Do you believe in an afterlife?
Posted May 6, 2013 9:33 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – So here’s a light little question for your Monday — is there life after death? As our population ages, there has been an explosion of interest in what, if anything, comes “next.”
“Consciously or unconsciously the ‘greying’ of the West is playing a role in this. We’re all looking ahead and we don’t feel like being judged anymore so we expect a happy landing” says Brian Bethune, head writer with Maclean’s Magazine. “Why can’t I live forever? That would be a boomer attitude, don’t you think?
The magazine calls it the “Heaven Boom” and in its latest issue asks why so many people, from best-selling authors to scientists, suddenly believe in an afterlife.
Medical advances have meant more patients reporting near death experiences before being resuscitated, things like ‘out of body’ experiences, but despite those advances, there is still much about the experiences that stump scientists.
“There’s some sort of non-explanation yet about what happens to human consciousness in these moments… there’s something we don’t understand going on,” says Bethune. “I’m not saying there is God and afterlife involved, but I am saying we don’t understand human consciousness and where it lives yet.”
The notion of an afterlife — and the willingness of aging baby boomers to start delving into the idea — has spurred on sales of books claiming to offer first-hand accounts of people who have spent from minutes to days in the afterlife before coming back and some of them are decidedly non-Christian or even “unreligious.”
A recent poll of people born in 1970 in Britain found half believed in an afterlife, while only 31 per cent believed in God.
