Sometimes I have a look at the In Memoriam notices in local newspapers, and I find that most of them conform to pious stock phrases for conventionality’s sake and for keeping up appearances. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the writers of these notices harbour a secret incredulity about life after death behind their public professions of faith.

Some of the notices feature childish doggerel about angels and heaven. Others are a rehash of the promises peddled by priests. Some writers address a dead loved one as if he or she were still alive. They cannot accept the fact that their loved one is truly dead and that “parting is all we know of heaven”.

The notion that a dead loved one lives beyond the grave arises from the innate self-importance of man, who likes to imagine that he alone survives death. The only “evidence” for his vain belief is the absolute silence of his grave.

Over the last 2,000 years, millions of Christians have perished. Not one of them has ever come back to tell us anything about life after death. Thousands of saints have been buried. Not one of them has ever come back to tell us anything about heaven. Thousands of priests at Christian funerals have promised immortality to their followers. These Christian faithful were relegated to oblivion, and the priests themselves were buried long ago and “their mouths are stopt with dust”. 

In a Newsweek cover story entitled “The New Science of Mind and Body”, Steven Pinker, professor of neuroscience at Harvard, wrote: “Neuroscience shows that the ‘soul’ is the activity of the brain. People naturally believe in the Ghost in the Machine: that we have bodies made of matter and spirits made of an ethereal something. People acknowledge that the brain is involved in mental life. But they still think of the brain as a personal computer for the soul, managing information at the behest of a ghostly user. Modern science has shown that there is no user. The ‘soul’ is, in fact, the information-processing activity of the brain.

“Turning back the clock on the ultimate form of self-knowledge is neither possible nor desirable. We can live with the new challenges from brain science. But it will require setting aside traditional dogmas.”

John Guillaumier

ST JULIAN’S