I rather wish that there would be
some sort of brief hereafter
(not one full of floaty joy
and tedious laughter)
where I could say sorry
to my aunt and mother
for my egotistical, egregious,
distressing, semi-autistical,
juvenile behaviour.
*The title of a famous song by Josquin des Prez.
see also: kurt gödel - his mother and the argument for life after death
Gödel's belief that he had proved the existence of an afterlife hung on his belief in the soul: an idea or fancy (of the visible and solid continuing forever invisible and immaterial) which has become belief. The further belief that humans are the only beings to have souls is even more unprovable and could be seen as mere (or desperate ?) religious (anthropocentric) arrogance.
Might a soul be acquired (like divine grace or the unearthing of a truffle) ? Might some people/animals/trees have souls and others not.
Could a soul be lost (like a pair of glasses or a shoe) ? Could one trade it in a pact as Faust did ? Could it be shared ? Could it become a tumour, or diseased and die independently of the person/animal/tree who housed it ?
Is a soul conscious ? Is it just another word for consciousness ? Does it have feeling ? It is hard to imagine an emotionless consciousness.
If we don’t have souls, what could constitute an afterlife ?
Even if we do have souls, more questions are raised: how long would an afterlife last ? Might it simply be the persistence of a quantum of energy…or would it be an expansion like a galaxy ?
Could there be a half-afterlife ? Might there be more than one ?
If so, might they be a series of Russian dolls, or discrete existences ? What constitutes an existence in this context ?
Gödel moves from the belief in the existence of an afterlife to the assumption that he would have a particular afterlife wherein he would see his mother again? But an afterlife may be private, temporary, or simply full of too many people to locate particular loved ones!
The concept of the soul raises far more questions than it answers.
When we die, we don't even leave a space behind us.
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