I wrote the following paper for submission for my English IV class during my
senior year of high school. The grade received was an “A-”. My teacher wrote on the cover
sheet: “Should be an A+, but requirements are requirements. Nice job,
Will.” On the last page, she wrote, “Very thoroughly and intellectually supported and
argued.” She was an open atheist.
I wrote my name as “Wil Fry IV”. The only changes I have made to the following are in
formatting. All errors below were included in the original. The cover sheet date was 1990.03.05,
but the date inside, on page 1, was 1990.02.15.
While I don’t recall the exact assignment parameters, I do remember it was a
pick-your-own-topic research paper.
Is There Really An Afterlife?
OUTLINE
I. Intro
II. Religious examples of afterlife
A. Christ’s resurrection
B. Irish reincarnation
C. Day of resurrection
D. Leave the sepulchres
E. Asian theory
F. Tulkus
G. Christian reincarnation
H. Egyptian afterlife
1. Fertile life
2. Bliss
3. Ushabti replace servants
III. Other cited types of afterlife
A. Believe reincarnation
B. ‘Near-death’ experiences
IV. Why not to believe
V. Piecing it all together
A. Basic incompatibility of life and matter
B. Life wears matter down
C. Separation of life and matter
VI. Conclusion
Many things in our world today cannot be proven, but even so, many of these things are taken for
granted. Among these are the ‘Big Bang’ theory, evolution, the existence of a
supreme being, etc. One of the ones that is possibly wondered about the most often is life after
death, in any form. Whether we speak of Heaven, reincarnation, the Egyptian vision of eternal
bliss, or any other form of afterlife, there will always be the question among mortals as to
whether or not it exists. Many say that it is just wishful thinking, an avenue of mental escape
for those who have problems here in this life, while others say that the thought of an afterlife
is only the indications of a sick mind (Kung xiii). Still, people will always wonder. Even
though life after death cannot be proven, strong evidence suggests that it really does
occurr.
First, there are many examples of a belief in the afterlife from the religions of our world. One
of the main religions of our world is Christianity, and the whole concept is based on their
belief that there is a resurrection of the dead, as stated by the Bible.
“Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is
no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not
been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in
vain.”
— I Corinthians 15:12-14
What this means is that if there is no afterlife, then the belief of hundreds of millions of
people is wrong.
To look at another religion, the Druids of Ireland, we see that many of them held far different
beliefs, clinging to what we now call “Eastern religion.” Many of the Druids preached
to their followers that after death, they would be recycled into another form of life, and their
soul would live eternally through other beings. Although this religion is dead for the most part,
there were still millions of people who lived and died under its influence (Bonwick 67).
Going to another of the ‘great religions,’ that of Islam, it seems that their vision
of the afterlife is quite similar to the Christian view. Their holy book, the Koran, says,
“O, Lord, thou shalt surely gather mankind together unto a day of resurrection... As for the
infidels, their wealth shall not profit them anything... they shall be the fuel of hell-fire”
(Sale 43). Furthermore, “On that day shall God call you forth from your sepulchres, and
ye shall obey, with celebration and praise...” (276). If this belief is discredited, then the
belief of another hundred million people or so is thrown out the window, so to speak.
An ancient Asian theory involving reincarnation was incorporated into the Buddhist belief system.
This belief system teaches that all past and lives, extending infinitely into the past, affect
our present life in some way. This means, according to the Buddhists, that whatever is done in
this life reflects on future lives, causing them to be better or worse. The only miracle allowed
by this religion is a change of heart, which enables people, or any other living being, to act
and live ‘better,’ so as to influence future lives for the better. This belief also
has billions of adherents.
In Tibet, the people embrace this reincarnation theory, but add on to it. Their religious
leaders’ positions are left open after any of these leaders die, until their reincarnation
(their ‘tulku’) is recognized. There are special groups of people who decide that a
child is actually a ‘tulku’, and they usually recognize them between the ages of
two and five. After discovery, the life of a tulku is totally and eternally changed. He/she
is moved up to his/her rightful place in life, according to the position they inherited
(Ross 107).
A certain Frenchman named Arnaud Desjardins visited Tibet and was greatly impressed with their
ideas about reincarnation. The glitch, however, was that Desjardins was a devout Christian,
who had no prior beliefs in reincarnation. After his experience in Tibet, he ingeniously
incorporated the theory of reincarnation into his previous beliefs of Christianity, astounding
and horrifying many religious leaders of his time. Surprisingly, his new system of belief,
containing two of the most popular beliefs about the afterlife, gained a large following which
remains to this day (108-9).
Another religion that is now dead for all practical purposes is the religion of ancient
Egypt. In this religion, there was also an afterlife, but it was slightly different from the
others, in that as long as people were good, they were rewarded with eternal life in Ra’s
heavenly kingdom. this kingdom was protected by Ra himself, and for the ex-humans, it was a place
of everlasting bliss (Ions 38). This afterlife was filled with plentiful water courses, all
close to the Nile river, and all those living there spent their time paddling peacefully. Just as
in their former life, however, they continued to sow and reap, and continued to use a communal
effort to do this, and prosperity was ensured for all (14). In the Egyptian view of the afterlife,
there were no servants involved in this sowing and reaping, because all servants were liberated at
death. In place of them, beings called Ushabti worked in their former masters’ fields
(15).
One type of afterlife that is usually associated with religion, but is widely believed outside
of any religion, is reincarnation. Reincarnation has been a popular belief for thousands of
years, not only associated with Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. Many people believe that all forms of
life are interconnected, and the soul is returnable to any other form of life, whether it is
animal, human, or god. Even in modern times, many popular thinkers and authors in both Europe
and America are leaning toward this belief, while not associating with any known religion
(Kung 59).
There is one type of experience that causes many people to believe in some sort of an
afterlife, and it is called a ‘near death’ experience. This describes what happens when
someone is dead, by all definitions of the word ‘dead,’ but is later revived, and has
some sort of memory of an afterlife, or something similar. In many of these cases, the stories are
the same, in that most of the people seemed to have seen the same things in their ‘out of
body’ experience. Many of them report having seen ‘cities of light,’ with
‘golden light’ coming from the cities. Also, there was the sound of music floating on
the air, and many of the people saw pastoral visions of streams, grassy fields, chirping birds,
etc. A large proportion of these people also saw other people there — not bodies, just
people — and there was a universal sense of love (Moody 15-6).
Many people do not believe in an afterlife because of the higher standards of living that
we have acquired, and the comforts in this life tend to blind us to anything that could be
beyond it. To many, death seems too real to be eternally unavoidable, and any belief in an
afterlife is a denial of reality, and is a sign that the believer is of a week mind
(Kung xiii).
So many people today are saying that when a body dies, it is dead, and nothing more will come of
it. This is partially true, in that nothing more happens to the dead body, but in actuality
it is a lot more complicated than that. When life enters a body (at conception), the aging
process begins, indicating that life seems to wear down matter. When life leaves a body (at
death), the matter of the body is slowly recycled back into the total mass of the world. However,
life does not just disappear. Even though it was life that wore down the body, this is only due
to the basic incompatibility between life and matter, and life continues to exist, even after the
body that it occupied has decayed. This may be hard to believe, but upon considering the matter
carefully, it is actually quite a sound conclusion.
So, to conclude, life after death at this time is unprovable, because not enough of us have
actually been there to see. However, if there were no such thing as life after death, then not only
would the beliefs of the majority of humans be void, but the basic signs all around us would be
proven wrong.
Works Cited
Bonwick, James. Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions. United States: Dorsett Press, 1986.
The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1971.
Ions, Veronica. Egyptian Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1982.
Kung, Hans. Eternal Life? Life After Death As A Medical, Philosophical, And Theological
Problem. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984.
Moody, Jr., M.D., Raymond A. Reflections On Life After Life. New York: Mockingbird Books, 1977.
Ross, Nancy Wilson. Buddhism: A Way Of Life And Thought. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1981.
Sale, George trans. The Koran. London: Frederick Warne Publishers, Ltd., nd.
Thoughts upon re-reading this paper in 2016:
At first, I was surprised by my teacher’s “thorough and intellectual” comment.
Back in 1990, I just took it as a compliment, but today I wondered a bit about it. Surely she
couldn’t have meant exactly that. Then I remembered that she was comparing my paper to the
others in the class, some of which I helped proofread. My paper wasn’t particularly special
unless compared to the others.
Secondly, I think it was accidental genius of me to include the Big Bang and evolution in the
second sentence — alongside the existence of a supreme being — as things that cannot be
proven yet are taken for granted, while skipping over that two of them have quite a bit of actual
evidence in their favor. It was, however, dishonest to use the words “strong evidence”
in the last sentence of the first paragraph, especially knowing what would follow — an almost
complete lack of evidence.
I do recall feeling frustrated with this paper as the deadline grew closer. I remember thinking
early on that surely among the billions of believers in the world, at least a few of them would have
constructed an airtight argument proving the existence of God and the afterlife. But through all
my research and study, the most powerful arguments I could come up with were: (1) lots of people
believe in it, (2) many people have reported “near-death experiences”, and (3) a bald
assertion about “the basic incompatibility between life and matter”. However, I knew I
wasn’t being graded on logic or debate skills, but rather on whether I cited my sources and
followed the rules of the paper regarding length, formatting, and spelling/grammar.
If I had been graded on logic, this would have failed in so many ways. Not only was I using an
ad populum logical
fallacy — “billions believe it, so it must be true” — but I failed to even
address that those billions do not actually believe in the same thing. While
it’s true that most people on Earth believe in some form of an afterlife, that’s as far
as their agreement goes. They believe in hundreds of different forms of afterlives. Even within
Christianity, if you asked a hundred believers to write a paragraph describing Heaven, you would
get at least 50 different responses, and probably at least a dozen contradictions among them.
And my own assertion near the end that “life enters a body” was based purely on my
presumption that souls exist and that all living things are alive only because God breathed life
into them. It also shows a distinct lack of knowledge of biology, something that I later corrected.
Today, I’m aware that life doesn’t enter a body; I now realize that every
cell of the parents is living, including the sperm and egg cells. Life was there all along. My
further assertion that “life continues to exist” after death, is completely unsupported,
as is my strange theory that life and matter are “incompatible”. (In the rought draft
outline, attached to the back of this paper, I clarified that this was “my own
theory”.)
However, I was relieved to read my final paragraph and see that I was honest enough to admit that
it “is unprovable” — and this was near the height of my theism.
I think I would enjoy the chance to converse with the person (an earlier version of myself)
who wrote this paper, over the course of several hours or days.