THE CONCEPT OF THE AFTERLIFE AS AN IMPERATIVE

Argument for the Life Hereafter ~ 240 ~ two tasks which it is the function of religion to perform, does not, of course, automatically follow.22 Having travelled so far along the road towards acceptance of life after death as a reality, it seems quite extraordinary to refuse to accept the religious concept of this same phenomenon. This is on a parallel with the insistance of an ignorant villager that conversation between two people living thousands of miles apart is impossible. Even when we dial the number of one of his own relatives living at a far distant place, hand him the receiver and let him have that conversation which he had found so incredible, he responds with, “Oh, that was not necessarily my relative speaking. That could have been some kind of machine.” Where belief is concerned, we can lead a horse to the water, but we cannot make him drink. NOTES 1. Man the Unknown, p. 173. 2. George Gamow, Biography of the Earth, p. 82. 3. T.R. Miles, Religion and the Scientific Outlook, p. 206.