Avoiding Myths of Afterlife Resonates Across Faiths

JUSTIN MERRIMAN/PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Published August 26, 2014.

Its sometimes said that religion originated out of the fear of death. We all face the abyss, and we all grieve when our loved ones pass away. From this utter meaninglessness, the theory goes, myths of meaning arise.

A review of Biblical literature, however, calls this theory into question. Unlike many indigenous and shamanic traditions, unlike other ancient Near Eastern religions, and certainly unlike Christianity, Islam, and later strands of Judaism, the Bible is strikingly uninterested in what happens after we die. Theologians chase after scraps a mention of Sheol in Genesis 42:38 and Isaiah 14:11, a witchs sance in 1 Samuel 28:3-25. If what happens after we die is so important, why is it not mentioned in any of the core passages of the Bible?

And what scant evidence there is, is contradictory. Despite the above (and other) references to Sheol and life after death, Psalm 115:17 tells us that the dead do not praise God (a text which has not stopped generations of Christians and Jews from depicting heaven as a place where the dead do exactly that). And Job laments that death is an eternal sleep. (Job 3:11-19)

I bring all of us this up not out of academic interest, but because the striking, almost shocking disregard for the afterlife in these strata of the Jewish tradition should resonate with our own sensibilities. Although some still cling to various beliefs in the afterlife, surely those of us whose worldviews are shaped by science do not. Our hearts still yearn more on this below but our rational faculties understand that heaven and hell are relics of earlier ways of thinking.

What happens after we die? Only agnosticism is justified here. If Occams Razor the principle that the simplest explanation is probably the right one holds, then what happens after we die is a ceasing of brain function; possibly the release of DMT, the chemical in the pineal gland that creates the near death experience (and is sampled ahead of time by some psychedelic enthusiasts); and then thats it, subjectively speaking. At some point, there is a last moment. Then, no more moments.

Of course, Occams Razor was originally a philosophical position meant to prove religious ideas (specifically, the existence of God), not disprove them. Its not clear what the simplest explanation of a phenomenon actually is. Perhaps the soul really is an ontological entity, neuroscientific evidence to the contrary, and if so, perhaps it exists independently of the body. Who knows.

Yet as someone who has experienced a heavy amount of illness and death among my circle of loved ones this year, Im not inspired by these attempts to rescue the idea of immortality from the clutches of scientific reasoning.

See the original post here:
Jewish Emphasis on Life Makes Death Rituals a Gift to World