Life after death

In my lifetime, I have come across a significant amount of suffering and experienced the death of a number of close relatives and friends; and yet, I believe life still has a positive meaning and that life with God follows death.

I acknowledge that for a number of people existence is senseless and useless and that nothing lies beyond the grave. This 'nihilistic' view of life is far from the isolated, oddball, radical philosophy many consider it to be. I have the highest respect for people who espouse this heartfelt belief.

What I find objectionable though is when militant atheists savage religion for the poisonous effect it has on our lives.

These people should acknowledge that different people have different beliefs about the afterlife and that these beliefs do not arise "from the innate self-importance of man, who is conceited enough to imagine that he survives death". Such beliefs do give these 'believers' a reason for living.

It has been argued that there is in all of us a need for connections that last beyond our own lifetime, a need to feel that our finite self is part of a larger something that endures. As Kahlil Gibran put it in his book The Prophet: "In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond... And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance".

For some, living on through nature serves them as an image of immortality. We die, they say, but the earth goes on and on and on. In returning to earth, we are literally part of that endless continuity. If the universe is consistently recreating itself, we would be the only aspect that is not involved, which does not make sense.

There is also the image of biological continuity, the image of living on through our children and theirs, or a broader 'bio-social' image of living through our nation, our race and mankind.

For others, immortality resides in those works and acts which have some impact on future generations - in the causes we fight for, and sometimes we die for, in the discoveries we make and the values we impart.

Others believe that we come back again into a new body - we are given a chance to fulfil desires and ambitions that were thwarted in this lifetime through some form of physical or mental handicap, an act of violence and whatnot.

Rapid advances in the field of stem cell therapeutics are bringing us closer to the elusive goal of harnessing the "immortal flame" that survives in a significant number of humankind. Indeed, it has become clear that, in the words of internationally known gerontology researcher Dr Michael West: "You and I are made from cells that have no dead ancestors and that we can harness the power of our undying cell lineage to achieve a taste of immortality." Time will tell.

In his book Life after Death, Dr Deepak Chopra, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, explores the theory that death is an illusion of the senses and that the soul survives in an ongoing spiral of refinement that ends in enlightenment. According to Dr Chopra, we are mind and spirit first and our home lies beyond the stars.

What remains of us after death is consciousness.

John Humphreys, a distinguished British journalist and agnostic had this to say in his book In God We Doubt about the common ground that exists between atheists and believers: "Both sides also acknowledge the presence of that still, small voice. But for believers its origin is divine and for atheists it is the voice of reason. As for me, it is difficult to understand the existence of conscience without accepting the existence of something beyond ourselves.

"You can call that higher power God or Brahma or Allah or - as Socrates did - your own personal oracle. What you cannot do is dismiss it."