The Greek have this to say about immortality of the soul:
- Only the Gods are truly immortal (physically), but live in shadow of themselves.
That is they aren't compleately human or mortal.
- The person has a soul and it is released in better shape then when in the body.
This next of these conceptions is the Eastern view on immortality of the soul:
- Immortality is undesirable. You want to release into the spiritual realm rather then
to be reincarnated over and over again. Reincarnation is viewed as punishment.
The last one is the conception of the Muslims on immortality of the soul:
- A soul without a body is not a person and will roam in the spirit world in confusion.
You must pass on to the afterlife or be reincarnated.
David Hume has a say so in this discussion. Here he presents the philosophical argument on immortality. He says the soul can't be destroyed. This is how he proves it:
- Nothing can be destroyed except for the separation of it's parts.
- The soul doesn't have parts.
- Therefore, the soul can't be destroyed.
Hume also says that the soul is known as self. The self is not just one thing, but also a collection of memories, like thoughts and perceptions or by the senses.
H.H. Price presented the scientific approach to immortality or life after death, by discussing mental medium ship. Price says there are at least 4 people involved in a reading:
- Sitter - the person that wants to contact the spirit.
- Medium - the person that communicates with the spirits.
- Control - the spirit that interprets between the living and the spirits.
- Communication - the spirit that the sitter is trying to contact.
Price says that medium ship can be risky and can be the basis for fraud. Sometimes the medium gets lucky by guesses right or they consult another medium. To reduce fraud a sitter may request a Proxy sitter join, which is a person that sits in and doesn't know anything about the situation, to help catch fraud.
Price also talks about two hypotheses that are supposed to help in understanding how a medium finds out things about people and spirits. They are:
- Super ESP - a medium can read the mind of the sitter, spirits, even family and
friends (living and deceased) that aren't even present.
- Survival - the deceased person's memories live on and they can be contacted by the
control or the medium.
The preceding were arguments that didn't really argue against immortality. The following is an argument against immortality:
- Our mental life is seriously reduced when parts of the brain is injured or damaged.
- Therefore, it is very likely that our mental life is dependent upon the existence and
proper functioning of the brain.
- At death our brain ceases to function.
- It is highly probable that at death our mental life completely ceases.
J.M.E. McTaggart disagrees. He says, once a person's soul leaves, the mind is not dependent on the brain anymore. (While we have a body, our mental life is a slave to our brain.)
The argument above on the idea that the mental life compleately ceases to function after death seemsed wrong to me. Although the first three make sence, the last one didn't. It was lacking something. As far as I'm concerned, McTaggart nailed the missing link right on the head.