In western civilization, a strong percentage of the population follows a Judeo-Christian religion. It is commonly accepted within these faiths that there is a Heaven and Hell, and often Purgatory as well. I do not believe that humans go there when we die.
Although I am essentially a psycho-physical dualist, for those of you who are familiar with Descartes, I do not allow that to justify belief in Heaven or Hell, or any other spiritual afterlife, for that matter. My abductive arguments may be summarized thus:
The Scripture of these faiths do not explicitly state that any human afterlife is merely spiritual, and excludes the physical;
The Scriptures state that we will be given new bodies;
Therefore, there is insufficient evidence to support a spiritual-aphysical afterlife.
The Scripture of these faiths display the importance of physicality;
The concepts of Heaven and Hell are derisive to the importance of physicality;
Therefore, the concepts of Heaven and Hell as they stand are unacceptable.
The Scriptures use the words (within translation) Spirit and Soul in reference to living people, who have bodies;
The Scriptures use the word dead quite explicitly to describe those who are no longer living, and who "do not have bodies" as it were;
Therefore, there is no Scriptural evidence for the existence of a person outside the body.
Resurrection is a strong theme in the Scriptures;
The importance of the Body strengthens and coalesces with that;
An aphysical afterlife takes away from the importance of Resurrection;
Therefore, we need to be careful not to contradict ourselves when it comes to Resurrection.
Definition: Dead means dead, not "self which is seperated from the body."
These arguments, if valid and true, rule out Scriptural support of survivalist immortality through aphysical means. As I'm sure you are just dying for my to quote to support my outrageous claims, here you go:
Support:
~~~In Job 7:11 they are used in poetry in the NIV translation. They are not necessarily used redundantly, emphatically, or with different meanings. See also Isaiah 26:9 for more poetry.
~~~In Hebrews 4:12 they are used with very similar meaning. Observe the comparison to dividing joints and marrow. Joints and marrow are not the same, but are near each other, and related. We can understand how analogically Spirit and Soul are similar yet not the same: however, they are both found in living beings.
~~~1 Thessalonians 5:23 is the most intriguing usage, where the Apostle Paul says, "May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless." This neat division of the human being implies a difference between the two, and explicitly includes the physical.
~~~The word Spirit is often used to describe God. In Genesis 1:2, the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. We cannot picture this in our minds without giving the Spirit of God some spatial quality within a physical frame. Water is physical. In later sections when the Spirit of God is mentioned, it often "comes upon" or "is in" someone. Either way it is given a locality, a living body as a point of reference.
~~~ Daniel 12:2 states, "Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt." It is hard to claim that this statement is referring to an aphysical Heaven or Hell. One could argue that the Heaven or Hell come after, yet that neither explains where the spirit was the whole time the body was sleeping, nor does it explain why, having been brought back from dust, any individual would be merely spiritual and not physical.
~~~ An often quoted verse from the book of Matthew talks about how humans will not longer be married or get married. Matt 22:30-32 makes at least 2 points. One important one is that we will be like the angels in heaven -- in that we do not marry. To take this farther would require substantial effort. In verse 32 he says he is not the "God of the dead, but of the living."
~~~ Luke 14:13-15 is a beautiful set of verses. Naturally the main theme is that of generosity, kindness, and love. However, for our purposes here, it is apparent that people who are righteous are not in heaven, but are dead until the resurrection. Heaven, which is often thought of as, "The Kingdom of God" cannot be where they are, as the next verse says, "who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God." We can see that Kingdom of God involves eating. Last time I checked eating was a physical thing, which the colloquial understanding of soul cannot account for, nor do I accept this verse as metaphorical. The reason I propose to take it literally is that God created eating, food, and so on, and also the human ability to enjoy it. Why would we be denied that in the Kingdom of God? Would we not be able to enjoy ALL of his wonderful creation? What about groumet food, is that all to waste?
~~~ Genesis chapter 1 has many occurances of God creating something and then seeing how good it was. God's creation pleased him. There is no reason to toss that aside.
~~~ Revelation 20:4-6 is an awesome passage. We see those who are "seated," the "souls of those," and that they, "came to life." I'd like to point out that a) You have to have a body of some kind to sit; b) souls OF those is different from souls ARE those. Those souls aren't people, but are part OF people; c) A soul is not living in and of itself, and neither is a body. d) We are an amazing creation.
Objections:
Although I would claim that the Semitic people from whom Judaism and Christianity did not believe in non-physical human existence, there may be those who disagree with me based on the usage of sheol and abyss, as well as the translated heaven, which are used in the Bible.
Sheol:
Sheol is often translated as pit or lowest pit, but most often grave. It is used in Proverbs 9:18 and Genesis 37:35. When Jacob uses it in Genesis, he is using it to express how deeply he feels sorrow for the loss of his son Joseph. It is interesting to note that he expected to end up there. In Proverbs it is understood as an undesirable place.
In Psalm 16, which is a Hymn of Thanksgiving and Praise, the writer declares that God will not abandon him to the grave. Please note that this does not contradict the idea of resurrection, in fact, it makes perfect sense. If the writer believed that he would die, one day to be resurrected, he would want very much not to be abanded while in the grave!
In Numbers 16:31-34 Korah and some others are swallowed whole by the ground, physically. The word sheol is used to describe where they went. The general concept of down does apply, but it is not a necessitated hell, merely a physical grave.
Let me wrap up a bit on Sheol with some quotation from wikipedia (an authoritative source!):
"both the bad and the good, slave and king, pious and wicked must go after death to sleep in silence and oblivion in the dust. . . Sheol in many cases does not seem to be an afterlife destination or a location at all, but merely the grave. . ." and also, " In the Book of Job, while Satan is portrayed as tormenting and testing the living, he does not appear to have any particular presidency over Sheol, or to dwell in Sheol." which leads us into the next topic:
Abyss:
Abaddon is usually considered to be Satan, as is described in Rev 9:11 the king of the bottomless pit, or the angel who rules over the abyss; this varyies slightly with translation.
The abyss, the "bottomless pit" which Abaddon rules over, is mentioned 7 times in the book of Revelation and once in the book of Luke. [NIV Translation] The occurance in the book of Luke is the result of Jesus' interchange with a man possessed by demons. In fact, he is possessed by so many, they are 'Legion,' and they do not wish to go to the Abyss, so instead Jesus allows them to enter a herd of pigs. [Sidenote: One of the things most amazing to me is that Jesus is not only merciful to us, but also to demons. Truly the Prince of Peace.]
One important thing to consider while discussing the Abyss is that in those days, people believed that demons lived at the bottom of the sea(s). Water was associated with chaos and evil, particularly in Jewish tradition. The Jews were, interestingly enough, terribly sailors who avoided the water. They had one major port during the peak of their civilization, whereas their neighbours to the north, who had much worse terrain, had many more. Furthermore, the Hebrews would often hire foreigners to sail their vessels for them. The reason why the association between evil and water and demons is important is that Jesus' miracles often involved water, especially calming the sea.
So What Do I Believe?
I believe people die and are dead. Then at some point, God resurrects them if he chooses. Then they are alive again. They're not alive in between, so they don't notice any time passing. I've seen no conflicts between the scriptures and this belief.
I hope you've enjoyed this brief overview, and that I didn't make too many errors as I didn't proof read it.
Cheers and God Bless! [And Merry Christmas]
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