Wacky Proofs for Afterlife Examined

PREFACE

Several philosophers have desired to encourage the selfish wish of people to live forever by trying to provide them with philosophical proof that the afterlife exists. Such attempts collapse under fallacies.
 
OCCULT ARGUMENTS FOR HEREAFTER
 
If you believe in magic it would seem to be a basis for holding that you can have eternal life beyond death. I have refuted the power of magic in my book, Magic Doesn’t Work.

You could cast a spell to make you survive death.

But when the occult says that we can only succeed with magic if we cast spells that natural law permits what if nature has the law that you cannot survive?

And also, the beings that have survived death could be casting spells to prevent your survival. The less who survive the more they have to enjoy.

And Spiritism, communication with supernatural beings or the spirits of the dead proves nothing because the power of mind over matter or clairvoyance could account for the really supernatural events if they happen. The dead would hardly come back to talk to us when we cannot be sure if it is them who are speaking to us. Spiritism does not demonstrate life after death. How can it when you need mind over matter to be able to communicate with them and when you have that psychic power it could be creating the spirits that talk to you out of your own resources for all you know.
 
THE POWER OF LOVE?

Consider this,
 
Nobody can honestly say that the cosmos and the earth with all their awesome wonder and complexity were not designed by an intelligence.

There is no higher being than a human being so we must have made all things for we have occult and magic powers. We prefer to be embodied to have feelings and sometimes we would take a suffering body for some noble purpose and have the power of mind over matter. This power only works when it is done in a spirit of love. Love is rational therefore you have to know what reason tells you to believe and believe it first. You want your enemies to change and everybody to be happy. Evil is caused by neglecting to use the power of love. Black magic is impossible.

If you use the power of love you improve yourself in your heart and your own happiness though you will have some setbacks. The power will not make you win money even if you believe you want it to help the needy for you must simply will that the best that can happen will happen.

It you use the power as a substitute for action it will not work for that is an unloving abuse of it. Somebody has to work to make the world nicer. You have to be there for other people so that the power can help them. The power could be unlimited but we haven’t the capacity to use all of it and never will. But it will always be available.

We existed before we were born and so death will not terminate our existence.

Who needs God with such a simple and wonderful doctrine? We adore love instead of God.

Sceptics cannot refute every instance that gives evidence for psychic power. We should try our best to refute magical claims but if we come up against something that is irrefutable and convincing then we have no right to say there is no evidence for psychic power. A testimony that stands must be accepted as true.

This argument is full of holes.

Love is only a feeling. The argument supposes that the first being was made by chance. How did that being learn to love when it was all alone? And why does love cause us to have vulnerable bodies that can die? It would make more sense for us to be immortal than for us to die and have to be reborn or preserved without a body. And if love power worked people would improve and love more and hate would not exist by now. And as for the experiments proving love’s magical power, they prove no such thing because psychics are not saints. Uri Gellar supposedly bends spoons but why doesn’t he expend his energy on forcing nature to deliver up the secret cures for killer diseases?
 
ARE WE THE MAKERS?
 
Let us examine another version of the belief that we made all things.

It goes,
 
“All things were made by intelligent beings. Since there is no being greater than us, we must be those beings.
 
We must be beings which can live without the body for we must have existed before we made bodies. There is no way of knowing if we came into existence or always existed. Our souls would perhaps be made of matter that does not obey the laws of the kind of matter we see around us. They are invisible. If the universe returns to what it was “before” the Big Bang” we would need to be able to survive this as disembodied beings. Would we have free will in the disembodied state? We cannot believe this for there is no evidence that free will is even possible.
 
We must have power over matter and have the power to influence one another but we are not all-powerful. Why then are we imperfect? Why do we suffer? Why do we die? If we can control matter as if by magic then there is no need for evil. But why have we come here at all? We have faulty minds. We are not right in the head.”

There might have been beings greater than us at one time.

Evil refutes the theory for we would not be that mad. We wouldn't tolerate evil if we had magical powers now so the madness idea does not wash with the rational. We are all so different so why couldn’t the sensible souls change us? We often change from evil to good seeing the evil as bad.

Perhaps we have come here because our disordered minds can only be fixed or arranged to be fixed by becoming vulnerable human beings to suffer and work to end the problem? It might be right for there are some strange laws. But if we have miracle powers we shouldn’t need to become incarnate.

It is said, “When something seems to make a person worse as a person, that is like making a person very sick so that some time in the future a more terrible disease will be averted”.
 
This is the dangerous notion that evil and suffering should be approved of as they only exist for a good purpose that makes them worthwhile so that they should be welcomed! This notion is why I am so severe against belief in God.
 
We could put ourselves into a permanent state of everlasting happiness if we have unique powers.

It is said, “We have given up our powers to become human which is why we cannot use our powers over matter now”. If we do that so that we can be made better, then we can use that power to make ourselves be perfect for we would not let it go. Why can’t the disembodied spirits help us if we cannot help ourselves?

When we program the will and control matter we should have been able to make ourselves perfectly happy and contented. Why make people evil to cure them when all you have to do is to prevent the evil from coming out? Evil is looking for the wrong kind of good so real good would satisfy us and we would not do evil. Consider how positive and happy thinking can lead to inner transformation and to a charming and decent personality.

We can suffer all we need in a few minutes and have the lessons of life implanted in ourselves instead of coming to earth to do it the hard way.

The theory implies reincarnation because if we are nuts one dose of earth-life will not be enough. There would be no need for death if we need to be reincarnated so reincarnation is a false theory except when a person murders over a programming mistake and when it is not meant to be.

The theory says that committing murder is not wrong for the person would not be allowed to die unless he or she were ready. But that is silly for very evil people have been murdered.
The disembodied persons should be able to stop you from killing when they know it is not meant to be.

Eternity is the state in which no past or future but only the present exists. Each moment of time is rolled into the present in it.

Any human being who enters eternity after living on earth is there even before he was born on earth. Because all time is made into one.
That same person would have infinite power – that is, all possible power that can exist – if he or she has any psychic power at all because once the power is used it will still be there and it can be used ad infinitum.

But in that case, we must all become one person or one almighty God for two persons cannot each have all power that can exist, that is unlimited power. That is absurd for suffering proves that there is no God.

If we enter eternity at death or any time then it is proven that nobody has psychic power. Reason scoffs at the mystics who claim to be able to transcend time and slip into eternity when they go into their trances. We might think, “Mystics such as Zen Buddhists and monistic Hindus make such ludicrous claims. If they really were in eternity where there is no past and future but only a present that never changes how did they get out of eternity? And especially when they shut down all mental activity? You need activity and the power to work in time to escape and if the eternal state is so terrific who would want to? Since they would still be in eternity when they emerge they would be able to utilize infinite psychic power if there is such power for being in eternity they are better than anything in time. Eternity is unlimited and time is limited. Their minds become unlimited in power for what is put into eternity can never be depleted for there is no change in eternity.”
 
The reply of the defenders of the mystics to these objections is that if you reach the eternal state all you want to do is enjoy the bliss and you will not use any powers when you come back to earth-level. Relishing the bliss is what you do with all your powers and when you come back to earth-level there is nothing left for anything else. The mystics are in eternity forever but they are also in time so they have to come back to time. Time is like an ante-chamber of eternity which is how they can be in both at the one time. Their past self is in eternity but the self after that is back in time.
 
The reply does not work for even if you leave your awareness in eternity to come back to time when you would be happier if you never returned to time it is clear that you would not come back to time at all especially when time is supposed to be a bad thing that keeps you away from the state of eternal happiness that is your right.

The theory that mad minds made all things and we are some of these minds incarnated is dangerous for it implies that when we went to all the trouble of becoming human beings to act mad that we should act that way and the madder we are the better for then the more we will be fixed for the next time we are reincarnated.

Nobody has the power to make themselves.
 
THE GOSPEL OF EVOLUTIONS
 
One reason religion thrives is because it offers a promise of everlasting life.

People can argue that death is not evil for we will just slip out of existence. But it and this argument are evil for it is better to exist.

This is a theory that might be right:
 
“Evolution is not one force but billions of forces which is why things evolve at different rates and conflicts between laws can cause setbacks. Things that seem never to improve may just be so slow that we cannot notice. Let the word evolution be on our lips no more. It is evolutions.”

 “There is no way the powers could let death be the end. If we do cease to exist they will bring us back.

 “Evolutions causes death when we would make more progress in a new existence but sometimes accidents will happen, in us the laws work to perfect our bodies and minds so that we will be perfectly good and happy. Evolutions must be enthroned in the place of God.

 “This is the simplest theory therefore we should accept it for it is our duty to agree with what is the most rational.

 “Sometimes people suffer in order that we may help them and evolve. We should not believe that people should suffer for Evolutions should be able to eradicate all suffering. If Evolutions did not happen on this world it happened on another.

 “We know that the mind can survive death when children who have hardly any brain matter still have minds for the mind is something that is plugged onto the body and is not the brain. The mind is a machine made of undetectable matter. It is not spirit for if a spirit goes unconscious then it would be non-existent for its nature is to be aware. And being without parts there would have to be no forgetting or making mistakes. That we have no souls or spirits is proven. Physics hints that the mind can exist even after being disembodied (page 229, God and the New Physics).

The theory that evolution points to everlasting life is also argument five for life after death in Handbook of Christian Apologetics. It just adds the idea that evolution is God’s design so he would not let death end all when he went to all that hard work through evolution. But if that is true then why has evolution led us to the ability to create nuclear weapons and destroy all life on earth? That nobody has pushed the red button yet is not the point. The point is that even evolution cannot stop some lunatic getting access to the button. If that happens evolution only wasted its time for it is not geared for life in a spirit world but life on earth.

The reply to this is that evolutions might not be able to make immortals but makes mortals on the basis that it is better to have a bit of loaf than no bread. What if the power incorrectly thinks that we live on?
 
MADE BY FREE AGENTS?

Here is the reasoning behind the notion that we made all things and caused evil and suffering by the misuse of free will before we became human beings.

A: Minds may have always existed or were made by chance and evolved themselves as far as they could. Like thoughts, they are made of undetectable matter. They had some scientific or strange power over matter so they made all things from chaos. They became human beings.

They had free will, the power to choose evil or good. Because if they had not they would have made themselves perfectly happy. They wanted to be happy but would not let themselves be. They may have made their free will dormant to become human if we don’t have free will. And they gave up their powers.

COMMENT: There is no need for them to become human or to abandon their powers so this is silly. Leaving your powers aside enables other stronger beings to do what they like with you. It is dangerous. We don’t have free will now but really evil beings would not give up free will in order to do more deliberate evil.

Can we be blamed for the evil we do now even if we don’t use free will now on the grounds that when we had free will we chose bodies with evil tendencies and to be born amid circumstances that drew us into evil and error? Is it like a man hypnotising himself to commit murder in a trance – he did not mean to commit the crime when he committed it but it was his fault?
 
No. If you give up free will you are no longer to blame. You are only to blame as long as you have free will.

We have to treat people like they have no free will and never had just in case. It is not true that denial of human free will destroys our way of life and human dignity.

A: We came here to be able to do things we could not do in the pre-existent state.

COMMENT: When we were able to make the world we were able to communicate with one another and imagine ourselves to be in paradise forever so what more would we want?
 
And if we have such great powers what did we make the rest of the universe for? Why didn’t we do something better with them? If we are Gods we don’t need to be on earth.
 
CONCLUSION
 
Most doctrines of the afterlife are silly and obviously false. However it is still possible that we survive death. We have no rational reason however to think that we do and to really care for our lives in this world we have to abandon the concept.

BOOKS CONSULTED

AFTER DEATH – WHAT? Fred Pearce, Christadelphian Publishing Office, Birmingham
ETERNAL LIFE, Hans Kung, Collins, London, 1984
GOD AND THE NEW PHYSICS, Paul Davies, Penguin Books, London, 1990
HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch, East Sussex, 1995
JEHOVAH OF THE WATCHTOWER, Walter Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House Publishers, Minnesota, 1974
IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? Paul Kroll, Worldwide Church of God, Pasadena, California, 1988
MIND OUT OF TIME, Ian Wilson, Gollanez, London, 1981
LIFE AFTER DEATH THE WONDERFUL FACTS, Alan Hayward, Christadelphian, ALS, Birmingham
REASONS FOR HOPE, Ed Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982
THE AFTER DEATH EXPERIENCE, Ian Wilson, Corgi, London, 1987
THE DEVIL HIDES OUT, David Marshall, Autumn House, Grantham, 1991
THE LIFE OF ALL LIVING, Fulton J Sheen, Image Books, New York, 1979
THE INCREDIBLE CREED OF JEHOVAH WITNESSES, Frs Rumble & Carty, TAN, Illinois, 1977
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEAVEN? Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Publishers, Oregon, 1988

The Web
 
www.csicop.org/sb/9803/reincarnation.html
Case of Reincarnation Re-examined by Joe Nickell. This refutes the reincarnation claims of Jenny Cockell.

BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible