God would be an atheist... A rational look at religion, morality, politics and daily life

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Review After Death? Past Beliefs and Real Possibilities David L Edwards Continuum / Contemporary Christian Insights, London / New York (1999 / 2001) After years of experience I should have learned not to judge a book by its sub-title. But once again I let optimism triumph over experience and I ordered After Death from a remainder catalog convinced it contained a serious attempt to prove the existence of life after death. Of course I was disappointed. Never once in the 170 page paperback does Edwards, a "priest in the Church of England", attempt to offer even circumstantial evidence that human consciousness persists in any form after the brain and heart have died. But the cloud has a silver lining; After Death? provides an informative overview as to how different cultures have viewed the afterlife. Of particular interest is Edwards' description of changing attitudes in Christianity towards damnation. As recently as the early nineteenth century it was heresy to assume that all sinners were not condemned to eternal hellfire. Today mainstream theologians offer a smorgasbord of options to insure that the majority of dead souls end up, not in Heaven (which many see as an outdated concept) but in some form of love-fest with God. Like online games or a Klingon grammar, speculation about an afterlife offers hours of harmless fun to people with time on their hands and an active imagination. And like online games and Klingon, intense speculation as to who will be "saved" and the exact nature of purgatory has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Edwards, however, appears not to realize this. He discusses brain function and the "Creator" as if the two were of equal status - rather than one being a reality subject to repeated and consistent observation and the other a fiction that when scrutinized consistently evaporates into non-existence. Such lapses aside, I recommend buying After Death? if you see it on Amazon or in a secondhand store, for the valuable summary it gives of people's inability to accept their own mortality. More reviews

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