ENDURING APPEAL OF IMMORTALITY!!

We have this powerful sense that death is a transition, not an end. Why can’t we imagine a world without us? Let’s begin like this.

Immortality is the indefinite continuation of a person’s existence, even after death. In common parlance, immortality is virtually indistinguishable from afterlife, but philosophically speaking, they are not identical. Afterlife is the continuation of existence after death, regardless of whether or not that continuation is indefinite. Immortality implies a never-ending existence, regardless of whether or not the body dies (as a matter of fact, some hypothetical medical technologies offer the prospect of a bodily immortality, but not an afterlife). 

Immortality has been one of mankind's major concerns, and even though it has been traditionally mainly confined to religious traditions, it is also important to philosophy. A substantial part of the discussion on immortality touches upon the fundamental question in the philosophy of mind: Do souls exists?? Dualists believe souls do exist and survive the death of the body; materialists believe mental activity is nothing but cerebral activity and thus death brings the total end of a person's existence. However, some immortalists believe that, even if immortal souls do not exist, immortality may be achieved through resurrection. 

People across the world, regardless of their religion or culture, believe that humans are immortal, according to research. A new study has shed some light on people’s beliefs that a person's soul or essence transcends the physical body’s death. Scientists think the belief that part of us is eternal emerges early in life and is part of our human nature, rather than something that is imposed on a person by a culture or religion.  

The biggest thing that attracts people to the idea of immortality is fear - fear of death, fear of what's on the other side of death, fear of nothingness or a deity or many deities, fear of change, or any number of other fears connected to dying.

An unhappy man is as truly alive as the happiest being in existence; and if he be immortal by nature, will continue alive through all eternity. In no plain, common-sense language can any immortal being be said to suffer Death. The nature of the self is self-preservation. Death is a real threat to the self and thus we have the fear of death. Most religions adhere to the belief in immortality on the basis of faith. In other words, they provide no proof of the survival of the person after the death of the body; actually, their belief in immortality appeals to some sort of divine revelation that, allegedly, does not require rationalization.

Our situation today is not so different. Although social surveys indicate that roughly 80 percent of Americans believe in life after death, it is a belief cherished against the grain of perceived official skepticism; and among academically trained religious thinkers, one finds a greater measure of skepticism than in the population at large. For many, immortality is not a matter for reasoned debate, but is simply ruled out of play, along with guardian angels and statues that weep. It is taken for granted, as if it were a premise accepted by all reasonable people, that no one seriously believes in Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, in the life of the soul, the resurrection of the body, or the personality of God as the concrete realities they were once imagined to be.

We may prefer to view images of life after death as metaphors for the transcendent dimension of human existence. This is right, but it is not enough. Talk of the transcendent dimension is effective only as long as it continues to have a purchase on a concrete and living myth of the other world, a “true myth”!

“If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.”
                                                                         - Fyodor Dostoevsky