What Is The Afterlife?

Imagine being stabbed by an unrepentant murderer before a date, but you realize only then your life truly begins. The protagonist in Gary Soto’s The Afterlife, Chuy, becomes a spirit and finds himself stuck in a world between the living and the dead. Chuy observes the daily lives of his grief-stricken family and friends which sparks a sudden hatred towards his murderer. As he transitions into the afterlife, he undergoes several significant physical and emotional transformations and develops a love for a ghostly girl who committed suicide.

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The real question of life after death isn 't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.” The idea that death is inevitable is well known by everyone, yet no one is certain as to what happens afterwards. Even though the subject of life after death has been argued for centuries by many philosophers and theologians. In the article Sign Here If You Exist, Jill Sisson Quinn adequately employs figurative language, rhetoric questionings, and personal anecdotes to demonstrate a controversial argument on the topic of life after death.

After reading What’s Heaven by Maria Shriver, I got the opportunity to realize that talking about heaven can be difficult—especially when a child’s grandparent passes away or loved one passes away. For instance, as a child I always thought that human beings live forever; however, as I got older I began to realize that human beings cannot live forever. Nevertheless, as a nineteen-year-old college student, talking about death and heaven is tough and emotional for me; I cannot imagine myself mourning the death of a loved one—specifically, my mother, brothers, sister, aunts, cousins, friends, etc. My mother attempts to have conversations about death and heaven with me: “Kevin, my son, human beings get the chance to live a long-life here on earth;

The afterlife is a concept that has troubled humans for a long time. For many decades, people have worried about “their ticket” to heaven and what heaven consist off. First and far most, Mouw stresses the fact that there’s more to life than to just make it to a separate world or heaven. He says our life is about redemption of humans, but also transformation of culture. However, people are still and will always be concerned about getting into heaven. Fortunately, Mouw answers these questions with biblical interpretation. Like I said previously, Christians have believed heaven to be a distant world in which saved souls rest after being extracted from earth. Mouw believes heaven to be a renewed creation of God in which the earth is not destroyed, but rather transformed and

Since I hold a strong conviction in the one Triune God, I believe God created the entire universe for himself. When I look at the world, I see nothing but God’s beauty; His hand print on things that happen. However, I believe in an evil force that is at work in our universe and the leader of that force is Satan himself. Because he convinced Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of life that God did not permit them to eat, sin entered the world, thus the reason why we have thunderstorms, earthquakes, tornadoes etc… I do not believe everything that happens in the universe is an act of God. I believe Satan causes storms and disasters to happen as well. There is a good and evil at work in our universe because of sin, not because God wanted it that way.

Vengeance and murder infects the minds of Montresor and Fortunato upon an exchange of insult in Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Cask of Amontillado”. This is the story of pure revenge after Forturano disrespects Montresor. The story follows the characters meeting up at a carnival and eventually the disguised Montresor lures Fortunato into the catacombs of his home by convincing him that he acquired something that could pass for Amontillado, a light Spanish sherry. Fortunato grows eager to taste this wine and to determine for Montresor whether or not it is truly Amontillado. He leads him back to the catacombs of his home and carries out his plot to bury him alive. Edgar Allan Poe writes from a mysterious first person perspective, uses colorful symbolism and situational irony to present the man's inner self, in turn revealing that revenge is fundamentally infeasible.

According to Kevin Nelson, a neuroscientist and the author of “The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain,” adults often have a sense of looking back over a life; young children, lacking that perspective, tend to report “castles and rainbows, often populated with pets, wizards, guardian angels, and like adults, they see relatives and religious figures, too.” It’s hard to convey to anyone who grew up without the idea of God just how fully the language, stories and “logic” of the Bible can dominate a young mind, even perhaps especially the mind of a toddler (Nelson, The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain”20-21.) There have been various accounts taken over the years regarding near death or life after death experiences. A known account of this situation is taken from Colton Burpo, in which a bestseller book published in 2010 and motion picture released in 2014 known as “Heaven is for Real” is based on. In 2003 three year-old Colton claimed to have visited Heaven during a near death experience where an emergency surgery was performed on him to save his life. Colton recounts the details of his amazing journey with childlike innocence and speaks about things that happened before his birth... things he could not possibly know. The next is the story of Dr. Eben Alexander, who is a proclaimed neurosurgeon and writer coming from a lineage of scholars and medical doctors. He

Upon everyone’s reunification in heaven they realize that the one thing that paradise is missing is life. They decide that they need to be reborn in order to experience the beauty that is living. Through all of their struggles, they have experienced a myriad of emotions. They have hated life, and yearned for death. Now they look forward towards life with a changed and renewed outlook.

The aim of my report is to explain how the view of the afterlife in Ancient Greece has shaped works of art, books and the mentality of people. In order to do this I am going to explore how ancient Greek people saw the underworld as well as Roman people and the Renaissance period. Because Greeks saw the underworld as a dark, dreadful and gloomy place, many of the works that refer to it, either in Roman times or the Renaissance, are influenced by this view. In particular works like the Odyssey by Homer or The Phaedo by Plato, explained to a certain level the structure of the afterlife in ancient Greece. These two pieces of literature severely influenced works like the book VI of the Aeneid by Virgil where he depicts the underworld referencing to the Greek point of view. But a deeper description of the underworld is given by Dante in his Divine Comedy where he uses Virgil as his guide, from the depths of hell to the Purgatory while Beatrice, Dante’s ideal woman, guides him through heaven. All these time periods shared the idea of the underworld as being a place where souls pay the sins they committed during their lives.

Buddhism began in the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ by Siddhartha Gautama. The teachings of Buddha, also known as Siddhartha Gautama, are the major beliefs of Buddhism. Buddhism is a belief and religion based on an assortment of customs, principles, and practices. The name Buddha means the awakened one. Buddha’s teachings were of the termination of suffering, attaining nirvana, and absconding from the cycle of suffering and rebirth. Buddhism has spread all across Asia and throughout the world, now with between two hundred thirty million and five hundred million followers. Buddhism is largely based around the belief of Karma. Karma is the “action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation” (Dictionary.com) or “the cosmic principle according to which each person is rewarded or punished in one incarnation according to that person’s deeds in the previous incarnation.” (Dictionary.com) In simpler words, how you live your life now determines how you will come back when your current soul expires. Buddhists live their lives in hopes of achieving to be placed in the highest state known as Heaven. The after-life stems from Karma and leads into Rebirth. Rebirth is a course of action where humans proceed within multiple lifetimes in one or more of the six states of after-life. Each lifetime begins with birth and ends with death. Buddhists believe that we should not fear death because

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is a story of lust that takes place over four days. Within this time, Romeo meats Juliet, who kisses him with in the first hour. Within the four days, they merry, are separated due to their families fighting, and both die as a result of the separation, and both of them not knowing what exactly has happened to the other. Shakespeare uses the main characters of “Romeo and Juliet” who are Romeo and Juliet, to show the theme of love, which is that love must be build over time, and not be with someone that you just met. This is shown by conflicts that arise for both Romeo, and Juliet.

In the ancient Hebrew writings, the concept of heaven and hell is limited to an underworld development. After burial, it was believed that the souls of the dead would descent into the lower parts of the earth. This underworld or Sheol was a place where people would “dwell as weak, dim shades with no consolation from God.” The book of Psalms considers Sheol as the Pit, where there is no help and the soul is remembered no more (Ps. 88:3-5).

Ancient Greek Gender Roles vs Modern Times Gender Roles Over the year’s people have changed their views and beliefs about Gender roles. For the most part society, today have most of the same gender roles as back then in ancient Greek time but, there are still things people look at differently from back then. In today’s world gender roles is a huge aspect of how things are running in society. Women today have tried to find ways to change the different gender roles that woman portrays.

A study of American undergraduates indicated that the beliefs about the nature of life after death were quite complicated. A 41-item questionnaire produced 12 independent groups of beliefs. Belief in an internal locus of control and that one’s life is owned by God were associated with a more positive view of the afterlife, as was being Roman Catholic rather than Protestant. The most common beliefs were that one is reunited with family and friends, that the afterlife is comforting, that there is Heaven and that the transition is peaceful, all believed by more than 90 percent of the students.

The movie What Dreams May Come gives a rather positive view on the afterlife. I think most of the ideas and views shown in the film are related to many of society's main beliefs pertaining to death and the afterlife, but the views are left broad enough so they can relate to any specific religion. Personally, I have no concrete belief concerning the afterlife, or whether or not if there even is life after death, but I can see why many people would agree with many of the films perspectives. The movie is shown through Robin Williams's character, Chris Nielson who's first personal encounter with death is when his two children, Marie and Ian both die in a car accident. Four years later he dies himself after being hit