More stuffs about death. Well, its all souls day..

I was thinking. how and where did the idea of life after death came from. How come in our evolution, call it that for lack of a better term, we developed this idea of the afterlife. Where did the idea came from and what are the things that prompted us to developed the creation or conception of another world, an alternate universe, if I may say so.

So, anyway, I have come with this list.    

Justice. Suffering and misery is one feature of our existence that makes the idea of life after death seem necessary, in fact this idea was one of the foundations of the creation of religion. Our life is full of injustices. Innocent people killed by criminals. States and government bombing and killing people for the faults of the few. In the end, when human justice failed, the victims have no one to turn to and here the idea of divine justice comes in, justice beyond the graves, the great equalizer. 

I remember a preacher’s look when he was confronted by an atheists about the illogicality of life after death. When reason, science and superior arguments cornered him and he cannot turn on the Bible to support the idea of the afterlife and divine justice, he became emotional and argued, almost a pleaded, “what will happen to the world when the idea of divine justice is expunged. People will take justice into their own hands and the implications are unimaginable.” The reasoning, though emotional, has truths in it. To the thinkers, the philosophers, religion may  not be necessary to live a moral life but to the common and uneducated and mal-educated masses whose life revolve around the idea of an old man up there in the sky, the realization that his faith and beliefs are nothing but a product of bitterness and hatred, could snap their anchors. 

Rewards and Punishment. At the center of all religion is this belief in reward and punishment and it culminates in death and the afterlife.  

Re-unions. It’s all about reunions. We just can’t let go of our loved ones and we need to have this idea that somehow will meet our departed dear ones again and the reunion would be eternal. 

Fear of the night. Imagine waking up in total darkness. There's this idea that sensation or sentience does not en in death but it continues on. To many the idea of a incorporeal existence sends scares the bejesus out of them but for some philosophers, whose idea of life after death is that of the disembodied mind, this is exciting for they could pursue their search and exploration of knowledge without the encumbrance of a physical body.