The Myth of an Afterlife

In TheMyth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Keith Augustine and Michael Martin collect a series of contributions that provide a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife all in one place. Divided into four separate sections, this essay collection opens the volume with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest available evidence as to whether or not we survive death-in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of "surviving" death-from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Next essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife-Heaven, Hell, karmic rebirth-and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems undergirding those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife.