Some of us believe souls survive death, and some of us don’t. The two beliefs are nakedly adversarial. They are two religious positions which are so far apart that conversation usually cannot bridge them. At some deep stratum these are actually the two camps that make up the human race, and many moral and political disagreements are really just these visions, warring from guerilla disguises.
The gulf is hard to overstate, since the believers and the deniers can’t finally even talk about the meaning of any loved one’s death without angering each other. Despite the millions of words that will be spent today arguing over such abstractions as “the meaning of suffering”, none of these words generate light, only heat, because at least one has a mental picture of a specific lost love one. So it’s like one person barking, then the other responding with a meow. No communication has occurred, though both may leave ruffled.
Cloaked premises make for painful conversations, even between the good-hearted.
You’d never evaluate the morality of any event while intentionally blinding yourself to the sequelae. You’d never reach a final conclusion on a scene or character without seeing it all through to the curtain. The ending colors the beginning and middle.
Yet these debates attempt to stop the play, have one viewer say “nothing comes next” and another say “there is an infinite number of scenes left” and then intelligently discuss the play. They’re literally talking about two different stories. Shall we blind ourselves to the state of a person a minute after death, then try to talk about whether that death was good or bad, fair or unfair? For believer or skeptic alike, this is stupid logic.
The only hope to make such conversations productive would be to actually talk about life after death. But this is seldom the topic, because there isn’t actually much material. Christians accept a written report, skeptics do not. That simple.
Of course, even the believer doesn’t know enough about the condition of the individual dead to talk about it, even to himself, and for the purpose of talking to the unbeliever he knows nothing (though he may believe much.)
In fact, the believer is rendered silent about individual deaths precisely by his belief in an undetermined eternity. He can repeat what his scripture teaches about eternal states, but since the skeptic doesn’t accept his scripture this is futile, and often insulting to the skeptic.
I say “silent about individual deaths”….what we believers believe is that the dead behold the Creator an instant after death, and that beatific vision subsumes the entire life leading up to it.
I’m not objecting at all to traditional Christian comfort at funerals. “She’s in a better place…her suffering is over…etc.” These are believers talking to each other. Within their common vision their words make sense.
It’s just that non-believers can’t be expected to do other than scoff at assertions of “God’s will” or paradise after death.
But, by the same logic, believers will just never see the same meaning, or lack of meaning, in any moment of suffering. Even when your faith is strained, when suffering is no longer a word in a blog post but is your child in pain – even then you can’t pretend not to see the story continuing after death. It may be no consolation, you may even hate your own dogma, but you’ll still see the play from the balcony seat, while the skeptics are at ground level.
My point here is not about comfort or emotional truths at all. All the emotional days and nights we roll through, all the scenery in the story, is all hung on logical scaffolds, which are usually invisible. Those who believe the stage is infinite and those who believe it is not could save lots if time.
Either argue about the size of the play, or just stop.