life after death

Life After Death ?

One of the greatest questions of humanity is our topic of the day. Is there life after death? Is our soul transported to a new world after leaving our body? What do scientists say? What do the religions say? Are these urban legends?

The skull and crossbones being our emblem and the ultimate symbol of death, we naturally asked ourselves the question on Rebel Skull! And we’re going to answer the questions you just read just above in this article to try to find the answers to this complex topic. ☠️

The only certainty in life is death. For centuries, humans have been trying to find ways to deal with it, which might explain why many believe in an afterlife. From ancient tribes to the modern Western world, people have important rituals and beliefs around death…

Is There Life After Death ?

Science suggests “no”, but this subject is surely beyond scientific proof in 2020! Humans have always been fascinated by death and the idea of returning to life. Is it really possible to come back from death as some people claim when they come out of a coma? What is the difference between a living being and a dead body? Let’s take a look at the scientific theories that seek to answer these questions.

Is There Life After Death

What Is Death ?

It may seem like a strange question to ask, but it’s the first one we need to answer in order to define what death really is, says Dr. Jonathan Jong of the University of Oxford’s Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. “There are rituals around death that can vary greatly from culture to culture, but there can also be different definitions of what death is. Even in the scientific communities, there is not complete agreement on this.” 🧐

So is death a shutdown of the brain or the heart? What if a person has a terminal illness and parts of their body die before their vital organs stop and cease to function? “When you start thinking about this question in different cultures, the issue becomes even more important. For example, in some parts of Indonesia, families dig up the bodies of their deceased loved ones and rebury them. They say that a person is not really dead until the second burial. For them, death comes in stages,” says Dr. Jong.

In some parts of Tibet, corpses are left on a mountain rather than buried. To some, this may seem rather cruel. “But when you think about how difficult it is to carry a corpse up a mountain, it becomes clear that this is a deliberate and meaningful act.”

Similarly, in ancient Persia (now Iran), some tribes, such as the Zoroastrians, used to build towers of silence where they would lay their dead to be eaten by birds. “Again, at first glance, this may seem like cruel abandonment to us, yet they were building very expensive structures just for the dead.” ⚰️

All cultures care about dead bodies, but in different ways. Perhaps some people might find it strange to dress up a corpse, or even give it cosmetic surgery as is often done in the United States? Increasingly, in the UK, corpses are being drained of their natural fluids and filled with embalming fluid to preserve them. These practices may seem normal to us, but they are bizarre to others.

Woman body and soul

Feelings About Death And Dying

Rituals are evolving to help us cope with death. We need these rituals, says Dr. Jong, because our feelings about death can be ambivalent. “We evolved to avoid physical threats, which is part of the reason why dead bodies repel us. Not only do they represent reminders of our mortality, but they can also be sources of infectious disease.

We are therefore torn between the need to dispose of a corpse that might carry germs and the desire to keep the body still recognizable as belonging to someone we once knew and loved. This contradiction may explain why we surround death with drama and ceremony.
A funeral means that we do not simply dispose of a corpse as if it no longer has value. We say goodbye to our loved one. We still see them as a person. This is the kind of explanation that evolutionary anthropologists give.

Feelings About Death And Dying

Ars Moriendi (Dying Well)

There is little evidence about the question “what is a good death? It is something that has developed culturally over time. There is certainly a long Western tradition of thinking about it, going back to the ancient Greek philosophers. In the European Middle Ages, the Church even published manuals for dying well, called ars moriendi, the art of dying.

Over the centuries, there has been less reliance on the Church as a singular institution, and so death has been, like so many other things, privatized. People have had to make up their own minds about how to die well.

“As you can imagine, when most people are asked what a good death is, they say they don’t want to suffer or be surprised by an accident, for example. To this day, the dominant idea in the West is that people should face death with courage, which is not unlike the way the ancient Greeks conceived of death. But why should people be brave and accept the end of their lives?

Ars Moriendi

Believing in Life after Death

The belief in the existence of an afterlife is psychologically deep and probably stems from our intuitions about the relationship between body and mind. Let’s highlight here the studies of Bruce Hood, professor of psychology at the University of Bristol.

Bruce Hood and his colleagues conducted studies on young children aged about four to five years. He showed them a hamster and then told them he could clone an exact replica. When asked if the cloned hamster shared the same physical characteristics as the original, the children generally said “yes.” But when asked about the clone’s psychological characteristics (e.g., “Does this hamster know that you tickled it?”), they most often answered “no.”

In another set of experiments, children heard about a mouse that had been eaten by an alligator. When asked about the mouse’s biological characteristics, such as “Does its brain still work?” or “Can it still walk?”, the children generally answered “no.” But when asked about the mouse’s feelings, such as “Is the mouse still afraid of the alligator?” they most often answered “yes.” So it would seem that children think that our bodies end when we die, but that part of our psychology lives on.

It is often assumed that adults tell children what to think. But research on this topic suggests that children naturally develop these beliefs, and sometimes retain them into adulthood.

This fundamental and deeply held idea that our minds (our memories, emotions, desires) are somehow distinct and separate from our bodies allows us to believe that while our bodies may die, we can somehow live on, perhaps as immaterial souls. 💭

Eternal life

Belief in the Hereafter

Some people find the belief in an afterlife very soothing. It can help with grief, loss and sadness. It is comforting to think that one day we will be reunited with a loved one who has died, in a better world than this one. Especially for people who have a very hard life, thinking that it will be better after death can help them through their current life. For example, African American slaves often sang songs about the afterlife to soothe their brutally cruel existence. 🎶

Still, there are different “stages of belief.” Indeed, to believe that humans are made up of bodies and souls is one thing. To believe in the afterlife is another. And to believe in a pleasant or unpleasant afterlife, such as heaven and hell, is still different.
Moreover, “it is not only the traditional religious who have beliefs about the afterlife. For as religious beliefs decline in countries like France, belief in heaven declines much more slowly. God goes away, but heaven remains. 🙏

And there are other ways to keep the dead alive, without literally believing in heaven. By talking about someone who has died, looking at pictures and movies of that person, and maybe even “talking” to them. In this way we keep them alive in our minds, memories and hearts. In this sense, then, there is life after death.

Belief in the Hereafter

Life After Death According To Different Religions

If you were to ask a biologist what happens to us after death, he or she would probably tell you everything there is to know about what happens to our bodies after our hearts stop beating. But this is not the expected answer to one of the biggest questions of humanity. By life after death, we mean our spirit, our conscious mind… The great religions of the world generally give an answer to this question in two ways:

1) Heaven and Hell

The three Abrahamic religions, those that recognize Abraham as their first prophet (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) all answer this question in a similar way. They say that you are not only your body, but also your soul. After your body dies, your soul lives in a world beyond the physical world.

2) The Renaissance

The great Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism) also teach that there is something in us that survives the death of our body. But it does not leave this world. Rather, it finds another body to live in. We call this movement from body to body, reincarnation or rebirth (Samsara).

Life After Death According To Christianity

Based on the New Testament, which tells us how Jesus died and came back to life, Christians hope that God will give them eternal life after death. They also believe that at some point their lives will be judged by God. Those who put their faith in Jesus will go to heaven and those who rejected him will go to hell. 👹

Hell is often described as a place full of pain and suffering. But it should not be taken too literally. Suffering is the anxiety we feel when we are condemned to an eternal life without God (the creator of life and all that is good) by our side. In the same way, heaven is not a high place in heaven. It is the place where we are reunited with God, the source of our life.

Cross Necklace

Life After Death According To Islam

Because both Islam and Christianity worship the God of Abraham (Allah being the Arabic word for God), these two religions understand the afterlife in similar ways. Like Christians, Muslims believe that we have a soul that survives the death of our body. And the idea that there will be a day when God will judge mankind is one of the six core beliefs of Islam. On that day, everyone will be sent to paradise (Jannah) or hell (Jahannam). ☪️

The faithful go to paradise, which is represented as a garden with 7 layers of sky, the top one is the Garden of Eden and the home of Adam and Eve. While in the lower layers, our neighbors will be people like Jesus and Abraham. Hell also has 7 layers, each with a different necessarily eternal, as in Christianity. It is possible that after serving his sentence, a person who has sinned will be welcomed into paradise.

Islam

Life After Death According To Judaism

The Hebrew Bible and early Jewish texts are not entirely clear on the question of the afterlife. There is an underworld called Sheol. But this is the hell of Christians or Muslims. It is where all the dead go (whether they lived a good life or not) to spend eternity as a shadow of their former selves. There is no punishment or suffering here, nor is it the house of God.

Later Telmudic texts develop more familiar ideas of judgment, hell (Gehenne) and heaven (Olam Ha-Ba). On the day of judgment, those who have followed the laws of Judaism pass from this world (OlamHa-Zeh) to the world to come (Olam Ha-Ba). It is in the Garden of Eden that the throne of God is located. But Gehenna is where most ordinary people reside. Here they will either be punished or purified (depending on which scripture scholar is asked) for a period of up to twelve months. After that time, they will be ready to join God. But true evil will have to spend eternity in hell or be completely destroyed. ✡️

Judaism

Life After Death According To Buddhism

The Buddhist tradition is very different from the three religions described above in two essential ways. First, after death, we do not go to another world but remain in the one we know. When our body dies, we are reborn into another. Second, there is no self or soul, there is no “you.” Confused? Don’t worry, let’s take it a step further… 🧘

If there is no soul or self, what is there to be reborn? According to the Buddha, the feeling that we are the same person throughout your life is an illusion. For Buddhists, everything is always changing, nothing is permanent. So when we die, it is not us, but the energies that shape us that take a new form. The pieces that make us up are arranged slightly differently and form someone else.

This next life is connected to the previous one by something called karma. This is the idea that an action in a previous life has a reaction in the next. Did we do something horrible in a previous life? We could be reborn as a cockroach! The ultimate goal of Buddhism is to escape this cycle of rebirths by attaining enlightenment or Nirvana.

Buddhism

Life After Death According To Hinduism

Like Buddhism, Hinduism also views life as a cycle of death and rebirth bound by karma. If we are unlucky in our life, we must have done something wrong in the previous one. So freeing ourselves from this cycle is again the goal. 🕉

Hindus call this state of freedom “moksha“. But unlike Buddhists, Hindus believe that there is something that makes us us. They believe that every person has an atman, a soul or spirit. This spirit is always the same, regardless of the body in which it temporarily lives.

Hinduism

Life After Death According To Sikhism

Like Buddhists, Sikhs believe that life is a cycle of death and rebirth bound by karma. The goal is again mukti, or liberation from this cycle. Like the Hindus, Sikhs believe that there is a soul that is passed on through a series of bodies.

Just as we can change, our soul is reborn in a new body. Sikhs realize mukti when the soul becomes one with God. The soul originally came from God, but was separated from him. As a result, it has become impure. But by remembering and meditating on God’s name, the soul can find its way back.

Sikhism

Life After Death According To The Chinese People’s Religion

Chinese folk religion’s understanding of the afterlife also focuses on the rebirth of souls. However, if we have sinned in our previous life, we are not only reborn in an uncomfortable body. We are waiting to be punished for our sins. And once we receive our punishment, we are ready to be reborn into a new body. The punishment differs according to the sins committed and their severity.

Chinese temple

Afterlife In Philosophy

It is quite natural to want to know if there is life after death and to really want there to be life after death. This is because many of us assume that death is a bad thing, something to be feared. But not everyone does. Some philosophers have said that death is not so important after all…

Let’s assume for a moment that there is no life after death and that when you die, it’s over. Some philosophers ask: is it wrong to be dead?

Now, it is important to add that no one denies that death, the process that leads to death, can be unpleasant. When philosophers say that death is not an evil or that death is not an evil for the one who dies, they are not denying the suffering that some people endure. In this case, on the contrary, they suggest that the state of death is not really bad.

Afterlife In Philosophy

The Theory Of Epicurus

The idea that death is not bad is associated with the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-272 BC) and his followers. He realized that many of us fear death, but he thought that this fear was irrational. He presented arguments for this conclusion, which he hoped would reassure people.

The first question is: if death is bad, for whom is it bad? Well, it’s hard for those who are left on earth, but we don’t worry about them in this case. We are mostly talking about the fact that it is bad for the one who is dead. However, according to Epicurus, this does not make sense. Death is annihilation (the ultimate end of everything). At the very least, for something to be bad for someone, the person must exist.

Think of it this way: Epicurus is long dead. It wouldn’t make much sense to go out in the street and shout “Epicurus was a crazy old philosopher!” Would this comment be bad for Epicurus himself? Certainly not, because he is not here to receive the comment. And so, if death really is the end of all we can experience, this suggests that when we are dead, we are no longer here to feel anything unpleasant. So being dead is not bad.

However, not everyone is convinced by Epicurus’ reasoning. Some philosophers argue that Epicurus went wrong because he had a wrong picture of what it is to be bad for someone. He assumes that something is bad for someone only if that person has a negative experience, like if a bee stings you, you’re very likely to have a negative feeling. But is there any other way to hurt a person?

Epicurus

Life Before Birth

Epicurus’ disciple, Lucretius (99-55 BC), a Roman philosopher and poet, proposed a different argument, known as the “argument from asymmetry.” The best way to explain this argument is to think about the time before birth… We are born at a particular time, and not before. If we had been born earlier, we could have enjoyed things during that earlier period. But few people think that it is a bad thing to have been deprived of the period before their birth. Yet, in all respects, the period before our birth and the period after our death are the same. Both extend into infinity and neither includes us. So if we don’t mind missing one, you shouldn’t mind missing the other…

What mattered most to Epicurus and Lucretius was to convince people to let go of their fear of death. If death causes us no pain when we are dead, then it is a mistake to let it cause us pain when we are alive. Instead, they were hedonists, who thought that what mattered in life was pleasure. Instead of worrying about our death, we should “eat, drink and be merry”, as the saying goes.

Grim Reaper Ring

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