If you believe in an immortal and immaterial being beyond our ability to measure, it's not such a stretch to believe there is such a thing as immortaity.  To put it another way, if you have good reasons to believe that an immortal God exists, then you also have good reasons to believe that immortality exists.

The arguments from God's existence (which we considered in our last column) are great if you already believe in God.  But what if you don't buy into Christian theism?  Or what if you just have doubts about an eternal life with God in heaven beyond this mortal life?  Is there any empirical evidence for such a belief?

In their book, Beyond Death, J.P. Moreland and Gary Habermas consider several pieces of evidence, moving from experiential to philosophical to empirical evidence.  In the category of experiential evidence for immortality, Moreland and Habermas cite documented cases of near death experiences (NDEs), such as the vivid description offered by Don Piper in his book, 90 Minutes in Heaven.  Honestly, we're not big fans of this category of evidence because it's based on the experience of the person having the NDE.

Unlike the experiential evidence, the philosophical evidence offered by Moreland and Habermas is very compelling.  It's called the argument from desire, and one of its greatest advocates is C.S. Lewis.  According to Lewis, every person desires heaven, although that desire can be hidden.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.  if none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.  Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.  If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a copy, or echo, or mirage.  I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main objective of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same.

Moreland and Habermas add, "Sometimes we desire lesser, finite goods (such as beauty), but these are symbols of and pointers to the transtemporal, transfinite good that is our real destiny.  The desire for heaven is a desire that no natural happiness will satisfy."

So far we've presented evidence for a life beyond this life based on God's existence, personal experience, and human longing.  All of that together makes a pretty good case for immortality, but what if we had empirical evidence as well?  Moreland and Habermas pose the question like this:

What if we had evidence based on historical and scientific research that verified what philosophy showed was rational?  What if we could find events that have occurred in our world that show that life beyond the grave is true?  In fact, what if we could find at least one person who survived death and returned to tell us and show us what immortality is really like?

Next time we will consider these questions and propose an answer (although we're pretty sure you've already figured that out).