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Afterlife (also known as life after death) is a generic term referring to a continuation of existence, typically spiritual and experiential, beyond this world, or after death. This article is about current generic and widely held or reported concepts of afterlife. See Underworld for a comprehensive catalog of specific traditions about afterlife.
In the popular mind, afterlife is a belief. It is generally thought to be a non-verifiable (and non-falsifiable) belief because it is generally accepted as beyond the experiential knowledge or casual accessibility of most people (see esoteric knowledge). As a result, the popular mind relies on various sources for concepts about afterlife, arranged below in presumed order of reliability:
While there is information available from all of the above sources, a preponderance of concoctions, speculations, and extrapolations have arguably historically characterized formal descriptions of afterlife. Religious traditions have historically formalized and codified ideas about afterlife in widely divergent forms. Though the onset of the information age is bringing to light increasing consistency and uniformity of beliefs about afterlife from across and without religious boundaries, most afterlife conceptions continue to follow traditional descriptions, often viewed as rationally weak by skeptics who -- particularly atheists and agnostics of a secular humanist mindset -- hold that we entirely cease to exist.
For those who do believe in an afterlife, the various conceptions about it differ in their answer to the following questions:
For an afterlife to exist, there must be something that survives the body when death occurs. This something is usually believed to be extraphysical and is usually called soul or spirit.
One notion of afterlife which is common to Judaism, most Christianity, and IslamCairo Egypt Islm (In Arabic: , "submission (to God)"; In Persian and Urdu: ) is a monotheistic faith and the world's second-largest religion. Followers of Islam, known as Muslims believe that God (or, in Arabic, Allh revealed His Will to Muhammad (c. is that human souls go on for eternityEternal links here. For the British pop band, see Eternal (band). While in the popular mind, eternal often simply means existing for an infinite, i. limitless, amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside of time . to a place of happinessThis article is about an emotion. Happiness is also a 1998 U. film written and directed by Todd Solondz. See also Joy for the disambiguation of that term. Happiness pleasure or joy is the emotional state of being happy . The definition of happiness is one or torment, such as heavenThe heavens are the sky, the celestial sphere, or outer space. Indeed, sky is the original meaning of the word Heaven''. Heaven is an afterlife concept found in many world religions or spiritual philosophies. Those who believe in heaven generally hold tha, hellHell is, according to many religious beliefs about the afterlife, a place of torment, of great weeping and gnashing of teeth. The English word 'hell' comes from the Norse Hel', which originally referred to the goddess of the Norse underworld. In most reli, or purgatoryIn Roman Catholic theology, Purgatory is a place of cleansing after the particular judgment. One of the first documents to mention purgatorium was a letter from the Benedictine Nicholas of Saint Albans to the Cistercian Peter of Celle in 1176 (Haggh, 1997 or limboThis article is about Catholic theology. For other uses of the term, see Limbo (disambiguation). In Catholic theology, limbo describes the temporary status of the souls of good persons who died before the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the permanent st.
Many religions hold that after death people get reward or punishment based on their deeds or faith
The Christian Bible, for example, contains the words of Jesus: "The measure you give will be the measure you get." (from the Sermon on the Mount?). For many, belief in an afterlife is a consolation in connection with death of a beloved one or the prospect of one's own death. On the other hand, fear of hell etc. may make death worse.
In the informal folk beliefs of many Christians, the souls of virtuous people ascend to Heaven and are converted into angels upon their deaths. However, a more orthodox reading of scripture suggests that the dead wait until the Last Judgment, which is followed by resurrection for the faithful.
In view of the eternity of afterlife, some consider regular life as relatively unimportant, except for determining whether or not afterlife follows, and/or what kind. It is just a provisional situation, and the metaphor of a tent as provisional housing facility is used as quoted below:
In what we know of Egyptian religion, afterlife is very important. The believer had to act well and know the rituals explained in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If the corpse was properly embalmed and entombed in a mastaba, the defunct would relive in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the Sun god on its daily ride. If, during the psychomachia, the souls of the defunct was found faulty, the Devourer monster would eat them.
Others, including some Universalists, believe in universalism which holds that all will eventually be rewarded regardless of what they have done or believed.
Life after death is however in no way an universal believe, for example, some christians don't believe in an afterlife based on (among other) Ecclesiastes 9:5:
They tend to believe in a resurrection in the flesh at some future date as a reward and death (not being) as punishment.