lifestyles
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MARCH 16, 1995 PAGE 6A
What awaits
Afterlife?
Answers to the question of life after death differ from culture to culture, person to person and religion to religion
By Luisa Flores
Kansan staffwriter
Many times in life we question death and wonder whether there is something beyond the grave. For many University of Kansas students, these questions are easily answered.
Eric Tsai, El Dorado sophomore, believes there is nothing beyond death. Tsai, who is agnostic, says that he believes in God but that he does not believe in an immortal human soul.
"I believe that once we are dead, we are dead. I don't believe in soul or spirit." he says.
Sory Sangare, Lawrence senior, who is Muslim, says there is certainly something beyond the grave.
"We have a soul. Depending on our deeds in this world, it is determined where are we going to go after we die."
For some, this is a comple religious and philosophical subject that can be easily explained with faith, religion or sci-
Daniel Breslauer, professor of religious studies, is interested in life after death. He says that burial rituals were the first indication of belief in an afterlife.
"First, there is the general idea that the human body should be buried because it wouldn't look right to see birds coming down and eating a human corpse," Breslauer said.
Breslauer says that the Old Testament generally indicated that early Jews did not believe in life after death.
"There are several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Ecclesiastes and the book of Job, that explicitly say this is the end," he said.
Breslauer said that the only book in the Old Testament that had a reference to the resurrection was the book of Daniel. According to Daniel, some would be resurrected for punishment after they died, and some would be resurrected for reward, he said.
"My feeling is that human beings are both curious and adventurous, so we want to experiment with what idea we find sounds good to us," Breslauer said.
After the biblical period, people from different nations held all kinds of beliefs, he says. And sometimes, Jews and Christians believed in life after death, resurrection or reincarnation.
"So the variety of views about death, life after death, resurrection and reincarnation come from the Middle Ages up to the modern period."
William Arnold, professor of sociology, who also studies death and life after death, says the belief in an afterlife has several functions, depending on the society's religion.
Arnold says that in Hinduism, the soul is reborn in a cycle in which it moves up a chain of spiritual evolution. This makes people strive for a better reincarnation in the next life, he says. They believe in an afterlife, not as an individual soul, but as a collective soul.
For some tribal people, life after
For some tribal people, life after death acts as a kind of social control. Some tribes believe their ancestors' souls can get into coconut shells, which are put over the roofs of their houses. The ancestors can teach over their lives
watch over their living relatives from these shells and make sure they behave.
In Christianity, the afterlife creates optimism about the eventual victory of God and goodness. Some Christians believe that in their afterlife they will be punished or rewarded for their behavior on Earth.
Arnold says the belief in afterlife also has a commercial function in what he calls the "salvation industry."
"The whole missionary enterprise was created to save souls based on the belief that human beings have an immortal soul." he said.
The mortalist position says that the soul goes to sleep until Christ comes.
The mortalist
Arnold says that Christians primarily hold two different views of what happens after a person dies
And the other position says that when one dies the soul goes to heaven.
that the soul goes to sleep until Christ comes back again
Andy Garlick, Litchfield,
Conn., junior, holds
this position.
this position.
"There is an after-
life. There are two
directions if one
is a Christian.
There is a
heaven
and hell. If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, you will go to hell," he said.
Arnold says that from the Marxist perspective, belief in the afterlife has social-control functions: The rich people controlling the poor. The Marxist idea that religion is the opium of the masses means that as long as people believe they are going to have a good afterlife, they won't be rebellious in this life.
Christians, Jews and Muslims believe in the soul and in afterlife. However, there are other societies and religions that deny this belief.
Arnold says that in the traditional religions of China, belief in afterlife is not strong.
"What people do is revere their dead ancestors so that could be an indirect way to have somewhat of a belief in afterlife." he said.
When a society does not believe in an afterlife, it creates other ways to survive death, Arnold says.
"Some ways to do this are to survive through children or through great accomplishments," he said.
Arnold says that he personally believed in immortality.
"I am a fairly traditional person. I hold to the mortalist position in which everybody goes to sleep," he said.
"I think this belief has become less important to people than it used to. And I wonder if it's because life is longer than it used to be," he said.
People now live longer than they did in the past, and maybe people feel that they have to do more in this life and not worry so much about
if she die and not worry so much about afterlife, he says.
at do you believe? This question continues in everyone's lives.
Nery Gonzalez,
Corinto, Nicaragua,
Applied English Center student, said, "I don't believe in life after death a lot, but according to my ancestor's beliefs, there is a spiritual life. According to religion it will be a new life, and it will be a lot better."
Mike Copeland, Great Bend freshman, does believe in the afterlife.
"I believe I am Christian. I'm not sure what it really is, but I believe it is good. I have faith it is something better. Heaven is a place that I look forward to," he said.
COULDN'T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
— A central Florida enterprise called Pyramids Unlimited plans to approach several towns with its venture of a 50-story-high, pyramid-shaped tomb that would hold 300,000 crypts and house a chapel at the top. Said Pyramids spokesman Ben Everidge of the $200 million project, "We're not talking some tacky mall here."
— In September, a 25-year-old woman was abducted from her home in Carrollton, Ohio, by a man police identified as Donald Eugene Bright, 37. According to police, Bright took her to a motel near Pittsburgh, Pa., where he raped her. She escaped, and, shoeless, ran along a road, avoiding Bright's pursuing car, unsuccessful in getting assistance from passsby. So many motorists refused to help
her that
when
police
finally
picked her
up, she
had run 15
miles from
the motel
— In October, in Jakarta, Indonesia, authorities discovered one of the largest caches of drugs ever found in a smuggler's stomach. Basudev Parajuli, 26, of Katmandu, was carrying at least 2.6 pounds of heroin, valued at $460,000.
— In December in Stuart, Fla., Francis Reichert, 58, inadvertently dislodged a cherry pit, one-half inch in diameter, from his nose during a routine visit to his doctor. Reichert said that he had stuffed cherry pits up his nose to impress playmates when he was a kid but that he had not done that since he was 8. Reichert's doctor said the pit may be the longest-standing object ever discovered in someone's nose.
CHUTZPAH
— According to a November Wall Street Journal story, a traveler telephoned the Hyatt Hotel in Dubai to ask that it send him luggage that he had absentmindedly left behind. The luggage already had been searched for identification by the hotel and was found to contain Hyatt towels, Hyatt silverware, a Hyatt clock and a Hyatt bathroom scale.
— In July, James Dixon, 29, demanded that police come to his home in Syracuse, N.Y., and listen to his complaint about drug trafficking in his neighborhood. After the visit, on a hunch, one officer stayed behind as the police car pulled away from the building. Almost immediately, the officer reported, a stream of customers knocked on Dixon's door to buy drugs. A search turned up 84 bags of crack cocaine.
— In December, three men were arrested in Russellville, Ark., and charged with theft. The men lived in a three-bedroom house that, according to the sheriff, was built and furnished entirely with stolen materials — everything, according to an investigator, from the plywood to a porch swing to the teapots.
FAMILY VALUES
- At sentencing in November in Brattleboro, Vt., for killing his father with a chainsaw. Kevin Record, 28, was asked
by the judge if he had any regrets. Said Record, "One of my main regrets is that I wasn't able to take the chainsaw to the rest of my family."