Canada: Exploring the afterlife | Faith leaders debate death

The Koran, the holy book of Islam, says salvation depends on a person’s actions and attitudes, plus God’s grace. “The Koran also says a person who believes in their God, no matter what their faith, will be entered into heaven.” [Muhammad Mirza]

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Deask

Source/Credit: York Region | News
By Chris Traber | Jul 15, 2011

The bookend to birth is the inevitable physical end that awaits us all.

What exactly happens after we expire, however, is up for debate among York Region’s theological communities.

Celebrated physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, stirred the afterlife argument recently when he suggested the concept of heaven was foolish. He equated human existence to that of a highly complex computer hard drive. Once usefulness is fulfilled, it simply ceases to be. It doesn’t go to a mythical, otherworldly paradise or abyss. When we die, there is the nothingness from which we came, Mr. Hawking hypothesized.


Rabbi Michal Shekel of Newmarket’s Or Hadash Synagogue paused thoughtfully and chuckled.

“Judaism is somewhat ambiguous about the afterlife,” she said, referring to Olam Ha-Ba, the Jewish concept of the world to come. “Certainly Hawking can say we come from and go to nothing, but I suggest that the hardware is the body and software is the soul.”

The author, teacher and Bronfman Rabbinic Leadership scholarship recipient, one of only a dozen Canadian female rabbis, views our time on earth as an antechamber. How we behave in this realm determines what happens to us in the next, she said.

“If we live a moral, ethical life, the next will take care of itself,” she said.

In the Jewish faith, the concern is with the existing world, she said. The Talmud, the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law and legend, marries life with the immortality of the soul.

“The righteous view ties judgment and resurrection with the coming of the Messiah,” Rabbi Shekel said. “That won’t happen until, we, in this world, behave in a certain way.”

The notion of an angelic, blissful heaven and a fire and brimstone hell has been toned down by many religious factions. The majority agree the tenets of all the worlds’ many faiths are guidelines for kindness, generosity, peace and respect for all living things. Few mainstream faiths believe nothing comes after death.

The atheist movement believes the genesis of contemporary religion can be found in the desire for purpose.

However, Rev. Peter Ma of St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Markham said cultures have long speculated about an afterlife.

“We don’t have much to go on and I haven’t been there myself, so we don’t know much,” he said tongue in cheek. “We take the Bible as our information source about the afterlife. Jesus said there will be a place of hope he’d prepare for us. God is faithful to us in this life and the next.”

Rev. Ma pondered the existential dilemma that suggests life is absurd and meaningless.

“If that were the case, there would be no need to be virtuous,” he said. “The afterlife shouldn’t be viewed as a carrot on a stick. Look at life as a journey where goodness is as important as faith.”

The Koran, the holy book of Islam, says salvation depends on a person’s actions and attitudes, plus God’s grace, Vaughan’s Ahmadiyya Muslim Community cleric and regional missionary Muhammad Mirza said.

“The Koran also says a person who believes in their God, no matter what their faith, will be entered into heaven.”

The Muslim idea of Jallah and Jahunnam, heaven and hell, is a strong spiritual influence, he said.

“People are either motivated or scared of things. Hell serves as a deterrent. It’s up to interpretation. Some take it literally, some metaphorically.”

Muslims also believe in reincarnation, but not in the traditional sense of returning as another living entity, he said, “Rather, in the afterlife, you continue in heaven with a spiritual body.”

Historically, faith is a work in progress. Interpretation of the many different scriptures changes.

“For us, it’s a spiritual journey that begins at baptism and continues to physical death to eternal life. The goal is being reunited with God and those we love,” Catholic priest Father Tim Hanley of Our Lady of Grace Parish said.

“We do acknowledge the presence of hell and the mercy of God,” Father Hanley said, adding escape from purgatory is possible if cleansing takes place or if the sinner wasn’t accountable for his actions. “Only God can judge our hearts. As such, hell is viewed as a stepping stone up, not down.”

Father Hanley hasn’t heard from anyone claiming to have witnessed the other side after being revived from clinical death. Colloquially, many ponder when one is truly dead and what heaven or the alternative is all about.

“Is it a room, a place?” he asked. “It’s all conjecture. We believe the soul is the part of the body that moves forward from death to life.”

Father Hanley said John 11:25 summarizes the Catholic philosophy. The scripture reads: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.”

Mary Roach investigated the topic in her 2005 New York Times Bestseller, Spook — Science Tackles The AfterLife. She interviewed all manner of people from doctors to sheep ranchers. She enrolled in medium classes, trying to channel messages from the dead, all in a valiant effort to answer one of mankind’s most profound questions: What happens when we die?

The answer, of course, is no one knows for sure. Accordingly, the afterlife remains great fodder for those who like to speculate without being proven immediately wrong.

An existence beyond this mortal coil is a widely held belief.

The ancient Greeks believed the dead were ushered to the underworld, ruled by the god Hades and had to pay a few coins to the ferryman Charon to cross the River Styx and enter the afterlife.

Once in the underworld, the dead were judged to be good or evil. The good ascended to the Elysian Fields, or Elysium, a place of paradise. The evil descended to fiery Tartarus, where they were punished eternally, or in some cases, sentenced to repent.

The Greeks also believed in reincarnation, with judges at the gates of Hades deciding the next incarnation of each soul.

The Celtics believed in otherworld, a great misty island, such as Avalon or Tir Na Nog, or in some cases simply a universe parallel to our own. There, the righteous existed in eternal happiness.

The Buddhist afterlife is a series of tiered paradises, each a higher and more magnificent plane of consciousness. Where you end up is linked to virtue and spirituality. Nirvana, the highest plane, marked a total release of the soul from all things human, where it can exist in a pure state.

The traditional native Japanese religion of Shinto believes we become supernatural beings called a kami. The kami continues to have influence in the world of the living, thus, Shinto incorporates a great deal of ancestral worship. Those who were good in life become beneficial kamis. Those who were evil in life become destructive.

In some Native American religions, spirits sometimes have to walk balance beams and require the aid of holy people’s prayers to make it to the better part of the afterworld. Those who made it were rewarded with happy hunting grounds.



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