Some feel that if the fact of bodily death spells the extinction of the person, then this fact, if it is a fact, consigns human life to meaninglessness. This is a very strong intuition among those who have it, and I have it. But there are certain arguments from the naturalist camp that need to be addressed. I will now examine some of these arguments.
Suppose one dies and goes to heaven. Might not a heavenly being wonder about the point of its existence in the same way an earthly being* does? It might even be urged by the naturalist that heavenly existence would exacerbate the problems of existential meaning. Earthly delights are brief, unreliable, and often hard to obtain, but this prevents them from being boring. Endless heavenly delights, however, without any admixture of pain or difficulty in their acquisition might prove unbearably boring. You might imagine that endless disporting with 72 black-eyed virgins would be the ultimate in bliss — until you had your fill of it.
A Twilight Zone episode from 1960, A Nice Place to Visit, illustrates the theme. A two-bit thug, shot to death by the police, wakes up on the far side. Given his life of crime, he is puzzled to find himself in what he takes to be heaven: a penthouse of Pascalian divertissement has been provided for him in which he can sate his every sensuous appetite. The supply of booze and broads is endless, and he can't lose at the gaming tables. But soon enough our man tires of the 'good life' and heads for the door — which is locked. Turning to his host, played wonderfully by Sebastian Cabot, the thug complains that he'd rather be in the other place. "This is the other place!" the host demonically laughs.
Indeed, it might be urged by the naturalist that it is precisely the brevity of life that lends it meaning and value: just as gold is precious because rare, life is precious because short. Life interminable would be life without meaning.
The naturalist argument for decoupling meaning and immortality might be summed up as follows. There is no connection between the meaning of a life and its temporal duration. So even if life did extend beyond the grave, this would not ensure its meaningfulness. And if there were a connection between the meaning of life and its temporal duration, it would be brevity, not longevity, of life that would ensure meaningfulness.
What are we to say to this? Note first of all that the naturalist presumes to know what the afterlife will be like. (Of course, he does not believe in it himself, but he presumes to know what the immortalist must mean by it.) It will be more of the same, but with the negatives removed. The naturalist's conception is likely to be crassly materialistic, as materialistic as the popular Islamic conception. But no sophisticated immortalist thinks of the afterlife as more of the same, but with the negatives removed. He does not think of it as a mere continuation of the present life, as a temporal extension of this life. He thinks of it as a qualitative change, a transformation and purification of the selfish self of this life into a godlike self: ". . . it is deiformity, not mere endless continuance, which is held out to man as the prize of his calling." (A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist, vol. I, 256) The life to come on a sophisticated conception is a sharing in the divine life which completes and perfects the individual soul while at the same time harmonizing it with other souls. Immortality is a divine gift rather than something that naturally occurs. And although it is a gift, it is something that must be earned. For the soul can be lost as well as gained. This life takes on meaning as a "vale of soul-making" in Keats' phrase.
This is a very rough sketch of a sophisticated conception of immortality such as one finds in A. E. Taylor's The Christian Hope of Immortality (Macmillan, 1947). Armed with such a conception, the immortalist will have no trouble turning aside the naturalists' objections as follows:
1. The postulation of an afterlife is unavailing because the same problems about existential meaning that arise in this life will also arise in our post-mortem existence. Response: This is not the case. Immortality is not a mere surivival of the present self, but a tarnsformation of the self whereby the self participates in the divine life. Since that just is the meaning of existence, no further questions can arise about it.
2. The afterlife would be one of unbearable ennui. Response: This objection presupposes that the afterlife would be just more of the sort of thing that transpires here below. It is not, so that puts paid to the objection.
3. Far from immortality ensuring life's meaningfulness, it precludes it: life is meaningful and valuable precisely because our days are numbered. Response: This objection again presupposes that the afterlife is just an extension of this life, albeit with the negative removed. If this is what it is like, then a finite life would be preferable. But on a sophisticated conception, the afterlife is not more of the same, but a scarcely imaginable participation in the divine life.
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*The sophisticated reader will appreciate that 'earthly being' in this context cannot mean being who lives on the planet Earth any more than 'heavenly being' in this context means being who lives in space beyond the planet Earth. Human astronauts far from Earth remain 'earthly' in the religious sense.