Life After Death.

What the specification requires:

• An examination of the arguments for and against life after death. • Reincarnation. • Rebirth. • Resurrection. • Immortality of the soul.

Introduction.

Humans have refused to accept that this life is all we get for thousands of years. As a result of this refusal, humans have developed various theories to explain that when our bodies cease working, there is some kind of existence that takes place after this.

Obviously, before getting into this debate, it is important to agree on what is meant by the word ‘death.’

‘…when respiration and other reflexes are absent; consciousness is gone…an absolute and total loss of the brain function that cannot be reversed.’

This is a medical definition and is based upon medical methods of determining physical (brain) death. These methods are generally the use of an electroencephalograph (EEG) to determine brain function, an examination of pupil size and reaction and obviously, a check of blood flow (pulse), heart beat and respiration. It is generally accepted that once a body exhibits brain stem death, i.e. that there is no activity in the most primitive part of the brain, that death has occurred.

What makes a human being?

Theories concerning life after death are all interested in whether or not there is a part of the human body which survives the death of all the physical parts and where (or indeed when) it goes.

There are a number of theories exploring what makes up a human being, but the basic distinction that you need to be aware of, is the distinctions between the materialist, monist and the dualist approaches. The distinction was basically started by the divergent opinions of the two great Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle; Plato being a dualist and Aristotle being a monist. Later thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and