Topic 12 Different Views of Immortality

Question 1

What was Plato’s view on immortality?

Answer 1

Dualist

• soul knows the truth
• body can only learn though physical sense experience
• soul is immortal and unchanging
• pre existed before birth and exists after death, body just a vehicle
• pre existing knowledge = pre existing soul (uneducated slave boy solves a puzzle, knowledge from before birth)

Question 2

What did Aristotle believe?

Answer 2

• soul = substance that remains same throughout person’s life, body changes
• soul dependent on body
• soul did not survive after death

Question 3

What does Richard Dawkins believe?

Answer 3

• no part of person that is non physical + consciousness cannot be separated from brain
• no soul and after death consciousness must end
• very atheist

Question 4

What do Hindus believe about the soul?

Answer 4

No soul but an atman or ‘self’

Eternal and seeks unity with god

Question 5

What do Christians believe about the soul as a ‘divine spark’?

Answer 5

• god gave people their soul as a divine spark, so made imago dei
• soul unique to human beings in Gen 2:7 god breathed the soul into humanity
• soul immortal
• after death, heaven or hell (fundamentalist)

Question 6

What do fundamentalist Christians believe about immortality?

Answer 6

• after death, judgement day

- those who believed n Jesus will go to heaven and those who have not will go to hell, based on John 14:6

Question 7

What do conservative Christians believe about immortality?

Answer 7

• soul continues after death, will go to heaven to join God after death
• ‘hell’ seen as when someone deliberately rejects God at end time

Question 8

What do liberal Christians believe?

Answer 8

• no hell and soul is with God after death for eternity
• grading whereby those who have lived good lives are closer to god and those who have not are further away
• based on Matthew 25 parable of sheep and goats

Question 9

What do Hindus believe about immortality?

Answer 9

• soul can escape cycle of reincarnation and lose itself in Brahman
• spiritual state of existence, neither good nor bad things happen

Question 10

What do Buddhists believe about immortality?

Answer 10

• no soul
• when they have attained enlightenment they attain Nirvana
• peace and freedom

Question 11

What are some non religious views?

Answer 11

1. No soul, no immortality
2. Belief in ghosts, could be a form of immortality of a soul
3. We become spirits after death- look towards the activity of mediums and the spirit world they are contacting