There is no evidence for life after death. Discuss this statement.

by vdshjffjdhgdfh (student)

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

‘There is no evidence for life after death’. Discuss this statement.

In this day and age, we are very afraid of death and therefore try to avoid mentioning it and most people receive much comfort from the thought that we will have eternal life in Heaven. However, there is not much physical evidence for this which raises the question, whether there is enough evidence of life after death.

Most Christians see life after death as a reward for leading a good Christian life on earth. If you believe in God and you do good things, you deserve to be rewarded in Heaven. However, if you sin and are evil you deserve to be punished. If there was no such thing as life after death, there would be no need to follow Christianity as both believers and sinners would be treated equally. I think that this is a logical argument as it would not be fair on people who dedicated their lives to doing good things, if they were going to die and rot in the ground, along with everybody else who might not have led such good lives.

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There are also many people who have near-death experiences, in which they experience the divine and are therefore thoroughly convinced of their truth of the existence of life after death. However, there is very little evidence for these and it is very hard to work out whether they actually occurred. I think that this is a less good argument for life after death as near-death experiences are very personal and therefore very difficult to verify.

Most Christian’s are dualists and therefore believe that the soul exists and is independent from the body. There is much biblical evidence for the soul: in Genesis 2 it states that “the Lord God breathed life into his nostrils).This therefore means that when the body dies, the soul lives on (as it is eternal) and it is the soul that goes to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory (for Catholics). Christians would also look to Jesus for examples of life after death. Jesus’ resurrection is a perfect example of life after death and without eternal life, Jesus’ actions on earth would be pointless as the reason that so many people followed him was that he said that they would get eternal life in Heaven. I think that this is a logical argument for the existence of life after death, although this is only persuasive if you are religious and therefore would not hold much clout for an atheist.

Nowadays, there are many psychics who believe that they are in contact with the dead and therefore proves the existence of life after death. Psychics are even sometimes used in police investigations and they turn out to be correct. However, there is very little evidence for psychics. Although I do not believe in psychics, I can understand why they are so popular as people find it very comforting to believe that their loved ones are still out there and that they can talk to them.

Very radical Christians believe that we do not have life after death as Heaven and Hell are merely symbolic and that we have created them and they therefore don’t exist. Also, there is no scientific evidence to prove either way whether there is an afterlife. I think that this view is more likely to be true but this wouldn’t convince a Christian who would call these radical Christians heretics.

Although there is little physical evidence of an after-life, I believe that humans need to believe in the idea of some sort of live after death, and so whether it physically exists or not is not important as it causes people to live good lives.