You can't hush the terror of death with a few vague, fuzzy words. And so most religions come to the rescue with detailed descriptions of the afterlife, and clear-cut maps to get us there safely—bedrocks of certainty to protect us from death's merciless power.
In the entire history of the world's religions, two main models have emerged to reassure us of life after death: One tells us that at death our soul survives to be reincarnated into a new body through an eternal cycle of life after life. This is the option favored by Hinduism, some versions of Taoism, several tribal traditions, and—in a modified format—Buddhism. The other says the soul survives death by going on to live for eternity in either heaven or hell. Among the principal proponents of heaven and hell are Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, and some branches of Buddhism and Taoism. For the sake of fairness, I should mention that whereas many traditions hold their followers to very strict dogmas regarding the nature of the afterlife, a few exceptions (particularly branches of Judaism, Taoism,
Buddhism, and various tribal traditions) allow followers to entertain multiple possibilities. These, however, are not the religions we are focusing on right now, so my moment of fairness is over.
Although they may differ in form, the concepts of reincarnation and heaven and hell fulfill similar functions. Both reassure us that there is life after death. Both argue that—despite massive evidence indicating otherwise—the universe is governed by a moral order. Both console those who suffer in this life with the prospect of finding fortune in the next.
No religion has emphasized the idea of reincarnation as much as Hinduism. In the Hindu version, the individual soul (the Atman) is incarnated into a physical body about to be born. At the death of this particular body, the soul abandons the flesh to jump into a new body about to be born. In a perfect chain of cause and effect, the next incarnation is determined by the soul's karma—the force generated by the sum of all choices, intentions, and actions made in the previous lives. Good karma leads to a favorable reincarnation, while bad karma leads to being reborn as a lower form of life. The soul's options for reincarnation are not limited to human beings. Animals are also fair game since, according to Hinduism, they also possess souls—albeit ones which are inferior to human beings'.
On the surface, the whole notion of karma attracts me. It almost has a scientific ring to it, a spiritual version of the law of cause and effect. Since cause and effect rule every other aspect of life, karma doesn't seem too farfetched a concept. Also, it offers us a great antidote to the endless whining that many human beings love so much. Karma basically tells us that we have total responsibility for everything in our lives. In this worldview, there is no such thing as bad luck, because everything that happens to us is a result of our previous karma. So, rather than complaining about our bad luck, we are
better off doing something about it and changing our karma at this very moment. Destiny deals us some cards based on our previous behavior, but it's up to us to decide how to play them in the present.
On the other hand, this seemingly empowering idea can very quickly turn sour and end up smelling of fascism. By suggesting that everything happening to us is a result of our previous behavior, the concept of karma places the blame squarely on the victim. If something horrific happens to you . . . well, that's because you deserve it. A baby dies in childbirth? It's because of his and his parents' karma. While I'm all for emphasizing personal responsibility, karma takes it too far. Extending personal responsibility to actions supposedly taken in previous lives, of which you have no memory and no proof, appears to me as a perversion of personal responsibility. There are too many ifs for my taste, too much desire to rationalize all facets of existence.
Additionally, Hinduism has historically used the concept of karma to justify an extremely hierarchical view of existence, resulting in the stifling social oppression of the caste system. You are poor because you are born into a lower caste? That's because of your previous karma. Be a good boy by fulfilling the duties of your caste (that is to say, by doing menial labor and accepting suffering without complaining) and in the
next
life, you'll have a better birth. For much of Indian history, social immobility has been enforced with the threat of negative karmic consequences for those wanting to change their lives here and now.
Even when the concept of karma is not spoiled by such obvious ploys to defend the socio-political hierarchy, nagging questions still persist. Assuming that reincarnation is real, what exactly is reincarnated? Your physical self dies, and similarly all your memories disappear. In this world, our bodies and our memories determine our
personal identity. Without them, how can it still be “I” that goes on to the next life? This is where Hinduism and Buddhism differ in their views of reincarnation. Whereas Hinduism is attached to this single soul that moves from body to body, most schools of Buddhism deny the existence of a permanent self. Rather, they argue that upon death a person's consciousness merges with other energies to give life to a new consciousness, much in the same way that a wave crashing on the sand goes back in the ocean and becomes part of another wave yet to be formed.
If the theory of reincarnation, in all of its possible variations, leaves me unconvinced, the concept of the afterlife popularized in Christianity and Islam downright disturbs me. At least the cyclical nature of reincarnation gives us plenty of opportunities to correct our mistakes and start anew. The linear ideology of Western religions gives human beings one chance and one chance only. Depending on how people behave and on the strength of their faith (different denominations disagree about whether both faith and actions determine our destiny in the afterlife), at death the individual soul will spend
eternity
in either heaven or hell.
This notion of eternal punishment strikes me as one of the most perverse ideas ever devised. Monotheistic religions describe their God as merciful and compassionate, and in the same breath tell us that this merciful and compassionate God will sentence people to eternal torture if they don't believe in his existence, despite a complete lack of objective evidence. Is it just me, or are we looking at a bit of a contradiction? What loving parent would burn his children forever for misbehaving? The idea of hell seems like nothing short of religiously sanctioned sadism. Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, makes this abundantly clear when he states that one of the joys of paradise consists in witnessing the unbelievers being tortured
in hell.
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Most scriptures of the heaven-and-hell religions take inordinate joy in detailed descriptions of the gruesome punishments awaiting unbelievers. Sadism oozes out of these pages.
Among my personal favorites is the Zoroastrian punishment for a man who has sex with a woman during her period: he is force-fed menstrual blood for eternity save for brief breaks during which he has to cook and eat his own son.
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The Old Testament is more moderate in this regard: it simply asks that a man having sex with a menstruating woman be sentenced to death in this life.
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In comparison, the Muslim and Christian hells in which you are
only
burned for eternity suddenly appear benign by comparison. Zoroastrianism may take the cake for its graphic goriness, but some versions of Christianity win the prize for the most shocking theological argument: those who commit evil actions are not the only ones deserving of hell. Rather, everyone, including newborn babies, deserves to be tortured in hell because of humanity's original sin. Only through repentance and begging for God's forgiveness can anyone be spared this fate.
The emphasis on otherworldly punishments found in the ideas of karma and heaven and hell betrays an attitude that is based on fear rather than understanding. Believers argue that a divinely supervised system of rewards and punishments is useful to teach people how to act in a moral manner. Heaven and hell (or karma, for that matter) are the supernatural equivalent of the carrot and the stick. With no incentive to behave morally, people would act like the selfish bastards that they are at heart. According to this logic, fear is a necessary tool to enforce social rules. But there is plenty of evidence to indicate that many human beings can act decently without being scared into it by boogeyman tales.
The belief in supernatural rewards and punishments may help people overcome their fear of death. After all, the only thing you
have to do is declare your faith and follow the rules, and you no longer have to fear death since you are offered an eternity of bliss in heaven or a brand new body in a better reincarnation. But this idea has too many disturbing and horrifying side effects. If the goal is to conquer our fear of death, and we are so desperate as to be willing to embrace beliefs for which there is no evidence, we can surely come up with something better than this.
Before we start to explore alternatives, it's worth pausing to look at a concept that is very much related to the heaven-and-hell system just discussed. The apocalypse, the end of time, judgment day, Armageddon: it goes by many names, but they all refer to the same thing: a prophecy predicting a global catastrophe that will put an end to the world as we know it.
Several traditions speak of it, but none develop this concept with as much enthusiasm as Western religions. Many scholars believe that this idea of the apocalypse comes to us courtesy of Zoroastrianism, which later passed it on to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Zoroastrianism, in fact, we find the essential elements of Western theology: God and the Devil; heaven and hell; an eternal battle between the forces of good and evil, with angels and demons competing to recruit human beings to their respective sides; the arrival of a Messiah before the last battle, which will destroy the world and banish evil forever; the creation of a new universe after the destruction; and, finally, the resurrection of the dead and a final judgment of the souls.
It doesn't seem to be a coincidence that the same religions that attribute much importance to the idea of heaven and hell also believe
in an apocalyptic showdown between good and evil. Both beliefs indicate a craving that evil be punished and good be rewarded. Both point to a bad relationship with reality as it is, and a wish for something to transform it drastically. The only difference is whether setting the record straight will take place in the next world after we die, or if it will occur with the destruction and recreation of this world.
Both beliefs, however, stem from the same frustrations and desires. We shouldn't be surprised, then, to find the idea of the apocalypse thriving among people who feel powerless to change the unpleasant reality facing them. We clearly see this at the origin of Christianity. The first followers of Jesus were Jews whose people had been conquered by the Roman Empire. Life wasn't exactly rosy, particularly for the poorer people in Jewish society. Not only did they resent Rome ruling over them with an iron hand, but they were also locked in a deadly struggle with the Jewish elite who cooperated with the Romans and lived off the labor of lower classes. Add to this mix the incredibly harsh conditions they faced day after day, staying just a few steps ahead of starvation, and you can begin to appreciate just how desperate the world appeared to them. But all was not lost. These, after all, were people who believed that the universe was ruled by a good and just God who regularly intervened in human affairs. Therefore, it was only logical for them to assume that a good and just God would not allow his faithful followers to suffer so horribly for much longer.
This is why preachers like John the Baptist gained huge followings by predicting that God would crush the existing powers of the day, bring the world to an end, and restore justice in a new world. Jesus, following in John the Baptist's footsteps, similarly raised
apocalyptic expectations among his followers. Mark 13, for example, quotes Jesus telling them that the end of the world was at hand. Stars would fall from the sky, the sun and moon would stop shining, and massive suffering would sweep through the land before the Second Coming. Emphasizing the immediacy of this prophecy, Jesus declared, “Truly, I say to you this generation will not pass away before all these things take place.”
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A similar story can be told about some American Indian tribes during the last few years of the 1800s. Much like the lower classes of Jewish society during Jesus' times, American Indians in the late 1800s were witnessing their world falling to pieces. The US government was their Roman empire. By the 1880s, all tribes within the borders of the United States had been conquered. Of a population of several million at the time of first contact, fewer than 300,000 survived. The government was busy trying to wipe out any remaining traces of their cultures. Their political independence was gone, their economy destroyed, their traditional religious ceremonies outlawed. They lived as little more than prisoners of war. Their situation was as bleak and hopeless as it could get.
It's within this context that a Paiute Indian named Wovoka began mixing the Christian theology of the apocalypse he had been taught by missionaries with his own native traditions. Wovoka claimed to have received a vision from God during a solar eclipse: a cataclysm would annihilate white people and cause the resurrection of dead Indians and the return of the buffalo (of which less than 1,000 survived from an initial population of more than forty million). Wovoka said that all American Indians had to do to bring forth this event was to practice a ceremony known as the Ghost Dance. Most Native Americans badly wanted to believe, for it gave them hope at a time
when there was none. Just like the first Christians, the Ghost Dancers expected God to fix the intolerable situation they were enduring.
Apparently, in both cases, God was otherwise occupied. Several decades after Jesus' death, the Jewish unrest was repressed in blood by the Romans, and the Ghost Dancers were massacred by the American Army in 1890. The promised apocalypse had not come after all. American Indians, for the most part, reacted by abandoning this belief, whereas early Christians got over the embarrassment of the failed prophesy by simply postponing the apocalypse to a later date.