Why You Shouldn't Believe in Heaven

Challenging the Concept of Soul and Embracing Mortality for a More Fulfilled Existence

The purpose of saying Heaven was just for the catchy title. You shouldn’t believe in any form of the afterlife. Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, limbo, and all the above. This might seem hopeless. If there’s nothing after this, why be here? If I don’t continue past this life, what’s the purpose of life at all?

As hopeless as it seems, I believe there is more value in foregoing the belief in an afterlife. I think you can live a happier and more fulfilled existence. More importantly, it opens your mind to the possibilities of what life and death are. It allows you to contemplate and research them without biases. It allows you to gain new knowledge without the roadblock of feeling certain.

I’ve met a lot of people who believe that there is something waiting for them after this life ends. I think there are flaws with their lines of reasoning. I will explain those here.

The Concept of the Soul

If you believe in an afterlife, that must also mean that you believe in a piece of you that extends beyond your physical body. Some might call this a soul. Some might refer to it as the self. Despite the differences in nomenclature, most hold a similar concept for what the soul is.

On a fundamental level, the soul is the immaterial essence of a living being. It comprises the abilities of a living being that are the most complex and most challenging to directly associate to its biology: reason, awareness, feeling, character, judgement, and consciousness.

The soul can either be mortal or immortal. It can die as the body dies or continue existing beyond biological death. Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas provides a framework for the soul that many Catholics hold. He claims that only human souls are immortal. Most Christian faiths maintain that after physical death, God will judge their souls as they await resurrection. This resurrection can either be to Heaven, which seems like fun, or Hell, which seems like less fun. Dogs don’t meet either fate. Neither do any of the fish in the sea. Just humans.

Other religions have slight variations on this belief. In Hinduism and Jainism, all living things are the souls themselves. This could be the smallest bacterium or a whole person. The physical body that these living beings have is just the mechanism to experience karma.

Although the soul has different interpretations, one thing remains true: you can’t discuss the meaning of a soul without unsubstantiated claims. It is not physical, therefore does not abide by the laws of physics or the laws of quantum mechanics. It is not biological, therefore does not abide by biological laws. There are no scientific laws governing what the soul is, what it is made of, or how it comes and goes. It is an unproven concept. It currently holds no weight in our current, and admittedly limited, understanding of how life works.

If we must invoke the soul to believe in an afterlife, that means we must believe in an unproven thing to ground our belief in another unproven thing. In science, where knowledge gain comes from observations and subsequent explanations of those observations, the concept of the soul would be bad science. We have not observed the soul, studied its contents, and derived from data what its capabilities are. Nor have we done so with any variation of the afterlife. To put it simply, we have no evidence of the existence of these things.

We learn more and more everyday about the human body. We learn more about how the brain operates all its parts. Yet, we still know so little.

Firm belief in the soul limits your ability and desire to study physiology and neurology. Why study the root of consciousness from a neurological perspective if you already know it comes from the soul?

We haven’t ruled out that consciousness is the result of our brain's interactions with our body and the subsequent interaction with our environment. It makes more sense to look there first than to assume the existence of an immaterial and unsubstantiated concept of the soul.

There are some people that have anecdotes to claim the existence of the soul. But, when trying to gain knowledge and understanding of where we came from and where we go, anecdotes don’t work well. Einstein didn’t build the theory of general relativity on anecdotes. He may have been inspired by them. That is different than basing scientific claims on them.

The Best Arguments to Believe in An Afterlife

There are reasons people believe in different variations of the afterlife. Here are the arguments that I believe make the most compelling case to believe in an afterlife.

The Scope of Knowledge Argument

One of the best arguments that I’ve heard of to believe in God, which also applies to the afterlife, is what I call the ‘Scope of Knowledge’ argument. In the Scope of Knowledge argument, one acknowledges how little they know about anything at all. I agree with this claim. In fact, I believe we don’t know infinite things.

How does ignorance prove the existence of an afterlife? If you don’t know infinite things, then maybe somewhere in unknown is an afterlife.

The problem with this argument is that it conflates true knowledge with a hypothesis. As an example, you may observe that the sun rises and sets daily. You may be convinced this is always true. You are sure that it will do so the next day because it happened today and the day before.

However, if instead of being on the Earth for that next day, you took a trip to the International Space Station, you would find that the Sun will rise and set many times as you hurtle across the Earth at incredible speed. The knowledge is not that the sun rises and sets. It is that as the Earth rotates, the sun lightens different areas of the Earth throughout the day. How the Sun provides anything with light is relative. In another solar system on another planet, the Sun is just another star in the sky providing little light.

In reference to the soul, you can hypothesize that because people are consciously aware that they have a soul. If you have this immaterial and immortal soul, you can then hypothesize that something after life must exists for the soul to go to. This does not mean you now have knowledge of the afterlife’s existence. You can test for its existence. However, you shouldn’t believe it exists. There is no evidence for it. We have not observed it. Our tests have not drawn conclusions. Therefore, the knowledge is still yet to be attained.

The Why Not Argument

I heard this argument from my grandmother. I felt as though this, combined with the Scope of Knowledge argument, were the best two arguments to believe in an afterlife.

The Why Not argument states that since we haven’t disproven the existence of an afterlife, why shouldn’t you believe in it? To believe that life ends, and it does not continue on, is a hopeless proposition. It is a low value mindset, one might argue.

There are many reasons not to believe in things that haven’t been proven to exist. The biggest being that you have now limited your ability to explore the possibilities. If you firmly believe in whichever variation of the afterlife you have subscribed to, why search for the truth in it? Especially if you’re willing to believe in it without any truth at all?

The Morality Argument

Many who subscribe to certain religions believe that without religion, man would be immoral. How can you be moral without accountability? If there is no reward for morality (i.e. you get to go to Heaven), why be moral at all?

Morality's source is a conversation for another day. However, one thing is certain: people are getting less religious and more moral over time. Pew research claims that in the United States, those unaffiliated with a religion will rise from 16% to 26% between 2010 and 2050. Globally, this percentage is expected to decrease. I would argue this might not be the case as more countries develop.

This is all while violent crime is decreasing in the United States over time. Of course, you can say the data is not correlated. Just because ice cream sales increase at the same time shark attacks do, does not mean we should stop selling ice cream in the summer. There are other socioeconomic factors to consider. I agree.

That data just makes it hard to prove that atheistic individuals are less moral than theistic ones. Judgement Day might not be as good of a motivator for the benign as we once thought.

Doubt as A Guide

I have not given you what I think (though I admittedly do not know) happens when you die. So far, my goal has been to show you the flaws in the current arguments to believe in an afterlife. I’m trying to get you to doubt more and believe less.

In science, there are no certainties. There is only new knowledge and more questions. The goal of science is to doubt everything, turn that doubt into a hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and learn cool things about what is happening around us.

Doubt is also a good for learning. If you move through life doubting everything, chances are you’ll look for the flaws in the way life is. You’ll search for problems. You’ll become curious about them. You’ll try to solve them. In that way, you’ll give the world the only thing science can give us: new knowledge. That means if you want to reject doubt and uncertainty, you must forego learning.

One of my favorite quotes is ‘Have strong opinions, loosely held.’ I believe this is a great framework for going through life. When you have knowledge, act on it. Place bets on the knowledge. Create things based on the knowledge.

When life gives you new knowledge that conflicts with the old knowledge, be ready to quickly adapt and change your stance. Don’t hold onto these opinions too tight. A good way to imagine this is the Monty Hall Door Problem.

There used to be this Canadian game show with host Monty Hall. On his show "Let's Make A Deal", he would have three doors. Behind one door there was a prize. Let’s say a nice new BMW. Behind the other two were nothing. Monty Hall would ask the contestant to pick a door. The trick is that Monty Hall knew which door the BMW was behind. He would then open one of the doors to reveal there was no BMW there. He would then give the contestant a choice. Out of the two remaining, unopened doors, they could keep their choice or change to the other unopened door.

Which would you choose? Would you choose a new door, or would you keep the door you chose initially?

Quick reasoning might convince you that your odds do not increase by changing your answer. There are still three doors, right? The other door is unopened just like yours. There is no difference.

When you take a moment to consider the problem, your answer might change. Your odds of getting the prize actually double if you change doors. Your odds of originally getting the prize were 33% before any of the doors were opened. There were three doors. You chose one.

When Monty Hall opened one of the doors to reveal that there was nothing there, you were given new information. You know the fate of one of the doors. If you were to switch doors now, you can add the 33% probability of the new door combined with the 33% of the door that you switched to. Your probability of getting the prize has now increased to 66%.

To more easily visualize this, imagine there were 100 doors. There is a prize behind only one. You are told to select one. Monty Hall opens 98 of the other doors to reveal nothing behind them. Now there are only two unopened doors. Yours, and the other that Monty Hall decided not to open. Do you switch now? Of course you would. The percent chance you were right was so low to begin with.

The point I’m making is that when presented with new information, be comfortable with changing your mind quickly, even when you’ve already made a choice.

Let’s imagine we have another contestant on the Monty Hall game. Although this Monty Hall game show is in a different universe. In this version of the game, everything is the same. Except, when he reveals what is behind all the doors and the contestant is wrong, he still allows them to change their answer to get the BMW! What a nice guy the Monty Hall in this universe is.

Of course, if it were you who chose wrong and now Monty Hall is telling you that you can change your answer to the prize door anyway, you’re going to choose the door with the BMW. But what if we had a contestant who didn’t choose the BMW in this scenario? They remained confident that even though they knew what was behind each door and that their door had nothing, their door was the right one for them. That would be strange, wouldn’t it? This person would not be very equipped to deal with new information at all. They must make many wrong decisions all the time if they cannot make the right one here when it’s staring them in the face.

This is like believing in the afterlife. Everyday we learn how life creates emotions, perceives its environment, and displays consciousness. Everyday we learn more information about how complex biological life is without invoking a soul, the more we learn how low probability it is that an immaterial, non-biological, soul exists. That means that all of what we know as our life is contained in our physical bodies and does not continue with us as we die. However, even with this new information, people still believe in an afterlife.

Here is an extreme example of the type of person that holds firmly to unsubstantiated ideas. This example person is an outlier. That said, I’m sure we can think of a couple of people in our life that display these characteristics:

Let’s say we have a person who believes the Earth is flat. They believe that the concept of a flat Earth is a conspiracy that the government is covering it up. They think the pictures from the International Space Station are all fabricated.

Let’s say this person gets to one day meet an omniscient God. They get the chance to ask this all-knowing creator of the universe about the nature of the Earth’s roundness.

“Hey, God. It’s great to meet you,” the flat earther says.

“You as well,” God replies.

“I have a question that I believe only you can answer. You know all about this universe, correct?”

“Yes, I do. I created it.”

The flat earther feels as though this is finally his chance to get his answer. He will be able to prove to his wife that he was right this whole time. His flat Earth friends on Facebook will applaud him. He will be able to post on his blog that he now has the proof. Oh, what a wonderful day!

“I’ve had this theory that the Earth is flat. Is this true?” he questions. He now looks at God through squinted eyes as if trying to read his thoughts.

“No, it’s not. The Earth is actually quite round.” God replies.

The flat earther walks away from God, head still high.

“This conspiracy goes higher than I thought,” the flat earther mumbles to himself on his way back home.

I have now talked about science, doubt, a game show, and flat earthers. Where am I going with all of this? How does any of this relate to an afterlife?

If There Is not an Afterlife, What Is There?

Here, I am willing to say I do not know. That does not mean I’m throwing in the towel on the answer. I actively seek for the solution that makes the most sense.

We know a bit about how the brain works and how it brings awareness to life. There is a lot of knowledge that describes neurology and its capabilities. We know that our brain’s neurological signals allow us to see, feel emotion, and intake feedback from our environment. Our brain and its connection with our body is most likely, based on the current knowledge, where we get consciousness. There is most likely no soul. The complex innerworkings between our mind and our body give us all the qualities that many associate with a soul. We have tested this. We have drawn some convincing conclusions.

We don’t know everything. If we completely understood how a brain does what it does, then we should be able to recreate it. We can’t. We aren’t even close. General artificial intelligence is a long way away. That means there is a lot more knowledge to gain. That means there will be many more doors that open revealing what’s behind them. That means you or I must decide to switch doors when this new information is present. Life is just one big game of Let's Make A Deal.

That does not mean we can’t hypothesize what happens when you die. If life is a series of neurological signals caused by the brain, then when those signals stop existing, so does life. This also applies to the signals that cause any organism without a brain or a neurological system as well. If their cells die and can no longer interact with one another, they are no longer living.

There is most likely no soul given our growing body of knowledge for an organism’s cells ability to interact and create consciousness. That means all of life is contained within their physical body. When that body ceases functioning, the thing that was once living no longer is. If there is no soul, no immaterial and immortal component to life, there must be no afterlife for it to go to.

How can you cease to exist? It seems like a foreign idea. When all you know is existing, how could it be that you could not?

An easy way to imagine this as a reality is think about all those memories you have before you were alive. Remember how fun that time was when your parents went on their first date? Of course you don’t. You weren’t there.

Not existing after having existed will be like how things were before you existed in the first place. Nothingness. No memories. No ability to perceive the world around you. No new experiences.

If I get new information to the contrary, I will adjust my stance. This is just my hypothesis based on the knowledge we have today.

Is It Better to Believe In Nothingness?

You shouldn’t firmly believe that after life is nothingness. That would be the same as firmly believing in an afterlife, which you have no reason to believe exists. There is knowledge to suggest this is the case, but it hasn’t been observed. The hypothesis has not even truly been tested. It is, however, significantly more plausible than Heaven, Hell, or reincarnation.

Some might fight back against this conclusion. If the nothingness claim had a ‘Why Not’ argument, hopelessness would be a big reason why not. Why continue living if its all going to oblivion anyway? I don’t want to create a religion around believing nothing happens after you die. It is a hypothesis, not a doctrine.

However, if you want a value proposition for why to believe nothing exists after you die, here you go:

If you believe that life is the only thing you have and there is nothing after, shouldn’t you cherish every moment? If people continue living when you die, shouldn’t you care for them more than you care for yourself? If the Earth continues to rotate and orbit around the Sun long after you stop existing, shouldn’t you treat it with respect?

If you believe life is the most important thing, you’ll appreciate its brevity. If you believe you stop existing while everything else continues on, you’ll stop placing importance on yourself and instead place it on the world around you.