Afterlife is an area of human consciousness we all enter upon leaving the physical world at physical death. Throughout history we've questioned if there is a life after death. Along the way, our religions and various philosophers offered beliefs and opinions to answer this commonly asked question. However, many of the answers contradict each other making it hard to figure out. "Belief in life after death is a source of personal security, optimism, and spiritual betterment" (1 John 3:2). Nothing offers more courage than the confidence that there is a better life for those who use the present to prepare for eternity. While some believe it's impossible to know whether there is life after death, belief in immortality is a timeless phenomenon.
Through the years there have been many philosophers that do not believe in life after death. Among them is David Hume. David Hume was a British imperialist to the extreme. He only believed in what he could see. He felt that if you can't see your soul or god then they must not exist. The same holds true for the after life, or heaven.
He felt that when you died that was it, your life was over and there was nothing more.
Buddhist's also do not believe in life after death meaning heaven. Buddhist's believe that when one dies he is reborn again and this continues until the person reaches Nirvana. "The properly ultimate goal for man, no matter how much he may line his way through birth-death by flower beds of temporary betterment or pleasure, is to escape world process completely in timeless, space less, distinction less Nirvana." (King 21).
Nirvana is the state in which one has attained disinterested wisdom and compassion. In the Buddhist religion there is no god to save you or to show you the way. To reach nirvana you must achieve insight and wisdom. "The Buddha was not saved by a revelation or from any god. He was the self-enlightened one; by the power of his own post virtue, which finally produced piercing insight and wisdom, he came to the knowledge or the saving insight into things 'as they are.' He literally made himself a Buddha and subsequently entered Nirvana." (King 23)
One of the great philosophers that did believe in life after death was Spinoza. Spinoza believed there was a heaven and a hell and the life here in the physical realm...