Resurrection, NDE (Influences of Developments in Religious Belief)

Question 1

Resurrection in Judaism

Answer 1

• there is no single teaching on LAD
• in early days, no notion of LAD because to have a soul meant to be alive, seemed that the dead had no soul
• Story of Elijah and Elisha and resurrection, although the boy is only resurrected into another mortal earthly life: “The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him….I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth” (1 Kings 17:22-24)
• Pharisees believed in resurrection whilst Sadducees did not
• Messianic age: dead will be raised, some believe there’ll be spiritual resurrection and others argued perfect bodily resurrection

Question 2

Daniel (resurrection in Judaism)

Answer 2

“multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2)
— Daniel written later, around 165 BCE, a time when Jews were persecuted for their faith. May be written to solve problem of injustice in earthly life.

Question 3

Moses Maimonides (resurrection in Judaism)

Answer 3

12th century Rabbi living in Muslim Spain, set down 13 principles of Jewish faith, one of them being LAD: “I believe with perfect faith, that there will be resurrection of the dead, at the time which pleases the Creator. Blessed be His name, and may His remembrance arise, forever and ever.”

Question 4

Resurrection in Islam

Answer 4

• al-akhirah (LAD), receives more Qur’an teaching (authoritative word of Allah) than any other topic and to reject it is to be an unbeliever
• earth is preparation for the afterlife, viewed as a test, Jihad is the tackling of earthly difficulties
• God is just, and so would give life after death to deliver justice
• judged on actions in life, soul is judged after death of body
• the good and followers of Islam go to heaven, those who reject God go to hell
• “he will admit them to Gardens, beneath which Rivers flow, to dwell therein. Allah will be well pleased with them, and they with Him” (Surah 58:21)

Question 5

Opinions on Hell

Answer 5

-can hell be compatible with notion of loving God?
• Hume: can a finite sin justify eternal punishment
• some argue that in sinning we eternally reject God and so deserve eternal punishment
• but then even minor offences would constitute eternal punishment
• difficulty with hell arises because of God’s omnibenevolence
-What if, like B Williams suggests about heaven, Hell becomes boring, being the same thing for eternity
• Counterpoint: omnipotent God could easily make something eternally pleasurable or painful
-What would eternal punishment achieve?

Question 6

Christian judgement

Answer 6

• everyone is judged when they die
• particular judgement is when everyone is judged individually and personally
• final judgement at the end of time
• judgement may be a flawed term: Matthew 25:31-46: people shape their relationships with God through their actions, God just accepts these
• Matthew 25:40: “And the king will answer them ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”
• God and Jesus set out principles, rejecting these is rejecting God
• God forgive those who repent they must acknowledge their wrongdoing (contrition) admit it (confession) and atone (an act of satisfaction)
• some claim god will forgive them for whatever they do, but justice demands atonement

Question 7

Heaven

Answer 7

-in Christianity, is a state of being in which you can see God face to face, experiencing him in a new way, called ‘beatific vision’ by Catholics
• 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face”
-a state of fulfilment where all human longings and wishes are to be in a right relationship with God: “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfilment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme definitive happiness” (Catechism of the Catholic Church)
• the ultimate goal of existence
• Catholics and Orthodox believe it is achieved through actions, people have to desire to do good and actually do it

Question 8

Hell

Answer 8

-the fate for those who do wrong in life, characterised by:
• a state of separation from God
• a place of punishment
-John Milton in ‘Paradise Lost’: “A dungeon horrible on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed…darkness visible served only to discover sights of woe:
-wrongdoers in hell are denied the beatific vision and they know to have lost it
-justice demands punishment
-people bring punishment on themselves through wrongdoing

Question 9

Aquinas on hell

Answer 9

for medieval Christians, hell was about a separation from God and state of punishment
• “for mortal sin which is contrary to charity a person is expelled for ever from the fellowship of the saints and condemned to everlasting punishment” (Summa Theologiae)
• “the elect rejoice therein, when they see God’s justice in them and realise that they have escaped them” (Summa Theologiae)

Question 10

Sartre and hell

Answer 10

atheist philosopher, hell was a separation from other people
-poor relationships with others are experiences of hell
• “What a joke! No need for the gridiron…Hell is other people”

Question 11

Resurrection (general)

Answer 11

from the Latin resurrectus (raised up again)
-The promise of post death existence in a recreated (i.e. perfect) human body, rather than a disembodied soul.

Question 12

Geach on Resurrection

Answer 12

resurrection is the only meaningful way to talk about LAD
• a person couldn’t be meaningfully identified with an only spiritual existence
• souls must be reunified: “to such a body as would reconstitute a man identifiable with the man who died”

Question 13

(Arguments for Resurrection) St Paul

Answer 13

• Jesus was resurrected, meaning we could be too
• God is able to make human bodies perfect: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”(1 Corinthians 15:12)
• if we accept God is creator then resurrection coheres
• although, whether resurrection happens at the point of death is unclear

Question 14

(Arguments for Resurrection) Aquinas

Answer 14

• adopted Aristotle’s idea that the person has no truly independent soul, arguing…
• “The natural condition of the human soul is to be united with a body… the will cannot be perfectly at rest until the soul is again joined to a body. When this takes place, man rises from the dead” (Summa Theologica)
• avoids the weaknesses of mind body dualism
• the soul animates the body and gives it life, called soul the anima

Question 15

(Arguments for Resurrection) Catechism of the Catholic Church

Answer 15

“as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives for ever, so after death the righteous will live for ever with the risen Christ”
“We sow a corruptible body in the tomb, but he raises up an incorruptible body”

Question 16

(Arguments for Resurrection) The Fourth Lateran Council 1215

Answer 16

[Jesus] “will judge the living and the dead, to render to every person according to his works, both to the reprobate and to the elect. All of them will rise with their own bodies”

Question 17

(Arguments for Resurrection) Nicene Creed and Tertullian

Answer 17

-Nicene Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come”

-Tertuallian: “All who have died since the beginning of time will be raised up again and shaped again and remanded to whichever destiny they deserve” (Apology)

Question 18

(Arguments against Resurrection) Peter Cole

Answer 18

in ‘Philosophy of Religion’: “If Christians are in a physical, resurrected state and physical environment, will they have to queue to see Jesus? Where will this physical existence be?”
• St Paul against Cole: “…When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed…There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendour of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendour of the earthly bodies is another…it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:35-44)

Question 19

(Arguments against Resurrection) incompatibility with modern worldviews

Answer 19

• Christian arguments about creation or the resurrection of Jesus will not be persuasive to non-believers; they are based on scripture alone
• the idea of a physical body being remade may seem strange or mythological to people of the 21st century
• the body could be seen as the source of flaws and limitations: desire, disease, suffering etc.
• there is no empirical evidence for resurrection, supporters of the verification principle like Ayer or empiricists like Dawkins would reject it

Question 20

Dawkins on Resurrection

Answer 20

• a materialist who believes that human beings are bytes of digital information
• there is no soul as we are the sum total of our genes
• he concentrates on the idea that humans are merely carriers of information and DNA
• he only conceivable theory is that of evolution, we are as we are because of our genetic makeup, not the efforts of our soul to guide us towards the realm of ideas, each change is due to evolution. There is no soul which continues, only survival of DNA

Question 21

Other questions with resurrection

Answer 21

• is it us or a copy? if we have died by definition, we cannot be brought back to life so surely it is a clone that lives on?
• Age and appearance of the resurrected body? perfect condition or remaining flaws
• only evidence is Jesus, even his disciples didn’t recognise him at first but he did have human wounds
• Russell: perhaps “the continuity of a human body is a matter of appearance and behaviour, not substance”

Question 22

Soft materialism

Answer 22

-Hick is a soft materialist
• believes that people are wholes, not divided as in dualism, but also that a person is more than a sum of their total genes
• unlike Dawkins (a harsh materialist) soft materialists believe in life after death

Question 23

Cosmic Optimism

Answer 23

• is carried by religious belief, it is an optimism that we will have a chance one day to improve ourselves and be more perfect
• this will be in heaven or hell
• when we die and if we could look back at our current circumstances we would see the importance of the suffering and challenges we face, we will be able to justify our suffering and where it is leading us

Question 24

Hick on LAD

Answer 24

• LAD is not an unreasonable belief and if we do continue our spiritual journeys after death, this provides a coherent explanation for the problem of evil in our world
• rejects the idea of hell, as it is incompatible with our belief about God, all-loving. He says it is a method of social control, make people afraid of disobeying the religious authorities

Question 25

Hick on religious belief

Answer 25

• religious belief is shaped by culture; India-Hindu, Ireland-Catholic.He says that there is truth within each faith and God wouldn’t prevent people from eternal happiness just because they were one group and not another
• everyone has the opportunity to continue to develop in the next life, regardless of where their worldly luck had put them
• he says the body and soul are inseparable, if LAD exists the body has to be resurrected

Question 26

Hick’s replica theory

Answer 26

• Hick’s view of personal identity is that a person is more than their mental processes. A person includes both the physical and the mental and the human is therefore a psycho physical unity
• what lives after death is a replica or a duplicate. The replica comes to life in heaven as an exact copy of the person who lived and died on earth. God creates this replica to live on after death
• IMPORTANT distinction between logical possibility and factual possibility, claims that his theory is not factually possible, but suggests that changes in the way matter functions would make it logically possible

Question 27

Hick’s three scenarios

Answer 27

1. a man is at a conference in London, and during the blinking of his eyes, he finds himself transported to a conference in New York. He has continuity of body, memory and personality (the same person) which is verified by his friends who travel to New York to see him
2. a man suddenly dies in a conference in London and an exactly similar ‘replica’ appears in New York. The same continuity as before, although the man died and the same self exists in another country
3. a man dies and is ‘replicated’ in another world which is populated with other dead persons who have been replicated. It is God who brings this resurrection/replication about
   —number 3 is a logically possible way for resurrection to occur

Question 28

Strengths of Hick’s theory

Answer 28

• if you accept God’s omnipotence then the theory is plausible. Hick claims it is far more biblical and is reliant on God
• he does not posit a soul and so does not have to verify one
• challenges the conflicting claims argument because everyone, in his philosophy, would go to heaven
• the theory des not depend on dualism and is acceptable (possibly) to materialists
• possible in terms of logic

Question 29

Criticisms of Hick’s theory

Answer 29

• Vardy: would the replication of memories, personality, and body necessarily mean it is the same person? surely a copy is not the same
• Bernard Williams: Hick’s portrayal of an endless life of replications would be a meaningless life. it might be a boring life.
• the theory is logically coherent and there is no evidence against it, but that does not mean it is true, logical possibility does not equate to factual possibility
• heaven for all is inconsistent with Christian teaching, and with the beliefs of those the theory aims to save
• no consequence for evil
• Dostoevysky Ivan, nothing makes suffering worthwhile and God shouldn’t have bothered making the world (from novel The Brothers Karamazov, three brothers representing mind, body and spirit)
• if we are all saved, then do we have free will to reject God? this is incoherent with God wanting us to make good decisions

Question 30

Price on LAD 1

Answer 30

• have to establish coherent beliefs before arguing they’re true
• if we can’t imagine the afterlife then why are we discussing it
• LAD isn’t inconceivable- it could involve disembodied, discarnate existence, perhaps like dreams where we believe mental images are real but we aren’t bound by time and space
• disembodied existence wound’t be a problem if we had these mental images, we would have a sense of identity

Question 31

Price on LAD 2

Answer 31

-where would this be?
• it is a different kind of consciousness, not place but will have ‘space’ like in dreams
• mental images would make our own future, drawing from memories and desires so it could be unpleasant
• subjective, without connection between people
• maybe telepathy would allow shared worlds between which we can move
• evidence: mediums report the afterlife is like this, people have the same interests and concerns

Question 32

Criticisms of Price 1

Answer 32

• inconsistent with Christian and other teachings of resurrection of the body (Jesus was seen as physical)
• no contact with God in the afterlife makes it seem pointless
• the distractions of the physical world aren’t left behind
• some lived on earth with limited mental processes and sensory experiences
• the best afterlife would result from the best (most pleasant and likely sheltered) earthly life
• no reward for good behaviour or compensation for suffering

Question 33

Criticisms of Price 2

Answer 33

• Feuerbach’s idea: wish fulfilment occurs because we can’t cope with reality. This is problematic as we don’t face life realistically
• Hick: in the afterlife, if we live in our own worlds we have no contact with each other, questions the quality of this sort of life
• Price argues we might realise our desires but they may not be good for us but we can still learn and grow spiritually
• Hick approves of this as it fits in with the vale of soul making, with death not stopping the clock

Question 34

General Definitions of Near Death Experience

Answer 34

• when someone briefly dies, perhaps during operations, heart attacks, etc, and is resuscitated before the state becomes irreversible
• Hugh Montefiore: “something very specific which can occur when people are near to death, or think themselves to be. It is not uncommon for people to have…out of the ordinary experiences when they are…in situations close to death” (The Paranormal — a Bishop Investigates, 2002)

Question 35

Consistency in NDE

Answer 35

-Raymond Moody
• in ‘The Light Beyond’1973: discovered similarities in the testimonies of those who’d had near death experiences
• experients could be dreaming, remembering a lost unconscious memory (cryptomnesia), hallucinating due to lack of oxygen to the brain
-K. Ring:
• (Life at Death, 1982) identified a common pattern of ‘core experiences’
• these were: out of body experience, feeling of peace, entering darkness and seeing light

Question 36

Peter Fenwick general + feelings of peace

Answer 36

• (The Truth in the Light 1995) identified the ‘full syndrome’ of near death experiences
• Feelings of peace: may be due to drugs such as morphine or the release of endorphins to help the individual cope with the fear of death, or the hormone ATCH to cope with stress. The religious suggest it is a foretaste of heaven. However, this cannot be tested and cannot receive a satisfactory answer for those seeking physical explanation

Question 37

Peter Fenwick: Out of body experiences + Tunnel and light + Being of light

Answer 37

• Out of body experiences: would be possible if the mind can exist without the brain. Can be induced with psychedelic drugs. Often, things are heard or seen which couldn’t be from the experient’s position. Are memories processed from a bird’s eye view?
• The tunnel and the light: light is a common metaphor for divine realities and holiness. This could be the result of disinhibition and excitation of brain cells, especially in the visual cortex,leading to the random firing of cells and giving a visual illusion. However, these experiences are usually described as being orderly, not random
• The being of light: it is usually talked of as a positive, loving experience, beyond description. A figure who encourages and welcomes the experient and is often, but not always, related to the experient’s religion or culture. Fenwick gives example of Catholic who had vision of three young Indian men, maybe to do with Trinity?

Question 38

Peter Fenwick: Barrier + Another Country + Relatives and friends

Answer 38

• The barrier: point beyond which visitors may not pass. Montefiore: “perhaps, (for those who do believe that NDE is a spiritual journey), the barrier is an indication that our life is regulated by providence, and providence has decreed that it is not yet our time to die”
• Another Country: idyllic pastoral scene, filled with light, fragrance and colour, or a place beyond the barrier. Representation of refreshment, peace and contentment linked with the image of heaven or paradise. Could be the experient consoling themselves with a place of their memory
• Relatives and friends: Fenwick: “Then I saw a group of people between me and the light. I knew them, my brother, who had died a few years before”. Could be a retreat from the fear of death to the comfort of known and loved ones. Montefiore: “it would be difficult to produce a physiological explanation of the experience”

Question 39

Peter Fenwick: Life review + Decision to return + Return

Answer 39

• Life Review: sometimes takes place in front of the being of light. may be a preview of life and being told there are tasks awaiting them. Also reported to happen to pilots approaching the speed of sound and could be due to lack of oxygen reaching the temporal lobe, leading to random firing and excitation. However, this wouldn’t explain why the memories are so clear.
• The decision to return: people usually want to stay in the experience but can’t, the anoxia explanation claiming re-supply of oxygen, whilst others claim that the divine force behind the experience ends it.
• The return: usually rapid and followed by less fear of death. often lives change drastically and are lived more serenely and compassionately. Faith may deepen but not necessarily in an orthodox way, some claim to receive psychic powers

Question 40

Raymond Moody’s conclusion on NDE

Answer 40

NDEs raised as many questions as answers: “I am left, not with conclusions or evidence or proofs, but with something less definite - feelings, questions, analogies, puzzling facts to be explained”

Question 41

Susan Blackmore’s criteria for explanations (Dying to Live 1993)

Answer 41

• The explanation must be coherent and specific
• should not suppose any extra supernatural features without good reason
• should provide testable predictions

Question 42

NDE problems

Answer 42

Problem of reliability and verifiability of NDE, could just be lost memories