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The Immortality of the Soul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

J. A. Harvie
J. A. Harvie
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Modern Languages, University of Otago
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Extract

In 1944–45 a survey was carried out on the topic of religion in a London borough, and in 1960 the survey was repeated in the same borough. In both 1945 and 1960 over forty per cent of those attending Anglican services said that they did not believe in a life after death. When due allowance has been made for the relative unreliability of public opinion sampling, it is nevertheless obvious that incredulity on this issue is widespread and probably increasing, even within the Church. There are at least two main reasons for this—that personal immortality is commonly held to be incompatible with the scientific view of man, and the apparent irrelevance of the belief for life in the here and now. The question in people's minds today is no longer what the Bible says about immortality, nor what the churches teach on the subject [if indeed they teach anything at all]. These questions can be answered by reading the Bible and by consulting manuals of doctrine. The problem is this: How is it possible in any meaningful sense to believe in a life after death in the 'sixties of the twentieth century?

Type
Section II: Christian Philosophy and Ethics
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , December 1969 , pp. 207 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 209 note 1 Ayer, A. J.: The Problem of Knowledge (London: Pelican Books, 1956), p. 193.Google Scholar

page 210 note 1 Bennett, J. G.: The Dramatic Universe: Vol IV History (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966) p. 21.Google Scholar

page 210 note 2 Isaacs, Alan: The Survival of God in the Scientific Age (London: Pelican Original, 1966), p. 66. According to Mr Isaacs, flatworms normally reach towards bright lights and contract when given electric shocks; but if exposed long enough to light and shock simultaneously, they will ‘learn’ to associate light with shock and thereafter contract when exposed to light alone. However, it is difficult to see how memory of this type differs from a conditioned reflex.Google Scholar

page 211 note 1 Heimito von Doderer: The Demons, tr. Richard, and Winston, Clara (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961), p.54.Google Scholar

page 213 note 1 ‘Scientific Survival Research’, International journal of Parapsychology, Spring 1967.Google Scholar

page 216 note 1 In the United States a new science called cyrogenics has been developed which is said to offer business opportunities totalling ‘trillions of dollars’. Early in 1967 a 73-year-old Californian professor of psychology died of cancer. His body was refrigerated and is to be revived when a cure for cancer has been discovered. For this he paid $10,000. [Article ‘American Think-tanks Study the Future’ in The Times of 3 June 1967.] If a cure for cancer was discovered in the year 2000 and the professor successfully resuscitated, what significance would this have for personal immortality? The short answer is, none whatever. There is a widespread tradition that the soul does not fully dissociate from the body for three days or even longer after clinical death, reflected perhaps in the three-day interval between the death and resurrection of Christ and in the custom of allowing corpses to lie in state. Refrigeration might simply produce physiological conditions which made it difficult or impossible for the soul to leave the body and create a situation akin to prolonged hibernation. If he did not suffer complete amnesia, the professor's account of his ‘experiences’ would be sensational but unverifiable. This provides a good illustration of the impossibility of establishing or refuting values by factual evidence.

page 218 note 1 The following passage has some relevance: ‘A clever monk can manage already on his first attempt to penetrate beyond the moment of rebirth to a perception of the mental and physical processes at the time of his decease. But for those who are not very wise the passage from one existence to another is hard to see and must seem impassable and very obscure, for the reason that the psycho-physical organism of the previous existence has wholly ceased and another one has arisen in its stead.’—Buddhist Scriptures, selected and translated by Conze, Edward (London: Penguin Classics, 1959), p. 132.Google Scholar

page 219 note 1 Ivan Karamazov argues that human love depends on immortality, without which everything would be permitted. ‘He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognised as the inevitable, the most rational, even honourable outcome of his position.’—Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov, tr. Garnett, Constance (London: Heinemann, 1949, reprint) p. 65.Google Scholar

page 219 note 2 Lermontov, M.Yu: Sobranie Sochineny v Chetyrëkh Tomakh (Moscow: 1957), tom pervy p. 201 ‘Kogda b v pokornosti neznanya …’Widely regarded as one of Russia's greatest poets, Lermontov was born in 1814 and died in 1841. In the West he is best known for his psychological novel A Hero of Our Time, which has several times been translated into English, most recently as a Penguin Classic.Google Scholar