Reply #92: Whether there is a life after this present life is very much an open question for me

[MikeH]

My personal feeling has been that if there is anything at all to our sense of justice and fairness, and value and meaning of life, then there just has to be something after this present life. And I find very depressing the thought that after I, or anyone else, dies, that is it, there is nothing afterward, and no hope of justice for a person who receives the bad breaks in this life.

And I hate to think that all our good gifts and our experiences and our qualities of character are of value only for this short lifetime.

However I realize that my personal feelings do not prove anything, and that what I might wish to be true or strongly feel should or ought to be true, and what actually is true, are not always the same thing. And I also see that other people have strong personal feelings about the matter that are different from mine.

I myself used to be a Christian, and among other things, I liked to take comfort in the promise of life beyond the grave. However after seriously trying the Christian faith for a period of about 15 years of my life, I found that it had not been of any help to me in enabling me to better deal with any source of pain, frustration, or unhappiness in this life. I explain some of this here. Since Christianity for me did not live up to its promise of making a difference for me in this present life, I can no longer accept the certainty of a life hereafter based on the promise of the Christian faith, or on an account of something that supposedly happened 2000 years ago, or on what is said in any book that alleges to be some kind of revelation from God, such as the Bible. This was a disappointment for me, but something which I have had to accept.

The one hope for life after death is in the reports of near death experiences. I personally would very much like to think that these are manifestations of the life after the present life. Some accounts, such as in books and writings by Raymond A. Moody and others, seem very convincing.

I personally have never had any near death experience (and I don't think it would be wise to wish for such an experience!), nor do I know of anybody I know personally having had such an experience. And I have never personally experienced anything else that could be considered "supernatural", or that would indicate the reality of anything "supernatural", psychic, or paranormal.

However that does not mean that I regard as a certainty that such things are not real, and I do not want to make any statements or judgments regarding other people's experiences.

I consider myself to be a skeptic in the sense that I do not want to accept something as being true or certain based on insufficient evidence. For me this includes both the assertion, absent any verifying personal experience, that life after death, communications with deceased loved ones, and other "supernatural", paranormal, and psychic experiences, are for real, and the assertion that such things are definitely not for real. I particularly prefer to withhold judgment about other people’s reports or accounts of near death experiences, or communications with deceased relatives, or other alleged paranormal experiences, and what they would actually indicate.

I have some philosophical reasons for being open to at least the possible reality of life after death, and perhaps other things that might be considered paranormal or “supernatural”. When I was a Christian, one of my favorite writers was the noted apologist C. S. Lewis. Having at one time tried out Christianity and finding myself unhappy with it, I no longer accept his arguments regarding the person of Christ or tenets of the Christian faith (there have been criticisms of his trilemma argument, for instance), but I have liked and still like his arguments that our sense of reason, and our sense of right and wrong, and justice, must be rooted in some intelligence higher and greater than our own, and in some reality higher and greater than ourselves and the natural universe. He particularly makes this argument in the first six chapters of his book Miracles. If our sense of justice is actually rooted in some reality higher and greater than ourselves, rather than being just something that we happen to think and feel, then the idea of a possible life after this life is not entirely absurd or ridiculous. (And we do have near-death experiences, or reports of then.)

Of course even if our reason might indicate a higher reality or intelligence greater than ourselves, it is quite possible that any such reality or intelligence might not be exactly like the Christian God as envisioned by Christians like C. S. Lewis.

I would say that religiously I myself am closest to being a Deist, and just on the believing side of agnostic. Deists basically believe in a God or a Creator, but do not accept any alleged revelation from God (the Bible, the Koran, etc.). Deists advocate the use of reason, and a common position among Deists about life after death, seen in their web sites (typically mentioned in longer articles about other things), is a hope that there might be such a thing but an acceptance of uncertainty about the matter.

Of course if there actually is a life after this present life then there are many questions that can be asked. Such as, as was asked above, do animals have a life after this present life? If so, which animals? If there is a life after this life, do we really live forever, or do we die “for good” after a (perhaps very long) period of time? What about reincarnation? And won’t we get bored after perhaps a very, very long time, after we have done everything?

One thing that is comforting to me is that whatever is true about the matter is true, and is not subject to change, and is not affected by what I or anybody else might think or believe, or hope for or wish for. (This is unlike the outcome of an election, or a public policy decision!)