PHILOSOPHY ON BASE

Bertrand Russell says, “It is not rational arguments but emotions that cause belief in a future life.” This implies that a truly rational person would not believe in a life beyond death. Yet, Plato and Radhakrishnan are both very rational philosophers who believed in life after death, specifically, reincarnation. In this DQ put forth your best arguments for or against life after death based on rational reasons alone. Put aside religious beliefs unless you can gather reasons and evidence to back them up. Your initial or main post needs to be about 200 words long and consider both pro and con arguments. You may state which arguments you think are the strongest and emphasize those, but, if you are completely undecided, then state that. Further recommended web sites are listed in Unit 1 to help you formulate the arguments. This discussion, as well as DQ 1, closes six days from the beginning of the course (Sat 6/17). 

Putting aside religious beliefs and refuting the B. Russell argument that it is pure emotion that requires people to believe that there is life after death is propositional in context. Death and life are both verbs and a pernicious prepositional is placed before a substantive indicting its relationship to the action (Sartre). The act of dying is substantial and seemingly permanent fixed residence, at least to Russell. The action word of eternal life after death is a prepositional phrase. The act of being or going to someplace after death. Can an action take place if the object stays fixed? The transition must physically move from location to location, from life to death. Dying is the process of in rout to a place.  

Being several places at once is only possible from an omnipotent point of view.  An object with physical mass must by definition is either here or there. The Christians teach that god is omnipotent and can be everywhere simultaneously, but that the devil is only capable of being in one place at a time.  Russell points out that the death of the body is a transformation of the matter of the physical being.  He indicates that there is a physical atomic structure in place which is part of an irrefutable law of dynamics; I think that the Stoics also came up with the atomic theory of sub-particles. The philosophy of constant change is quite old and was pre Socrates’.