Life After Death

Overview

Recall questions on resurrection and immortality of the soul, reincarnation and transmigration, Hick's replica theory, and karma.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the immortality of the soul claim?

   Model answer

   That a person is essentially a non-physical thinking self which occupies a body for a time and carries on when the body dies. The soul is held to be simple and without parts, and so not the kind of thing that could come apart, which is why Plato thought it indestructible. Death is a separation rather than an ending, and personal identity is carried entirely by the soul, so on this account nothing that matters is lost when the body goes.

2. 2

   Outline the objections to the immortality of the soul.

   Model answer

   That nobody has given a clear account of what a non-physical thing is, or of how it could act on a body. That everything we know ties memory, character and personality closely to the brain, so damage to the brain damages precisely what is supposed to be immaterial. And that a disembodied soul would have no senses, no location and no way of acting, so it is unclear either that it would be a person or that the resulting existence would count as a life.

3. 3

   Explain what Buddhist teachings mean by rebirth.

   Model answer

   Buddhist teaching denies that there is any permanent unchanging self to be reborn, which is the doctrine of anatta. What continues is a stream of conditioned mental and physical processes: the final moment of one life conditions the first moment of the next, as one flame lights another without any substance crossing between them. Kamma, the moral quality of intentional action, shapes the conditions into which rebirth happens. Bringing the whole process to an end is what nibbana means.

4. 4

   Distinguish reincarnation in Hindu traditions from Buddhist rebirth.

   Model answer

   In most Hindu teaching there is an enduring self, the atman, which passes from one body to another through samsara, the round of birth and death, until it attains moksha, and karma determines the circumstances of each new life. The crucial difference from the Buddhist account is that here something identifiable travels between bodies, whereas Buddhist teaching insists there is only a causally connected process with nothing underneath it. Treating the two as the same doctrine in different clothes misrepresents both.

5. 5

   What work does karma do in both accounts?

   Model answer

   It makes the process moral rather than mechanical. Intentional action has consequences reaching beyond the present life, so the distribution of fortune is not arbitrary, and the universe is just without needing a judge to impose a verdict. It also supplies an answer to undeserved suffering that the monotheistic traditions do not have available. Critics reply that it can be used to blame the afflicted for their affliction, and Hindu and Buddhist teachers commonly answer that its point is to govern one's own conduct rather than to pass judgement on anyone else's.

6. 6

   What is J Hick's replica theory, and what is it for?

   Model answer

   It is his argument that bodily survival is a coherent idea. He asks us to imagine a man vanishing in one city while someone exactly like him - same body, same memories, same character - appears at that moment in another. He argues that after the initial shock we would accept the newcomer as the same man, because there would be nothing else it made sense to say. Extending the case, Hick suggests God could re-create the whole psychophysical person in another world, so resurrection need not mean the reassembly of a corpse.

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