God, Probability and Life after Death reveals its objective in its title, namely, to present an exploratory argument concerning the probability of human resurrection. The exploratory argument follows a probabilistic passage along an evidential trail to the discovery of the probability of life after death. It is a trail that the reader can personally engage with in order to reach their own conclusion and even introduce additional evidence they think relevant. The argument begins with the probability of the existence of God, and once a position is established on this issue, the argument becomes empowered for the next stage, which is to address the evidence for human resurrection, namely, the Resurrection of Jesus, near-death experiences and apparitions. The probabilistic relationship between the evidence and the resurrection hypothesis is critically examined throughout the book by engaging the potential views of an atheist and agnostic in addition to that of a theist. On this probabilistic journey, other issues relevant to the resurrection argument are introduced, such as personal identity and the possibility of resurrection given the nature of our world. Evidence and argument for a non-supernatural possibility for human resurrection are also considered. Significantly, the author does not assume the normal spiritual approach to human resurrection, when a disembodied soul leaves the body to continue a spiritual existence in a ghostly realm. Instead, a materialistic approach is taken, whereby the resurrected person survives in bodily form in a physical realm. The use of probability theory is intended to keep the evidential argument within the bounds of coherent reasoning. It also enables the argument to link one piece of evidence to the next in a probabilistic sequence that eventually leads to the conclusion that human resurrection is not only possible, it is also very likely.

Unlike many books about the afterlife, Life after Death makes no appeal to religious faith, divine revelation, or sacred texts. Drawing on some of the most powerful theories and trends in physics, evolutionary biology, science, philosophy, and psychology, D'Souza shows why the atheist critique of immortality is irrational. It is not only reasonable to believe in life after death; it is also beneficial. Such a belief gives depth and significance to this life, a path to happiness, and reason for hope.

What happens when we die? Will we simply dissolve into nothingness, or will we survive death in some other form? Issues of death and dying have consumed humanity from time immemorial. In our modern western culture, we have tended out of fear to deny and push death away. And yet, a healthy consideration of this issue can help us embrace and understand what happens to us when we die. There is Life After Death is Tom Harpur’s classic examination of death and dying. Now fully revised and updated, here is a new edition of a book that weighs the scientific, religious and anecdotal evidence of survival of death and what happens after we die. The likelihood of death being a portal to other forms of existence is argued persuasively. Tom Harpur looks at the witness of near-death experiences, and examines the idea of reincarnation, as well as the claims of channelers and spirit mediums. Most importantly, the author looks at how the great world religions from Christianity, Judaism and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism and Native Spirituality among others, deal with life after death. This book is a powerful summary of what we know and believe about death. There is Life After Death is both illuminating and comforting in its message and conclusions — and goes a long way in putting to rest one of the last great taboos of our culture.

Life After Death offers irrefutable proof that there is indeed eternal life. This fascinating text, supported at every turn by Scripture, examines the issue of death, what we can know about those who have died, and the question of salvation after death.

An exploration of the rituals, beliefs, art, and mythology humans have used to understand death and the afterlife examines a wide range of practices and traditions--Mexico's Day of the Dead, Victorian funeral customs, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the burial of Pharoahs, cryonics, and ideas from the Bible--to show a variety of human responses to death.

Because every single one of us will die, most of us would like to know what—if anything—awaits us afterward, not to mention the fate of lost loved ones. Given the nearly universal vested interest in deciding this question in favor of an afterlife, it is no surprise that the vast majority of books on the topic affirm the reality of life after death without a backward glance. But the evidence of our senses and the ever-gaining strength of scientific evidence strongly suggest otherwise. In The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Michael Martin and Keith Augustine collect a series of contributions that redress this imbalance in the literature by providing a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife. Divided into four separate sections, this collection opens with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest evidence of whether or not we survive death—in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next, contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of “surviving” death—from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Then essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife—heaven, hell, karmic rebirth—and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems supporting those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife. Fully interdisciplinary, The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death brings together a variety of fields of research to make that case, including cognitiveneuroscience, philosophy of mind, personal identity, philosophy of religion, moralphilosophy, psychical research, and anomalistic psychology. As the definitive casebookof arguments against life after death, this collection is required reading for anyinstructor, researcher, and student of philosophy, religious studies, or theology. It issure to raise provocative issues new to readers, regardless of background, from thosewho believe fervently in the reality of an afterlife to those who do not or are undecidedon the matter.

THERE ARE FEW SUBJECTS IN HUMAN THOUGHT THAT RAISE SUCH STRONG EMOTIONS AS THE AFTERLIFE. What if anything, awaits us after we leave this physical world? Are we reincarnated to try to "get it right" through another life? Do we simply vanish? Do we enter some state of bliss or torment based on our good deeds or lack of them? It seems that there is no end of conjecture offered by human religion and philosophy on this subject. Yet, most of this seems to be nothing more than baseless speculation. As we have no evidence (indeed, we cannot have any physical evidence) of what becomes of us after our physical death, it appears that we have no choice but to pick the idea that is most appealing to us and go with it. It is true enough that we will ultimately pick the idea of the afterlife that we choose to believe to be correct, yet this is a matter of sufficiently great importance to warrant our choosing wisely. The source of information we choose to accept as the correct depiction of the afterlife is one of the most critical decisions we will ever make. While this will ultimately be a matter of belief, we owe it to ourselves to make our choice based on what these sources actually say and not on what we think they say or what others tell us they say. This book is presented as a look at the Bible's teaching on the subject of the afterlife and the choices available to us for an existence after this present life is over. The findings presented in this book are at considerable variance with the teachings of traditional institutional Christian church doctrine and dogma. It is the author's hope that the points presented here will give the reader a different perspective of the biblical view of life, death and afterlife.

The only information we have on Atlantis is from a very ancient Egyptian account that describes it as bigger than all their neighbours combined. Why is this fact ignored by most of the fanciful theories? From Atlantis to our current scientific predictions, the truth about so many things becomes clear and obvious only if all the facts are collected and examined, yet many people just select those that agree with their thinking. The resulting conflict between experience and belief, truth and distortion or good and bad, is only resolved when science, philosophy and theology are harmonized and examined as aspects of one universal truth.

THE object of this work is to state in plain and popular speech, the reasonableness of certain great truths which lie at the foundation of Christian belief. It has had its inspiring motive in the conviction-one which must be to every Christian mind a source of strength, solace, and security-that Christianity claims to rest upon a reasonable basis, and has the highest interest in using, in prizing, in defending the light of human reason with which God has endowed us. Religion means nothing if not the service of God, and God Himself requires that our service shall be "reasonable" (Rom. xii. 1), and that we shall not only possess, but be ready to give, "a reason for the hope that is in us" (1 Peter iii. 15). This cordial appreciation of the value and claim of human reason is a characteristic of Christianity, upon which we can hardly insist too much in an age of doubt and denial, and, I might add, of philosophical systems which are not uncommonly built upon an initial act of treason to our rational nature. We hold that it is reasonable to believe in the existence of a Personal and Intelligent God. We hold that we have reasonable evidence for believing that this God has spoken to mankind. And, God being Truth, we hold that it is supremely reasonable to believe whatever He has said to us. God speaking to us is Revelation, our believing what He says is Faith. Thus Faith and Revelation have their groundwork in reason-reason, which tells us that God exists; reason, which assures us of the fact that He has spoken; reason, which inculcates the duty of believing what He says. Never, then, can the Christian disparage human reason, without at the same time disparaging the very ground which underlies the spiritual house he lives in. He can never forget that the light of Reason, not less than that of Revelation, proceeds from Him, the light of Whose "countenance is signed upon us" (Ps. iv. 7), and" Who is the Light which enlighteneth every man who cometh into this world" (John 1). The Catholic Church has shown her wisdom in watchfully defending the right and the veracity of human reason against those who had impugned it. She did so against Luther, who, in teaching that our nature was wholly vitiated and corrupted by the fall, described human reason, the highest part of it, as a "beast," and heaped upon it some of the most vilifying epithets which he could find in his vocabulary of vituperation. She did so against De la Mennais, who sought unwisely to diminish and depreciate the scope of natural reason, with a view to magnify and expand the domain of Faith in the sphere of human judgment. She did so at the Vatican Council, when she vindicated for human reason its sublime function as serving as the natural basis of the truths of revelation. As long as the Catholic Church is the guardian of Faith, so long must she continue to be the defender of Reason.