death and afterllif Flashcards
Aquinas
Believe human beings have souls which are different from other creatures. Other life forms’ souls die when the body dies but we have a rational soul which enables life after death.
Also describes heaven as the beatific vision - a timeless moment face-to-face with God rather than length of time which stretches onto infinity.
Swinburne
Idea that humans have souls distinct from bodies which are capable of surviving after death. Near-death experiences may suggest there is life after death.
Dawkins
Argues that a person does not go to a new ‘place’ or ‘realm’ after death. There is no afterlife for an individual.
He is a materialist and would point to impossibility of us having a soul as there is a lack of empirical evidence for this and an afterlife. The only sense in which we survive after death is in the memories of others.
He also believed people live on through the genes that they have passed on to their children. For example, a parent will live on after their death through the genes they have passed on to their son and/or daughter, then on through the genes they will pass on to their children (their grandchildren).
Hume
Argues that due to the fragility of the mind, it is more likely to be destroyed by death rather than survive it.
Flew
In his essay ‘Can a Man Witness His Own Funeral?’ argues that people are mortal and that the minds of humans are united to a physical body. He explains ‘people are what you meet’ i.e. we talk of physical people, not the disembodied soul. Therefore, the cannot logically be life after death.
Develop how heaven is incoherent as it is not verifiable or falsifiable. There is no logically possible state of affairs to which would contradict it.
Russel
Sees a belief in the afterlife as wishful thinking –“all that constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit.”
Feurbach
Believed that religion is a projection of our hopes and desires. It is what we create to deal with our fears about life and about death. We fear death therefore we create eternal life and personal immortality. We fear helplessness in the face of disaster, we create a benevolent omnipotent God and Saviour.
Williams
Argues that heaven would not desirable, as it would become dull and boring if it was experienced for an eternal period of time. He uses the example of Elina Makropulos (the protagonist of the opera The Makropulos Affair), who is given the elixir of life. After 300 years, she can choose to take the elixir again and live for another 300 years, or she can choose to die naturally. Having become bored of her own existence, she chooses death.
Smuts
Develops Williams’ argument and argues that immortality would lead to a general motivational collapse because it would sap all our decisions of significance:
1) My actions are only significant because my time is limited
2) If I have an infinite amount of time I would exhaust all possible achievements and actions and so they would lose significance
Nausbamm
It will lead to a life of apathy and indifference
May
We will lose any care for our health/safety, or loved ones is know we are immortal
Bruckner
Argues that we would never get bored while in heaven because 1) our memories decay which allows us to enjoy things we have forgotten 2) our desires can be rejuvenated allowing us to enjoy achievements and fulfil desires that were formerly satisfied 3) human Ingenuity will always allow us to find new projects and pastimes.
Aquinas - timeless
Believed human beings have souls which are different from other creatures. Other life forms’ souls die when the body dies but we have a rational soul which enables life after death.
Also describes heaven as the beatific vision - a timeless moment face-to-face with God rather than length of time which stretches onto infinity
Rahner - Timeless
Making actions within our limited earthly lives gives them meaning. Thus the afterlife must be timeless or else it would be meaningless/boring.
Strong as if no distinct before or after there is no repetition
Heaven - phsyical
Place of eternal reward for all believers
A place where ‘the lion shall lie down with the lamb’ Isahiah
Fundamentalist view takes literal word of god thus heaven is a literal place
God rules upon a throne – lords prayer ‘our father art in heaven’
St Paul - Recognizes how ‘what is sown is perishable, what is raised is impenetrable/ sown a physical body, raised a spiritual body’
-place where soul and body exists together
-where ‘soul will be reunited with the body’
Wright - heaven phsyical
Points to parosia with the 2nd coming of Christ
Heaven a transformation of creation
Revelation 21:1
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea”.
-wright – heaven is the transformation of earth into the kingdom of god
-paradise of Eden resorted
Dante
Physical place of torture, Metaphor by inferno and 9 circles of hell
-where sinners are cast for eternity
-Mattew ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’
Augustine
Place of ultimate suffering and pain
-where one ‘burns without being consumed /suffer without dying’
Stump
Can reconcile hell with omnibenevolence
-Idea God would aim to make all people as comfortable as possible
-limits harm done
-but hells suffering aims to reconcile man to sins
Wl Craig
Hell is a necessary punishment
-Necessary to ensure god is just and fair
-presents how god is just/moral
-importance of using free will selectively and wisely
Oregien - Hell
Hell is an absence of gods grace
-not an physical place but an ‘interior anguish’
-’a sinner kindles his own fire, and our vices form its fuel’
-is mental /spiritual alienation, reach salvation by gods love alone
Tillich - hell
State of spiritual separation
-state of psychological and spiritual alienation
-heaven and hell are ‘metaphor for the polar ultimate’s
-hell a state of mind spiritually
-psychological power of being separate from god
Nysaa
Nyssa
Psychological state
-is guilty conscience when a person is placed in front of Christ
-psychological pain of when we own up to own sins
Rahner - Hell injust
All saved by Jesus sacrifice
-facilitates idea of anonymous Christians
-through Jesus all saved
-John ‘for god so loved the world he gave hus son.. So we shall not perish but have eternal life’
