Life After Death?

In the past week, two friends died.  Karen was sure she was going to heaven.  She lived her life based on that idea.  The other, Michael, didn’t harbor that vision and lived without such an end in mind.

Both were very good people who followed moral and ethical precepts, even though they had opposing views on the afterlife.  Karen was positive she’d be welcomed into a bucolic setting where she could await the arrival of her husband.

Michael was sure nothing happened.

I believe Michael is correct.

Just for starters, what are the criteria for a heavenly berth?  The only ones we know were created by humans.  As a result, they are contradictory.  A person can be rewarded and condemned simultaneously for the same act.  For example, a Christian who converts to Islam would be condemned to hell by Christianity and promised heaven by Islam for doing exactly the same thing. 

Heaven?

Besides, who knows what the rules are?  Some people point at the 10 Commandments, but they do not constitute a plan of action for anyone going to heaven.  No such promise is made in the text or even hinted at.  In fact, there’s no mention of a heaven or hell in the 39 books of the Jewish Bible.  The 23^rd Psalm offers the “valley of death,” which isn’t either.  The Prophet Ezekiel raised up dry bones, but there’s no indication that their owners were previously residing anywhere but on Earth.

The New Testament simply claims that anyone who believes in Jesus will go to heaven.  That, however, excludes anyone born before Jesus was voted divine status by other humans who lived 300 or so years later and never knew him.  Estimates place that number of people who lived prior to Jesus in the billions, not to mention the four billion people living today who don’t belong to a Christian faith. 

Only believers in one faith, among the thousands of existing religions, can expect a heavenly reward?  Karen based her existence on the promise, which is at best arrogant and chauvinistic.

Hell?

Which heaven? Islam has a heaven; so do the Zoroastrians, who conceived the idea of a heavenly reward for believers. Both are sure Christians are condemned to hell, which Zoroastrians also invented.

Then, there’s the question of location.  Where is heaven or hell?  As anyone who has studied astronomy knows, there is no “above” or “below.”  We live on a planet floating in nothingness without an up or down.  The biblical account of a “firmament” above and below is not only physical incorrect, it comes from the Babylonian creation myth.  The “firmament” is the bisected body of the ousted chief goddess, Tiamat.

Dante

Her name lives on as the word “chaos” in the first sentence of the Bible.

As for hell, the idea that anyone would be punished in such gruesome ways for eternity belies even the most modest claims about God’s supposed justice and mercy.  On top of that, the tales of hell come from the Italian poet Dante, whose description sprung from his imagination.  No one has ever suggested divine guidance for his poetry.

Inmates in hell invariably committed crimes against humanity, such as the bloody, devilish jury in the story The Devil and Daniel Webster, or failed to lived up to religious precepts.  As such, hell is conceived as punishment for those who failed to achieve human-generated standards.

The same contradictions apply here as with heaven.  Not even a deity could unravel that knot.

Finally, none of us can conceive of not existing.  That’s why we conjure up images of a heaven or hell.  Nevertheless, no one seems perturbed that none of us have the slightest awareness of existence before birth.  It’s just an enormous void. There’s no reason the same can’t be true after death.

One final note: Michael died of pancreatic cancer.  The cause of such a disease is often unknown, but doctors told Michael that he belonged to a small group of people who inherited a gene that encodes pancreatic cancer. As such, no matter how much he prayed during his life or how saintly he behaved, he was likely to develop the disease. 

There’s nothing godly about that, as any of the victims of other genetic diseases can attest. Their hell, as Michael learned, is on this planet. Heaven was their release from it.

That’s why Michael’s last request was that his wife, daughter and family go out to dinner after he died, drink a toast to him and talk about him.  They don’t have to pretend he’s being rewarded in some special heaven or being tormented in hell.

That’s for people like Karen who need rosy illusions.  The rest of us will just have to get along with a more prosaic reality.

To quote a Peggy Lee song: "If that's all there is, then let's keep dancing, break out the booze and have a ball ... if that's all there is."

That's all there is.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His most recent book is Passover in Prison, which details abuse of Jewish inmates in American prisons.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

Ghosts of Spiritualism Linger

Medium

Spiritualism, a religion most folks have never heard about, actually was all the rage globally back in the 1920s.  That’s the belief that personalities live on after death and can be contacted by the living via mediums.

The concept has faded away, largely through the efforts of debunkers who showed that so-called mediums were invariably frauds.  Living people blew the heavenly trumpets, not spirits, and they manipulated tables and the like without other worldly assistance.  Harry Houdini, who was then well known as a magician and an escape artist, led the charge against Spiritualism, which was supported by such well-known personages as Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries.

Houdini was joined by religious leaders from around the world, who saw Spiritualism as an attack on their faith. 

Houdini

Spiritualism’s attractions are obvious.  People were drawn to the belief because of personal tragedy.  They wanted to maintain contact with a dead loved one.  That’s how Houdini got involved.  He hoped to contact with his late, beloved mother and became disgusted when renowned mediums tried to defraud him.

I have been reading a book about Houdini’s efforts against Spiritualism, a tale that focused on a Boston woman who was seen as the world’s best medium.  Houdini was able to demonstrate how she pulled off her tricks and helped destroy her reputation.   

Then, I received a tweet from a friend, Jack, telling me about the sad death of his wife, Karen. Jack wrote that he looked forward to seeing her again in heaven. While he didn’t mean to raise a question, he did: How is his belief in a heavenly afterlife any different than Spiritualism?

Jack doesn’t intend to talk to Karen through a medium, of course, but fully expects to greet his late wife in some ethereal abode.  In Spiritualism, the place was called Summerland.  There’s no difference.  The logic is the same, too: the dead person really isn’t gone, just translated to a special place to await the arrival of a loved one.

Of course, to get there, Jack must believe in a certain religion.  Otherwise, neither he nor Karen could go to their imaginary heaven.

It’s the same snake oil once sold by people who dressed up in robes and orchestrated “messages” from those in the great beyond.

No wonder organized religions protested Spiritualism.  They didn’t like competition. Houdini didn’t have that concern.  He was a non-practicing Jew who had no apparent interest in any religion.  He didn’t care what religion a medium was.  He only was concerned if any contact really could be made into the spirit world.

Conan Doyle

Religions on the other hand saw a loss of followers and their accompanying money.  So, they vociferously protested Spiritualism to the point that even Conan Doyle spoke out against organized religion.

Once Spiritualism was destroyed – or, at least, shoved underground – organized religion was then free to continue to purvey the same nonsense about a heaven for their members.  They didn’t have to use bells and whistles, or spiritual manifestations.  They could rely on “sacred” books and pious claims to accomplish the same thing.

By the way, none of this is new, at least not with organized religion.  All faiths have absorbed competition by the simple expedient of re-branding a holiday or idea.  Spirits long preceded today's religions and were a mainstay of ancient faiths. They were just co-opted into "souls" that wing their way to "heaven."

That’s more comforting than reality, but just as much malarkey as anything Spiritualism ever claimed.  In fact, although Spiritualism these days may only hover about in the shadowy corners of society, the ideas encapsulated in its teaching prosper, just as they have for thousands of years.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His most recent book is Passover in Prison, which details abuse of Jewish inmates in American prisons.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

Casting Out the Real Devil

Devil casting per the Bible

On Christmas I was watching a television show on Jesus with my brother-in-law.  It was explaining how Jesus cast out devils that lodged inside all sorts of people.  The narrator said that Jesus would ask the devil to reveal its name and then order him to leave.  After a few minutes of such hogwash, I asked Michael to change the channel.

He wanted to know why I objected since the biblical text is loaded with devil-tossing episodes. He’s right.  They include:

And He healed many who were ill with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and He was not permitting the demons to speak, because they knew who He was. (Mark 1:34)

Now the woman was a Gentile, of the Syrophoenician race. And she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. (Mark 7:26)

And He went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee, preaching and casting out the demons. (Mark 1:39)

When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. (Matt: 8:16)

And He was casting out a demon, and it was mute; when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke; and the crowds were amazed.  (Luke 11:14)

“You just don’t like religion,” my brother-in-law said.

I disagree. I don’t like mythological nonsense.

Gospels

The Gospels were written close to 2000 years ago.  Mark is dated from about 70; then Matthew and Luke around 85; and John sometime close to 95, although it could be later than that.  As a result, none of those writers knew a thing about psychiatry.  They had no concept of chemical imbalances or how the brain functions.  They didn’t understand allergies or reactions to food, schizophrenia, psychophrenia, hallucinations or any of the others real conditions now identified and treated by modern science.

All they knew was that people sometimes acted strange.  To them, the cause was the devil or members of his satanic clan.  Everyone one else in that region had similar ideas.  So, that’s what they wrote about.  That was more than a millennium after Egyptians were conducting brain surgery.  In the Middle Ages, based on the absurd biblical accounts, Western surgeons were still (fatally) opening skulls to let "devils" out while Arab doctors were applying poultices.

Maybe Jesus was able to help these people, as described, but he didn’t do it by “casting” out a nonexistent entity that was supposedly was harming an innocent victim. No sane person today could plausibly claim that some internal demon created a problem.  The lone attempt to do that, in a Connecticut murder case, failed completely.

Wilson

The late comedian Flip Wilson turned the phrase “the devil made me do it” into a comic catchphrase, a fate it deserves.

The concept doesn’t even coincide with the beliefs of those who kneel before the Gospel and believe it to have been dictated by God.   They also believe in free will. How can anyone have free will when a devil is supposedly holding the reins?

As a result, as I told my brother in law, I was appalled any television show would attempt to pawn off the casting out of devils as plausible. Michael obligingly changed the channel. 

Since these biblical accounts are obviously inaccurate, what is someone who reads them supposed to think?  Maybe the devil-casting tales are metaphors.  Other biblical stories are now treated that way since they cannot be accurate. 

However, anyone insisting that the multiple devil outings were simply metaphors would expose a real weakness in believing the texts were dictated by God.  If one story, told straight forward without a hint of symbolism, is a metaphor, maybe the other so-called “miracles” are, too.  Maybe they are just tales designed to teach us a lesson.  If that’s the case, then, the authors are simply using Jesus as a tool for instruction, not some image of the divine.

To evade such a disaster, believers insisting on the rectitude of the Bible are forced to swear by a devilish idea long discredited.  For good measure, they then have to disregard all the scientific research in such fields as geology, astronomy, anthropology, archaeology and the like that undermine biblical accounts. In fact, they are obligated to live in complete ignorance. 

That’s one devil that really needs to be cast out.

Long-time religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious history.  He also speaks at various religious organizations throughout Florida.  You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.  He is the author of the famed Unauthorized Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel Writers Get Their Information; Noel: The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols; and Dummies Guide to Comparative Religion.  His most recent book is Passover in Prison, which details abuse of Jewish inmates in American prisons.  His books are available on Amazon.com, Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.  He can also be followed on Twitter.

You can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1