William L. Rowe's Philosophy Of Religion: Life After Death

In William L. Rowe’s book, Philosophy of Religion, one of the chapters deals with the concept of life after death. The following paper is a synopsis of that chapter, presented with my personal opinions on the various concepts. The author tackles the subject of life after death by organizing the article into four areas of discussion. In the first, varieties of immortality, he looks at the predominant views of life after death in various civilizations. Next, the meaningfulness of immortality, examines whether or not it is a meaningful idea that a person survives death. The third area of discussion, the case for immortality, makes up the majority of this article and is broken down into several subtopics. Finally, the author concludes the
article by discussing the case against immortality. Now that you have an idea of how the original article is organized, let’s dive in and try to make sense of it all. It should come as no surprise that a lot of people believe that there is life after death.
In fact, people from most major religions, and many different civilizations, have some belief in the afterlife. Rowe begins the article by pointing out that over time several conceptions of the afterlife have emerged. “Varieties of Immortality,” looks at the most predominant, and begins with those that appear in ancient Greece. One is the Homeric and the other is the Platonic. The Homeric view is that something does survive death, but what survives is only a portion of what existed on Earth. The Platonic view is quite a bit different, it presents the human soul as immortal and imprisoned within the body, with death bringing the release of the soul. Although these two views differ, they share the concept of individual immortality. Next the author discusses a non- individual form of immortality. He uses the example of Hinduism, in which the soul transmutes to another body and the cycle of rebirth continues until the soul gains release and is absorbed into God, at which point it loses all individuality. Finally the author presents us with, resurrection, which is taught in Christian faith. In resurrection, the soul and the body form a unity and will be reunited in end times when the bodies of those saved have risen. In this version, the resurrected body is spiritual and immortal. The two beliefs most prevalent in western culture are the Platonic and the Christian, and in each
of these there is a common belief that the human person exists and has experiences after the death of their body. In order to try and understand these concepts, I try to associate them in a way that helps me visualize them. When I visualize the Homeric concept I think of any scary movie I’ve ever seen with a spirit or ghost. In these movies a semblance of the person remains, but it is not the same as when they were alive. When thinking about the Platonic concept I think of Stephen Hawking. Here is someone who has one of the greatest minds of our time, but for all intents and purposes is imprisoned in a body that has quit working. The Hindu version makes me think of Star Trek, and the Borg. In which the Borg’s only purpose is to assimilate all life forms into the collective. Finally, when I think of the Christian view, which most closely aligns with what I believe, I imagine a day when I will be reunited with family members who’ve passed. Again, this is just my interpretation of the article to this point. The next section of the article is “The meaningfulness of immortality,” and tackles some pretty complicated concepts of what it is to be a person, and what it is to be the same person after death. Rowe begins by listing 5 characteristics or features that are necessary to be considered a person. They are: actions and intentions, sensations and emotions, thoughts and memories, perceptions, and physical characteristics. Using the list above the author attempts to demonstrate the problems that arise when discussing only the soul surviving death, since it would likely not have many of the features listed. Moreover, if you take the Platonic view and a person is identified only as the soul, then the human body is not what makes someone a person. The Christian view of the soul reuniting with the risen body leads us into the question of what it means to be the same person. If you accept that after bodily death something continues in existence, a problem is created. The problem is in our belief that not only does a person exist after death, but that the same person exists. At this point the author backs off of the philosophical argument and concedes that these are questions that are outside the scope of the article. In my opinion, the five characteristics listed are not narrow enough to stipulate what makes a person.
It is unclear if these are the five attributes that are the most widely accepted in philosophical circles, or if Rowe is using them as an example to help illustrate the bigger question. To me, my pet dog demonstrates each of the characteristics mentioned in the article. But I would never say that my pet is a “person.” I think the point of this section was to briefly expose the reader to some of the more difficult to answer questions that surround life after death. In fact, the author asks us to assume that those difficult to answer questions have been solved and transitions into the next section of the
article. “The case for immortality,” makes up the majority of the article. In this section Rowe lets us know that there are three main arguments for the case of immortality. They are referenced throughout the remainder of the article as the philosophical, scientific, and theological arguments.
The philosophical argument, we learn, is based on the Platonic view that the soul survives and is a purely ethereal substance. The summary of the philosophical argument is: A) A thing can be destroyed by separating its parts. B) The soul has no parts. C) The soul cannot be destroyed. The summary of everything else that follows is essentially more hair splitting on what it takes to destroy something. Specifically, whether something ethereal can cease to exist through loss of intensity and further, if the soul is even a substance at all. The conclusion the author makes is that based on the philosophical argument, there are no grounds for believing in life after death.
The philosophical argument poses some tricky questions. The area that poses the most difficulty for me is the argument of intensity. I wonder if someone who has an aneurism or someone who is in a comma for a very long period of time still has experiences, even though the brain and body are not functioning on their own anymore. What is the state of the soul at this point? Does it exist in the same intensity when the body is in stasis?
The scientific argument is next, and we learn that it is almost entirely based on “mental mediumship.” This is the use of a living person to communicate with someone who has departed this earth, where something remains and the medium has a means of communicating with it. Rowe goes into great detail to explain the process for mental mediumship, and then provides us with what I assume is one of the most thoroughly documented examples. The case of Edgar Vandy is presented in extensive detail. Out of everything covered in this article, there are more pages devoted to the explanation of mental mediumship and the Vandy example, than there are to anything else. In my opinion it is kind of interesting, but it doesn’t seem like it should make up such a large portion of the article.
The theological argument is next, and if the scientific portion was given the most explanation, the theological argument is definitely given the least. At just one paragraph long, the theological argument used by Rowe is simply that if you believe God exists, then it is also reasonable to assume that life after death exists.
Based on certain comments made by the author in previous parts of the article, I was sure that Rowe was presenting an argument slanted towards believing in immortality based on theological arguments. However, I was very surprised when I got to this portion of the article and found just one small paragraph about the theological perspective. Perhaps it is because the argument chosen is so simple, or perhaps not.
Finally, Rowe presents “the case against immortality,” in which we learn that the major line of argument against human immortality is scientific in nature, and based on facts familiar to us all. Loosely, our mental life or what we consider consciousness is dependent on certain bodily functions, and that when those functions fail, or we die, the brain ceases to function and our consciousness ends. Interestingly, this thinking is very similar to the questions that I had when thinking about the philosophical argument. I guess this is probably everyone’s question, when we die and lose consciousness is that it? What happens next?
In closing out the article Rowe suggests to us that the philosophical argument based on the nature of the soul is unconvincing, that the scientific argument both for and against have merit, and that finally, apart from theism, there is more reason to think that we don’t survive death than that we do. The author’s final sentence follows. “In sum, unless we have good reason to accept theism, we do not have good reason on balance to believe in personal survival after bodily death.”
In my opinion this final sentence makes it even more difficult to determine what the authors underlying intent of the article is. It’s like Rowe is saying, unless you believe in God, there is no life after death. But if that’s the case, the argument for it is done in one small paragraph under the theological argument, and the final sentence of the article. On the other hand, it seems like a great deal of time is spent on reasons not to believe in life after death. At the end of the day what I take away from this whole debate is that you can’t prove it either way, and that I like to think that one day I will see all my loved ones again. If that turns out not to be the case, well I’ll be dead and I don’t suppose it will matter much anyway at that point.