Life Hereinafter
By Masood H Kizilbash
Islamabad, Pakistan

 

Every religion of the world believes that human beings are temporarily housed in physical bodies and as soon as they die, the soul which is an eternal non-material being continues to exist ad infinitum. In other words, all religions believe in dualism of body and soul. Human societies from Greek era to mid-twentieth century adhered to this belief.

The belief is well- articulated by Socrates: “What is it that, presents in a body, makes it living? A soul.... And as now, if we agree that deathless is indestructible, the soul, besides being deathless, is indestructible.......If the deathless is indestructible, then the soul, if it is deathless, would also be indestructible - Necessarily.” (G.M.A.Grube: Plato p 145)

The belief held sway until the religious scholars themselves denied the existence of any concept of soul in Christianity. The denial was necessary to unleash materialism which had become a hallmark of the late twentieth century. Consequently, dualism was replaced by the percept of Physicalism, that humans are composed of only one part - physical body.

There are a number of scholars in the West, particularly USA, who have argued that the concept of soul in Christianity was a borrowed concept from the Greeks incorporated in old and new testaments and was not an original concept in Christianity. Among them, the name of Nancey Murphy, Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California figures prominently.

As some scholars, such as Warren Brown, came out with the thesis that dualism and physicalism was due to a conflict with science, Murphy exclaimed: “But when Warren raised the issue of specter of conflict with science, I decided that it was too important to the church to stay on the sidelines.” (Nancey Murphy, Do Humans Have Souls? Perspective from Philosophy, Science, and Religion)

Basing on the findings of Noble Laureate Francis Crick who discovered the structure of DNA that “the idea that man has a dismembered soul is as unnecessary as the old idea that there was a Life Force’, Murphy turns to Neuroscience to come up with the thesis that the characteristics of humans that have historically been attributed to the mind or soul can better be understood by brain functions. In this regard, he goes on to claim that prudence and morality are pretty obviously dependent on the functioning of particular regions of the brain so much so that he ascribes all human activities to the functioning of the brain.

Murphy concludes, “I want to get the word out to as many people as I can that it is possible to reconcile the exciting developments in neuroscience with Christian belief. Physicalism is a perfectly acceptable alternative to dualism. And although I do not have the space to go into it here, I predict that it will have interesting implications for all aspects of religious thought, ranging from ethics to the theories of afterlife.”

The theory of physicalism of Nancey is based on the argument that there is a consensus among the neurologist that mind or brain is the ultimate regulator of human activity so much so that it can change our brain states. The argument based on neural phenomenon may be as illogical as our consensus on the existence of the soul. Dr Joshua Farris in his article “The Soul and Science: Challenging the Consensus” dated March 22, 2019 contradicts the value of neuroscientific consensus on the ground that “Arguably neuroscience has very little to say that is direct about our mental and internal lives. It might tell us about various neurons in our brain and what those neurons do, but neuroscience tells us little about the nature of consciousness, thought, value, experience ...often associated with the soul.”

The scientists, including neuroscientists, have offered no concrete evidence that refutes the existence of the soul. What to speak of proof of non-existence of soul, science has not provided a definite answer to the origin of the universe or the earth. We have several theories on the subject. Hume categorized sciences dealing with mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. He goes on to remark that “All ultimate scientific ideas are equally rational conception.” Hence, he laid down the First Principle out of his six Principles as “The Unknowable”

Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson in their book We Have No Idea, Riverhead Books, 2017, repeat our ignorance about the origin of the universe. They observe, “While we need only three particles to build stars, planets and pickles, it turns out that these things make up only a tiny fraction of the universe. The kind of matter that we consider normal because of it’s the only kind we know is fairly unusual. Of all the stuff (matter and energy) in the universe, this kind of matter accounts for only about five percent of the total. What is the other 95 percent of the universe? We do not know.”

The fact of the matter is that we are ignorant not only about the origin of the universe and the beginning of human life on the earth, we are bereft of the knowledge of the origin of everything in the universe. Henry S Lucas in his book ‘A Short History of Civilization, McGraw- Hill Book Company published in 1953 has lucidly explained the point. He states as under:

“At the outset of our study on the history of civilization, we are forced to consider the profoundest of mysteries -he origin of things. The natural sciences in which the modern world has made notable advances, do not help us much in solving these difficult problems. Chemistry deals with the organization of matter but has not penetrated the secrets of matter and its origin. Geology deals with rocks and earth forms but has not revealed their beginnings. Biology is concerned with organic things but has not advanced beyond arranging an evolutionary scale of plant and animal forms. Scientists, however, have shown by laboratory experiments that the earth is 1,850,000,000 years old. They declare that this staggering total of years must be assumed as the earth’s age on the basis of the rate at which radium-bearing minerals as thorium and uranium break up and produce other elements.”

Science is based on the law of probability as ingrained in assumptions, presumption and guess work. It is confirmed by the fact that a theory today is contradicted tomorrow because human beings have no knowledge about the origins of everything. This is evident from our lack of knowledge about the spread of Covid-19 and its other variants that are engulfing the globe. With such a little knowledge how can one reject dualism, indestructibility of soul and life hereinafter?

(The writer is a former government servant, author of articles and monographs and several books, the latest being ‘Human Conflict with Nature-Alarm Bell for the Demise of our Modern Civilization’)