The case for immortality

✍ Scribed by Robert L. Patterson

• Book ID: 104642574
• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1975
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 721 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7047
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00148962

✦ Synopsis

THE CASE EOR IMMORTALITY*

McTaggart has made the interesting suggestion that, vchile the belief in immortality and the belief in God are generally to be found in conjunction throughout the centuries, logically they are opposed. In this paper I intend to consider the question of logical incompatibility. In the first place I shall discuss the question as to whether the doctrine of immortality be true. I do not, of course, anticipate that my discussion, or any discussion, will be productive of universal agreement. As an adherent of the correspondence theory of truth I hold that all argument rests ultimately upon an appeal to self-evidence; and that, when this stage is reached, argument terminates. I shall do my best to carry the argument to t]hat stage, for I am convinced of the vital significance of the belief.

The view which I accept is that adopted by all schools of Hindu philosophy with the exception of the C~rvKkas and the Advaitins, and, in the west by the Orphics, the Pythagoreans, and the followers of Empedocles, and which has recently been re.vived by McTaggart. It is, of course, the view that all selves are unoriginated and indestructible. And I think that we had best approach it by asking how the self could conceivably be originated. Orthodox Jews, Samaritans, Zoroastrians, Christians and Moslems wi[ll answer "by creation". In other words it is produced, they affirra, in toto and ex nihilo. As Muhammad put it, "God said to it 'Be', and it was". But is there any intelligible idea behind these words which are uttered with so obvious an effort to be profoundly irnpressive? When Aristotle discusses the process of making he distinguishes between the efficient cause, the material cause, the formal cause, and the final cause. Both intellect and experience bear witness to the adequacy of his analysis. Subtract now the material cause, and intelligibility is removed with it. For how can there be an efficient cause when there is nothing upon which it can exert its efficacy?