Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not)

Abstract

I will propose that if two people agree upon their definition of consciousness, they will agree on the existence or non-existence of an afterlife. This isn't an arbitrary judgment. It rests on the familiar experience that people make up stories, they believe in their stories, and the reality they inhabit conforms to their stories. For a skeptic whose story contains the facts that all things can be explained through materialism, experimentation, data, measurement, and a confirmed allegiance to objectivity over subjectivity, there will be no doubt that the afterlife is spurious – not because it actually is, but because a certain story, or worldview if you prefer, forbids it to exist. By the same token, a confirmed believer holds fast to a story where the non-existence of a personal God is impermissible, even unthinkable, and therefore the afterlife acquires its reality by association with the deity.