A Comparison of Two Accounts of Life After Death Essay

Life after death is a very controversial topic around the world and in society. Throughout our lives, we often wonder ‘what happens when we die?’. There are many different beliefs as to what happens to our bodies and to our souls after we die. Religion provides answers to this question, however different religions offer different beliefs and answers to this question. There are two basic kinds of religion in this world: Eastern and Western. Through learning about the key beliefs of Catholics and Hindus I have been able to learn some similar and some different perspectives on the forever debatable question ‘what happens when we die?’.

Many of us have some view or idea of the afterlife – whether it is some kind of utopia or even if there is one at all. Research conducted by Douglas Davies found that around 29% of us believe that nothing happens after death, 8% think that our bodies awaits resurrection and 12% believe that we will come back as someone else. Of course there are some more religious people, 22%, who just think that we should trust in God, the remaining 34% of us believe that our souls passes on to another world. These views can all be classed into the traditional divide used when discussing the soul and life after death. There is the Monist view – the idea that the body and the soul exists as a single unity, the souls existence is dependent on the body,

In this essay i will argue for the idea of the soul surviving death. The idea of surviving death has been floating around for years and has been debated by many. It is undeniable that the physical body cannot survive death, but the soul is a whole other matter. The soul itself, the containment of our thoughts, personality and experiences, survives the biological death of the body. The belief in the soul requires the belief in reincarnation based simply on science because of the laws of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed- it can only change its form. The soul it’s self can never be destroyed or die, thus must be reborn. Since the body is "recycled" by decay and decomposition after death, so does the soul, the soul is recycled by taking birth in a new form. To become something new while containing something old. We are all born with a full soul that has a personality, but as we grow, we grow into our personalities; we become more us as we age. The soul doesn’t require an actually body to live but without a body the soul can’t gain new knowledge or experiences. The soul takes the form of many different species to obtain the greatest experience of physical life. The two philosophical articles i will be using in this essay are Rosenberg’s “life after death” and Suits’s argument.

At the start, I will talk about the argument from the religion aspect for dualism. Most major world religions are based on separating the ‘mind’ and ‘body’. The eternal ‘mind’ or soul either ends up in heaven or hell, free from the ‘body’ itself. According to a number of religions, there is some sort of life after you die; a good example of this is angels which some call the ‘mind’ of god exists without any physical presence. This is what we come to know as substance dualism or something that is very relative to a form of substance dualism. As a result, "seeing how uncertain dualism is, in principle, the similar would be a willing to also be uncertain in one 's religious tradition, which a lot of people find challenging to do". [Churchland] Yet, it must

Both monism and dualism, ideas debated amongst philosophers for centuries, involve trying to explain the relation between the mind and body, or if there even is such a correlation. A monist believes that a person is singular in their being. This means that monists do not distinguish the mind from the body, or even reality from the physical world, such as life after death (Schaffer 32). For a monist, reality is confined to the materialistic world. Oppositely, there is dualism. Though there are many different forms, at it its core, dualism is the idea that the essence of the mind (e.g. who one is as a person) is separate from the physical body (Churchland, 84). Because many religions are based on a belief in the soul and life after death, dualism is a view commonly held among the public (Churchland, 84). Subsequently, I will argue in support of the type of dualism known as substance dualism and the idea of the mind being separate from the body and materialistic world.

In “Meditations on First Philosophy”, René Descartes came to understand that bodies and minds/souls are made of two separate substances, creating a theory known as Cartesian dualism. Paul M. Churchland rejected Cartesian dualism in favor of an eliminative materialist stance of understanding in his “Matter and Consciousness”. While, Gretchen Weirob and Sam Miller discuss the possibility of an individual’s soul being able to continue one’s existence after death in “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality”. I will be supporting Churchland’s theory.

For humans, we know the universal reality for us all is that in some point we will not escape death. During the many years that humans have been on earth we have created the concept of an Afterlife. The Afterlife is an idea created to fulfill the questioning and essential part of an individual’s identity after their death, in the thought that it will continue to exist after the death of the figure. Different religions have different practices and beliefs regarding their life after their death. Some believe that their body is reincarnated and others believe that after their death the soul is raised and united with God. I will be focusing on the key beliefs of the Islam and Catholicism religions.

The article Life after Death is based on one man’s thoughts about what will happen to him after death or more easily put will his mind/spirit live on after his physical body has died. There are plenty of different ideas people have come up with from reincarnation to resurrection all to put their minds at ease so death doesn’t seem too scary. Steven Stewart-Williams explains a couple of ideas for life after death and explains how these beliefs are false and cannot actually happen. My thoughts on his exploration are so what let the people believe whatever they want if it makes it easier in the end. Their beliefs aren’t hurting anyone if you are okay with dying

The concept of life after life itself is often disbelieved in today's society. Historically, the idea of religion and life after death was highly enforced for either the order or the basis that it was actually believed. Today, it is less common for a religion to be forced on an

Although, to some Dualism promotes the belief of immortality of the soul. Some religions deny this belief, many believe that after death the soul will continue on. If the soul is non contingent and the soul is part of the mind then the mind non contingent. But yet the body is an disposable object, making them two separate things. Also, if god existence is real then that is an example of what we may think of as a higher being with a mind or soul, obviously because he expressed his feelings and views of life itself. But, god was never in a physical form of a human but seen to humans only mentally, a figment of there imagination or conscious. The afterlife, existence of ones identity or consciousness after physical death is one of many beliefs

Our bodies die but your mind and soul keep living on in full contact. The soul is the spiritual thing in us which reasons, imagines and remembers. In the platonic belief Rowe explains the soul is connected to or imprisoned in a particular body. I agree more with the platonic belief in that our spirit or soul is with us our entire life on earth and keeps all what makes us ourselves. Just like God has his attributes we to have our own and I believe it is kept in our spirit. Once we pass on to live the rest of our eternity with our Father we have to take something. To sum up the quote from Socrates he stated his soul will keep living so he does not care what you do with his body. I have always said the same thing I do not care if you want to bury my body in the best clothes or cremate it I will no longer be in my earthly body it was nothing but a coat over my

Descartes theory of dualism supposes that there are two fundamental substances. The body is an example of a material substance, as it can be defined by its dimension, shape, movement, and other extensions. However, an immaterial substance like the mind cannot be defined by such concepts, nor can it be interpreted from sensory data. Descartes argues that the mind is the soul, as it cannot be altered by physiological means and ascribes its place in the pineal gland. Though I agree with Descartes distinguishing of the mind and body, I do

So what exactly happens after death? Do we reincarnate into a different form? Do we somehow take someone else’s body? The idea of what occurs after death has been controversy for many years. There’s has been theories and evidence that try to understand what exactly happens. According to Socrates he believes in the idea that there’s still life after death and the soul and the body are two separate things. Furthermore, his ideas would be considered what dualist beliefs. Meanwhile, another philosopher, Bertrand Russell, believes that there’s no such thing as soul and everything could be explained through physical explanation. More importantly, his ideas would be considered what materialist believe because he presumes that human being is

Today I was joined by John (the ox) Entwistle one day after he was pronounced dead in the arms of a Las Vegas stripper from a cocaine overdose 2 days before The Who’s states tour: The bassist of the millennium was in room 658 of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Nevada. The stripper/groupie of the band Alycen Rowse found John cold when she woke up. We talked to him and discussed how he was feeling about his death and hopefully find out the story behind it.

Bereavement is an issue that affects families all across the world. It is often hard for parents and families to comfort bereaved children as they are grieving too. Grieving parents many times ‘‘feel like they are losing their minds” (Dickens). But if parents are actively involved in helping their child’s healing process then children can learn coping flexibility and resilience and can deal with their grief in healthy ways. However numerous parents are “too emotionally wrought to comprehend the grief of their remaining children (Dickens). They, as well as other family members, experience symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and complicated Greif as they struggle to cope with the loss of their parent, spouse or child.