Immortality (22 page)

This is embarrassing, not only for our sense of cosmic significance but for the Soul Narrative itself. Before Copernicus, its advocates were always fairly sure about where their souls went: up or down, to the sun or the stars, beyond the horizon or under the earth. Now, however, we have searched all these places. Each time one of these sites is found to be empty of souls and angels, believers relocate heaven to the next place that we cannot so easily check—until we can, when it moves on again. It is not a track record that inspires confidence.

Souls, if they are to live forever, must live forever
somewhere
, but it is not at all easy to say where. Defenders of supernatural realms must explain what makes these supposed spaces more than just fantasy. Seeming to find it a little awkward, clever theologians invariably try to avoid the question of heaven’s whereabouts as much as possible. When put on the spot, they tend to take something of a mystical turn. The aforementioned theologian Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for example, writes that heaven “lies neither inside nor outside the space of our world” but rather is “the new ‘space’ of the body of Christ, the communion of saints.” Well, that clears that up, then.

B
UT
the Copernican was only the first of two revolutions that threatened both the Soul Narrative and our hopes of going to heaven. The second, of course, was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which placed us humans firmly on the family tree with apes, pigs, lizards and plankton. This raised many difficult questions for the conventional narrative of our place in the
universe, some of which we will look at in the next chapter when we consider the scientific search for the soul. One of the most pressing is what, if we are just one of countless species in the complex web of life, makes us so special that we think we have been picked out to live forever.

The Soul Narrative allows us to dream that we are part angel, part brute—and that the angelic part of us is both the more important and destined to live forever. The Darwinian revolution points to a different conclusion: that we are pretty much just brute. It is difficult to believe that God made us in his image when the evidence suggests we evolved very gradually over an immense time span. And biologically speaking, we are very similar to chimpanzees—not to mention other hominids such as Neanderthals. If God made us in his image, then he must have made them in his image too.

The assumption behind the worldview of Dante was that we humans are the point and purpose of creation, living in a world made for our moral and spiritual edification. But seen in the great sweep of the evolutionary history of life, this view seems madly arrogant. Most of the history of life has been dominated by single-celled bacteria, and indeed they form most of the organisms currently alive today. In fact, some biologists argue that multicellular organisms such as you and I
are
effectively just colonies of bacteria-like cells. Much more plausible, then, to think that a supreme being has made bacteria to rule the earth—perhaps, even, that they are in its omniscient but single-celled image.

As we are just one species among millions, it is not obvious why a supreme being would want to have every
human
soul who has ever lived hanging around his heavenly abode forever. Or why he might not choose bacteria, dolphins, or chimps for company instead. But assuming such a being would be so generous as to single us out for all this attention, we might ask just what such an eternity would be like.

F
OR
some ancient cultures, as we have seen, the next world was a dull, unchanging half-life. But for many others, it was very much like this world, only better. Vikings who died in battle, for example, would go to Valhalla—a large hall where they would drink beer and prepare for further fighting. Muslims expect a paradise called “the Garden” in which there will be all those things that are scarce in the Arabian desert from which Islam stemmed: rivers, fountains, shady valleys, trees, milk, honey and wine—not to mention, for the men, seventy-two female companions each.

The theologians who developed the Christian idea of heaven frowned upon such carnality. These were intellectuals and ascetics, and like Plato, from whom they borrowed their idea of the soul, they imagined a heaven fit for philosophers. This is the paradise of St. Augustine, in which a lifetime’s study and worship would be rewarded with the chance to contemplate the divine forever. Throughout most of the church’s history this has been the orthodox view, as it is in keeping with the modest descriptions of heaven in the Bible as a place of light whose inhabitants “are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night” (Revelation 7:15).

This is known as the “theocentric” view of heaven, as it is centerd on the adoration of God to the exclusion of almost everything else. It was the orthodoxy in Dante’s day and is reflected in the exquisite poetry in the third part of his
Divine Comedy
, “Paradise.” In Dante’s vision, virtue in this world is rewarded with closeness to God in the next, and the most virtuous of all sit in a great rose-shaped amphitheater, gazing up to contemplate the glory of the Lord. Here they enjoy an eternity of happiness and tranquillity.

The theocentric heaven is, however, not everybody’s idea of a good time. The ethnologist Élie Reclus writes of Christian missionaries attempting to convert a group of Inuits with the promise of a God-centerd heaven. After listening to the account of paradise, one
Inuit asked, “And the seals? You say nothing about seals. Have you no seals in your heaven?” “Seals? Certainly not,” replied the missionary. “We have angels and archangels … the 12 apostles and 24 elders; we have—” “That’s enough,” cut in the Inuit, “your heaven has no seals, and a heaven without seals is not for us!”

Seals might be a rather rare request, but many people expect more from heaven than an eternity of singing hosannas. In particular, they hope to be reunited with lost loved ones, to see again a child who died too young, converse once more with departed grandparents or feel the embrace of a husband or wife who went before them. This is the “anthropocentric” vision of heaven, one centered on the human. Throughout the history of the Soul Narrative, there has been constant tension between the mystical vision of the theocentric heaven and the more lively and recognizable afterlife promised by the anthropocentric version. This tension was a prominent theme in medieval verse, as the poets struggled to reconcile deeply felt worldly passions on the one hand with the prospect of an eternity of quiet contemplation on the other—a problem to which Dante, as we will shortly see, devised a unique solution.

In the West, the widespread acceptance of the theocentric vision was finally toppled in the time from the American Civil War in the 1860s to the First World War of 1914–1918. The advent of industrialized warfare left behind millions of bereaved wives, mothers and fathers, and they had clear expectations of their religion: to give them their boys back. This fostered the development of the Spiritualist movement, which portrayed the afterlife as a sociable community where people might pursue hobbies, look up old friends and generally live in an idealized version of small-town America or rural En gland.

This tension continues, with the theocentric vision largely defended by high-minded theologians—such as Pope Benedict XVI—and the anthropocentric view promoted by preachers keen to keep their congregations. The popular version has transformed with the
times into a Hollywood heaven, a pick ’n’ mix paradise where, according to the American evangelist pastor James L. Garlow, “your every desire is satisfied more abundantly than you’ve ever dreamed.” This is a vision for the consumerist age when people are used to getting what they want—and what they want does not stop at a harp and a halo. Not even freedom from worldly suffering excites those in the West who now live in unprecedented ease. So we are lured into church with promises of a heaven containing, in Garlow’s words, “buildings, art, culture, and music … goods, services, major events, transportation, and communications.” But attractive (or dreadful) as such a vision might be, it raises some tricky questions.

O
NE
day when Jesus was preaching in the temple, he was approached by some Sadducees (who rejected the idea of an afterlife). They said to him: According to Jewish law, if a man dies leaving a wife but no children, then his brother should marry the widow. Now there were seven brothers: the first married, but died, so the second married the widow; but he too died, so the third married her, but he too died, and so on until the seventh brother was dead, whereupon the woman died too. In the afterlife, whose wife would the woman be? (Luke 20:27–33.)

Jesus’s answer neatly avoids the problem: those who earn a place in the next world, he said, “neither marry nor are given in marriage … for they are like angels.” But this reply is a blow to those who wish for an anthropocentric heaven, in which you might indeed expect relationships like marriage to continue, or at least be an option. But Jesus—like the skeptical Sadducees—was aware of the many paradoxes to which this would lead.

Take, for example, a husband who dreams of going to heaven to be reunited with his dear departed wife. A reasonable wish, you might think, to have fulfilled in paradise. But it turns out that his wife’s idea of heaven is instead to be in the arms of her childhood
sweetheart. How, then, will both husband and wife find eternal happiness? Transferring human relations to eternity does not magically solve their problems—indeed, it only exacerbates them, making them more painfully clear. We have desires that are simply incompatible—my idea of paradise, for example, might be to see you every day, yours to never see me again. You might think Grandpa is up there waiting for you, but perhaps he would rather be playing poker.

Advocates of heaven often claim that all its inhabitants will be happy and good and will somehow just get along: “there is no jealousy, no competition, no cheating, no corruption, and no scandal … and all residents like as well as love one another,” according to one modern guide to the Christian afterlife. But it is difficult to see how this is compatible with their being real human beings. The reality of human psychology means that any community will experience conflict, dissatisfaction, frustration and, given a few billion years, boredom. It might be possible to imagine people who could live together for eternity without ever getting on each other’s nerves, but such people would be very different from me and you. And if we are to be somehow transformed so as to be entirely immune to ill feeling, irritation and boredom, we might ask whether it really is still you or I at all.

The reality of the anthropocentric view is that in positing a heaven in human terms, it cannot avoid importing human problems. The Islamic afterlife, as we saw, is a particularly colorful one, with endless feasts on sumptuous cushions in beautiful gardens, with rivers of milk and honey. All of which sounds fine for a vacation but is unlikely to suffice for infinity. For the virtuous male Muslim there awaits the added perk of lovely-eyed virginal female companions. This, however, is unlikely to make the hereafter paradisal for female Muslims—though some traditions suggest they too will be given heavenly escorts. But even if, as one ancient commentary holds,
there are seventy-two of these creatures per person, this still might seem thin gruel for a billion billion billion years—and that would not even be the beginning of forever.

Such escorts might, however, be necessary if spouses cannot recognize each other: presumably, if you died an old woman it would not be your idea of heaven to spend eternity frail, bent and with two artificial hips. You might therefore prefer that your soul take on the form of your sweet sixteen-year-old self. Other people will have become addled in their old age, their memories and reason consumed by dementia. Most soul theorists assume that everyone in heaven would be healed of earthly wounds and diseases, including presumably those of the mind—no one wants to spend an eternity with Alzheimer’s. But we now have a soul in heaven that is radically different and discontinuous both in form and mind from the individual on earth. The claim that it really is the same person is again becoming increasingly tenuous.

We must also ask where these bodies are coming from. Souls are supposed to be nonmaterial—that is, not made of stuff. This is what makes them immune to the degradations to which bodies are prone, and so immortal. But all the images of the afterlife that we have looked at sound very physical—full of people, thrones, even “transportation and communications.” Indeed, a next world devoid entirely of things, where even people have no form, is inconceivable. For Christians and Muslims, this problem is solved once the great resurrection has taken place and people have their bodies returned to them (though that, as we have seen, is a problematic notion in itself). But until then, it is a mystery how our souls are supposed to take on any form without losing their nonmaterial nature. Dante’s poetic answer is that the surrounding air collects itself into the shapes of the people and their various rewards and punishments he claims to have seen in heaven and hell: “So the neighboring air there puts itself / Into the shape impressed upon it by / The virtue of the soul.”

An anthropocentric view of heaven as celestial tea parties and
shopping malls is widespread in the modern West as well as in the Islamic world. But it is fraught with difficulties, as Jesus well knew when he suggested rather that the next life would be like that of angels. The theocentric view, therefore, is likely to remain the heaven of choice for popes and theologians. However, there are challenges that it too must answer—challenges that take us back to the question of whether living forever is a good idea at all.

T
HE
theocentric view takes an altogether different approach from that of the anthropocentric. Instead of a sensuous Shangri-la, it offers eternal exaltation of the divine. Its advocates say that this encounter with God
is
love and happiness, far exceeding anything we might have experienced on earth. The theocentric vision therefore defines away boredom and dissatisfaction: by definition heaven is pure, unending joy.