Memories of the 28th Century

Eternal Souls

While writing about the death penalty the matter of the human soul came to mind. Apparently the soul has a long history among humans. There were burials in prehistoric times that strongly suggest that people believed in souls even back then. Bodies were buried with tools and weapons, and that does suggest belief in an afterlife, while the flowers and ochre dyes could be taken to mean the same, but they might also be signs of denial of the loss. Within the last ten thousand years temples, priests, and formal religions have come along, and those have included belief in the eternal soul since the earliest records we have.

We can't tell what the temple complex in Asia Minor was all about, but it appears to be much like later temple complexes, so it is fair to think that it was largely about the souls of the departed in addition to the Gods and Goddesses. And the same was true of later Egyptian temples. The Ancient Egyptians clearly had a strong concept of the eternal soul and its route through the afterlife. The Ancient Greeks also had a well defined concept of an eternal life, but they thought that the souls were reborn in new bodies; this belief was common among the various Indo-European peoples, and these beliefs live on in the Hindu religion.

We can't tell whether accounts of Hades were fiction or based on personal experiences. The description of Orpheus going into Hades to retrieve Eurydice is a beautiful story, and Orpheus was a changed man after he failed through his own fault. Plato recounted someone recounting a trip to Hades, but he may have made up the particular account, but the account gave the impression that the idea of souls going to Hades, being judged, drinking from Lethe, and being reborn was a well known series of events. We can't tell whether anyone believed those things, but those beliefs were altered somewhat and carried into Christianity, when that arose; although reincarnation was eventually dropped by the Christians. Hell seems to have been derived from the concept of Tartarus, which was only one small corner of Hades' realm. The rest of Hades was developed into Heaven, Purgatory, and Limbo. It is interesting that the judging by Minos that went on in Hades became judging by God in the Christian version.

The afterlife in some of the Mystic traditions is much more interesting. I won’t go into detail, because it is too involved for a blog post of less than a thousand words, but I encourage anyone who is interested to look into the Astral Planes. There are four bodies that have their particular levels of existence (physical, astral, mental, and spiritual).

The Christian idea of the soul and the afterlife were largely derived from a combination of the Ancient Greek and Roman ideas and from mystical traditions.

Which concept of the soul is most accurate, or whether there really is one is an open question, because the evidence is almost completely subjective, so it doesn’t go very far in proving any logical argument, but, if one believes that there is an eternal soul that continues after the death of the physical body, then the death penalty is not all that extreme a punishment; it might even be a great favor to the soul of the executed. It is also possible that the soul will be condemned to Tartarus for eternal punishment, but we can't do anything about that. It might also be as Edward Fitzgerald suggest in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam LXXXVIII

"Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making—Pish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/246/246-h/246-h.htm

So even at worst the flawed will not be destroyed, or so Omar thought. But regardless of which view one has, if one believes that humans have eternal souls, then the death penalty is not a severe punishment.

There is some scientific evidence for the existence of the soul, but I haven't yet seen anything that is a good objective experiment that shows that the soul exists, but there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that has too much commonality and consistency to be ignored. If we accept the existence of an immortal soul, then the only opposition to the death penalty would be that it is cruel, but we already know that cutting the carotid arteries causes instant unconsciousness when the blood pressure on the brain drops to zero, so that problem is eliminated.

It might be generosity and kindness to send someone onto his next incarnation.



http://hermetic.com/stavish/essays/lucid.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1...n_2034711.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...dence-says-yes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/heal...ter-death.html
http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysi...erlife-exists/


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