“I don’t believe in death” she said. “Shortly after my father’s death I had a dream in which we strolled on the beach and talked.” My friend and I were walking towards a pizza parlour for dinner when she shared with me this intimate experience she had.
In response I recounted a similar experience. “Just after my girlfriend died in a car accident I also dreamed of having a conversation with her. We were discussing how to plan for her funeral. It felt very real.”
The difference between my friend and I is that that dream about her father confirmed for her that the soul survives death. I on the other hand do not read any supernatural meaning into my dream even though it was extremely vivid and tremendously emotionally touching. If I had to impose spiritual significance on my dream, at most I can believe that God evoked such thoughts in me, as an artificial way for me to say goodbye to someone I loved deeply. I do not believe that I actually spoke to the spirit of my girlfriend, even though the idea might be appealing.
“I don’t believe in the immortality of the soul.” I added.
We kept walking in silence for quite a while. Clearly we were in disagreement. We both had similar experiences, but our interpretations of those experiences differ greatly. The soul survives death and is therefore innately immortal, or the soul does not survive death and is not innately immortal. Those are the two camps.
I thought about sharing with my friend some Scriptural reasons, or even philosophical motivations, as to why I do not believe in the innate immortality of the soul. But almost instantaneously I decided against it.
Her reason for believing what she believes is based on personal experience. The conversation she had with her departed father was overwhelming proof for her and certainly had some therapeutic benefit. I doubt any amount of theological or philosophical discussion, abstract as they are, could easily persuade the subjective conviction of a personal experience.
For me, in contrast, my personal experience did not convince me. If souls are innately immortal, then from my Christocentric paradigm an everlasting hell must exist at this very moment, with loved ones being tortured there at present.
While my friend finds comfort in the idea of the soul surviving death, I’m absolutely horrified by it. I explained in a previous post that the concept of hell, a place where people are burned for ever and ever, requires that the soul be innately immortal.
Because I believe that God is infinitely good, I cannot believe that God would be torturing souls in hell at present. And of course if souls are immortal they have to go one of two places, hell or heaven. Since not everyone will be going to heaven, some must go to hell and must therefore be tormented right now. If you are Catholic you have a third option, which is not that much better either. The soul could instead be in purgatory where it is also tortured for thousands of years until it is cleansed enough for heaven.
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