Belief In Life After Death Comes From Emotion, Not Reason .
Bertrand Russell (Philosophy of Religion, B. Davies, p.721-723).
What happens after life is over? Philosophers used to think that the soul .
once created would last forever, even without the body. Russell points out that .
this is false. He defines our life as an ever-changing entity continually moving by .
our process of nutrient and wastage. In which atoms come and go and do not .
have a continuing existence. The body is a matter of behavior and appearance, .
but not of continuity of a person in which is a constant of habit and memory. We .
base our selves on the recollections of the past and continue to improve. So if .
this were the case then once life is over our mind or soul would continue to .
function as before with a new set of occurrences. He goes on to say that this .
could happen, but unlikely to. He compares memories to a flowing river that .
water will continue to change, but would keep a constant flow. If mountains .
were to appear then the river would stop flowing. So then that the mind would .
cease to exist just as the river would. Our emotions and memories determine our .
knowledge of moral and immoral behavior, but since it is possible for a person to .
suffer from brain damage and wipe away memory, so it would make sense to .
say the mind would not be able to survive death. Emotions are what cause .
people to behave in life after death. But if we truly believe that there is life after .
death then we should not fear it. Another emotion into believing that there is life .
after death is the admiration of the excellence of Bishop Birmingham says, "His .
mind is a far finer instrument then anything that had appeared earlier - he .
knows right and wrong. He can build Westminster Abby. He can make an .
airplane. He can calculate the distance of the sun shall then, man at death .
perish utterly?" (B. Davies p. 722). The Bishop argues that the universe is .
governed intelligently, so since it made man, should it let him perish?.
