The Afterlife Myth

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Afterlife was created to take the sting out of death for those left behind, ...

I doubt it.

 

[Shermana]

Right now. Your living it.

We are all spiritual zombies.

 

[Penumbra]

Humans are one of the few creatures that seem to realize that they'll be dead one day. The awkwardness of the human condition is that most people are instinctively wired to want to survive, and want to find the lives of themselves and others to be valuable, and yet they know they will one day die and they see how fragile lives can be. There are two strong and opposing pieces of knowledge that are kind of fighting themselves there; desire for life and the belief that it is valuable vs. the knowledge of death and how fragile life is.

It's pretty easy to justify a long-lived and happy life. But if a kid dies while she's young, or if a person lives an unhappy life and then dies, then there aren't many mundane things people can say to make the situation seem brighter.

People around the world have had all sorts of beliefs about afterlives since before recorded history, ranging from heaven to hell to reincarnation to dissolution into the rest of life, etc. I don't think it can be said that the afterlife was 'created' for any specific purpose; it's just something that people around the world identify with to varying degrees and in varying ways.

 

[Kemble]

I doubt it.

Surprisingly CDWolfe's statement is not a mere dismissal.

Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology: Afterlife Beliefs

Bering’s further hypothesis that human cognition is apparently not very good at “updating the list of players in our complex social rosters” [(Bering, 2006), p. 456] by adapting to the recent non-existence of any one of them suggests that people’s tendency to have afterlife beliefs may be explicable in terms of a residue of habitual social behaviours.* If this hypothesis were to find increasingly solid empirical support, it may well oblige certain religious traditions to abandon or make substantive revisions to their afterlife conceptions. Also, Bering’s suggestion that afterlife beliefs can be explained functionally as an illusion by design conferring survival advantages on those who curbed their selfish (and reputation damaging) behaviours through ‘fear of the watchful dead’ could be construed as an updated evolutionary version of the venerable ‘political imposture’ argument for the explanation of afterlife beliefs. On the face of it the implications of these hypotheses for religious belief are negative.* However, even were one to grant the adequacy of these hypotheses to explain all relevant features of afterlife beliefs, it cannot simply be assumed that these hypotheses as they stand are sufficient to explain away afterlife beliefs naturalistically – e.g., they are compatible with dualism and the possibility of afterlife survival which substance dualism at least opens up.* Nevertheless, the evolutionary stories which scholars are beginning to tell about these beliefs may force very substantial changes on certain religious conceptions of the afterlife, even if they arguably do not force an abandonment of the possibility of afterlife survival as such.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

The Afterlife was created to take the sting out of death for those left behind, ...I doubt it.

Surprisingly CDWolfe's statement is not a mere dismissal.

Not surprisingly ...

tak[ing] the sting out of death for those left behind ...​

is not equivalent to

... adapting to the recent non-existence of any one of them suggests that people’s tendency to have afterlife beliefs may be explicable in terms of a residue of habitual social behaviours.​

So, for example, CDWolfe's 'theory' does little to explain animism.

 

[LuisDantas]

Whatever causes belief in an afterlife is, I wish it was determined. The concept is so alien to me that I keep being surprised by finding out that there are people who believe in it.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Back to the OP...

Excerpting:

"...How cold and cruel this type of existence would be!...If you look at it logically, there is but one answer that makes sense:..."

First point: Your argument as presented here is predicated on certain emotional assumptions, and assumptions about emotions. Not necessarily wrong, but I am constantly encouraging my students to look carefully at their unexamined assumptions, which often appear under the guise of definitive statements, but are often based in their own emotions and socialized beliefs. There are numerous examples of people (individuals and cultures) who apparently do believe that there is no discernable purpose to life and death, and yet do not conclude that "existence" is "cold and cruel." Indifferent, perhaps...but that's not my point. Your argument assumes that there is ONLY ONE existential position to take regarding death (or perhaps more properly, that over prehistory and history, there is only one existential position that people have taken); I believe a study of philosophy and anthropology will suggest that there are a wide variety of responses to the observation that the dead are not physically inhabiting and moving the body they once did.

Second point: Your statement about logic is without logic. Logic is a system for assessing the possible validity of statements; its conclusions are predicated on the assumptions used in constructing the logical argument. Please lay out your logical argument, starting with your assumptions and working through your proofs, that "there is but one answer that makes sense," and that answer is indeed the one you offer as the explanation.

As others in this thread have suggested, there are other views about life and death, which makes other answers conceivable than the one alternative you offer. Even if the explanation you offer were to turn out to be the predominant explanation, it would not negate other explanations. Therefore, my response to your original question is, "No."

Unless you mean, are we living under such a false assumption that there is only one possible answer...;^)

 

[Kilgore Trout]

At what point did humankind come up with the afterlife? I am not necessarily referring to heaven or hell, but whatever supposedly happens after death (too many cultures, too many theories).

Seems like a natural progression for a species that 1) becomes consciously aware that their lives end, and 2) doesn't want their lives to end.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

The afterlife was a reasonable inference of primitive peoples who regularly (and unremarkably) experienced vivid dreams of those who had died.

I recently had a vivid dream where I was a chicken.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I recently had a vivid dream where I was a chicken.

Like I said ... reasonable inference.

 

[Sir Doom]

I recently had a vivid dream where I was a chicken.

Reincarnation is born... again...

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Like I said ... reasonable inference.

I suddenly feel like Wile E. Coyote.

 

[Sir Doom]

I suddenly feel like Wile E. Coyote.

Would you like to buy a catapult? They're on sale!

 

[McBell]

I suddenly feel like Wile E. Coyote.

huh?

You have an uncontrollable urge to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Acme products instead of just going to KFC?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

huh?

You have an uncontrollable urge to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Acme products instead of just going to KFC?

I like the blueprints.

 

[McBell]

I like the blueprints.

Yeah, them damn blueprints get me every time...