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The tyranny, the misery, the utter ownership of your entire personality, the smashing of your individuality, that begins at the point of death. Christopher Hitchens vs Peter Hitchens, debate 2011
Who the fuck in their right mind would want everlasting life? The Death of Stalin 2017 starring Steve Buscemi & Simon Russell Beale & Paddy Considine & Rupert Friend & Jason Isaacs & Michael Palin & Andrea Riseborough & Jeffrey Tambor & Adrian McLoughlin et al, director Armando Iannucci, Krushchev
Unlike Egyptian pharaohs, the Incan emperors did not prepare for a resurrection in the afterlife. They believed that after death they entered another form of life, and continued to wield power over daily events. The mummies were fed and cared for. They were included as honoured guests at important rituals and ceremonies, including ceremonies of sacrifice. Machu Picchu: City in the Sky
A man can have but one life and one death,
One heaven, one hell. Robert Browning, In a Balcony
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. Carl Sagan, In the Valley of the Shadow, cited Parade magazine 10 March 1996; viz Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium 1997 p245
Philosophy is an odd thing ... The most important philosophy I think is that even if it isn’t true, you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife. You cannot for one second I think abrogate the responsibility of believing that this is it. Stephen Fry, televised interview
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I v 167-168, Hamlet to Horatio
I’ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream II i 243
This is a test to see where we spend our life – heaven or hell. Muhammad Ali, interview Reg Gutteridge, film When Ali Came to Newcastle
The most important thing about life is what’s going to happen when you die. Are you going to go to Heaven or Hell? And there’s eternity: how long is eternity? ibid.
Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep and it is lifted. Percy Bysshe Shelley
For billions of people around the world death still acts as a gateway to heaven. Ancient Aliens s3e5: Aliens and Mysterious Rituals, History 2011
Heaven, Hell and everlasting life and all that – you’re not meant to take it seriously, Ted. Father Ted s1e1: Good Luck, Father Ted, Dougal, Channel 4 1995
God, does He really exist? I mean, who knows? I don’t know. I mean personally I don’t even believe in organised religion. ibid. Dougal’s television interview
Do you believe in an afterlife? Father Ted s1e6: Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest, Dougal to Ted
Raelians: there is only an afterlife if Science creates one. Nicky Campbell, The Big Questions: Is There a Difference Between a Religion and a Cult? BBC 2012
Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it? Making the wrong move at the right time. Like life, I guess. The Cincinnati Kid 1965 starring Edward G Robinson & Steve McQueen & Ann Margret & Tuesday Weld & Rip Torn & Karl Malden & Joan Blondell & Midge Ware & Jack Weston et al, director Norman Jewison
Data, you’re asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging. They believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an Earth-like garden which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness with all of our experiences and hopes and dreams merely a delusion ... Considering the marvellous complexity of the universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that ... matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond Euclidean or other ‘practical’ measuring systems ... and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality. Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e2: Where Silence Has Lease, Picard to alien as Data
Welcome to the afterlife, Jean Luc. You’re dead. Star Trek: The Next Generation s6e15: Tapestry, Q
Q: You’re dead. This is the afterlife. And I’m God.
Picard: You are not God! ibid.
This is the afterlife? Star Trek: Voyager s1e9: Emanations, Ptera, revived aboard Voyager
I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse. Isaac Asimov
As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they’re convinced that they’ll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting. Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
In the past the need for a hierarchical form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave. George Orwell, 1984
Berlin: A team of psychologists and medical doctors associated with the Technische Universität of Berlin, have announced this morning that they had proven by clinical experimentation, the existence of some form of life after death. This astonishing announcement is based on the conclusions of a study using a new type of medically supervised near-death experiences, that allow patients to be clinically dead for almost 20 minutes before being brought back to life.
This controversial process that was repeated on 944 volunteers over that last four years, necessitates a complex mixture of drugs including epinephrine and dimethyltryptamine, destined to allow the body to survive the state of clinical death and the reanimation process without damage. The body of the subject was then put into a temporary comatic state induced by a mixture of other drugs which had to be filtered by ozone from his blood during the reanimation process 18 minutes later. The Economist online article 29th August 2014, ‘German Scientists Prove There is Life after Death’
I don’t think a notion such as afterlife has any scientific basis. 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Gerard ’t Hooft
This assumption that the mind is separate from the body ... underpins notions of the afterlife. Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Professor Bruce Hood
The afterlife ... There’s no proof it exists. ibid. Michio Kaku
The idea of spending one’s afterlife with your loved ones in a pleasant place where you could do what you like is the same in both Christianity and the Egyptian religion. Tamara L Siuda, Egyptologist
The Egyptians believed in an intricate and vast afterlife. Each mummified corpse was expected to resurrect in another world for which there was only one guide: the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The name given to scrolls entombed with the mummified dead in ancient Egypt. Egyptian Book of the Dead, History 2006
Archaeologists have uncovered more than twenty-five thousand copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The oldest text dating from 1,500 B.C. The latest from the 4th century A.D. But it is here at the British Museum in the heart of twenty-first century London that the famous Scroll of Ani, the finest example of the Egyptian Book of the Dead ever preserved, can be seen. ibid.