The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should give us pause to consider whether religions should assure people that a life after death awaits them. In all probability, the terrorist attacks and innumerable other tragedies throughout history would not have occurred but for that belief.

Promotes Terrorism

The terrorists believed that Allah approved of their suicidal acts and they would be eternally rewarded as martyrs. In a letter discovered after the attacks, their ringleader assured his companions that they would soon be in paradise "with beautiful angels" who have "put on their most beautiful dresses."

The Koran supports his belief. As for the reward awaiting Muslims after death, it says: "But for the God-fearing is a blissful abode, enclosed gardens and vineyards; and damsels with swelling breasts for companions; and a full cup." This is where "reclining on beds they will ask for abundant fruit and exquisite drinks, all the while next to them will be blushing virgins as companions."

Terrorist leaders use these promised rewards as a primary means of recruiting the young and motivating them to carry out murder-suicides. This method of inciting terrorism would be ineffective if the recruits had been taught that there is no rational basis for believing in an afterlife.

Promotes War

According to Richard Dawkins, such erroneous beliefs about the hereafter have immunized not only Middle Eastern terrorists against fear of death but also countless other warriors throughout history. The promised heavenly rewards made the prospect of death in battle appear attractive.
The use of this propaganda has been so effective that Dawkins exclaims: "What a weapon! Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank and the neutron bomb."

Bertrand Russell makes a similar observation: "At a certain stage of development, as the Mohammedans first proved, belief in Paradise has considerable military value as reinforcing natural pugnacity."
Whether the Muslims were the first to use that belief for military purposes, it is certain that the same idea was soon used against them. In the Middle Ages, rewards of eternal bliss in heaven were promised to Christians who joined the Crusades against Islam.

More recently, during the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, assurances of heavenly rewards motivated many young Iranian boys - between 9 and 16 years old - to give their lives by running through mine fields to clear the way for advancing Iranian soldiers. The promised rewards also motivated parents all over Iran to encourage their sons to participate in these "human wave attacks."

Robin Wright, who witnessed the boys' actions, wrote in Sacred Rage that "wearing white headbands to signify the embracing of death, and shouting 'Shahid! Shahid! (Martyr! Martyr!),' they literally blew their way into heaven."

Similarly in the 1990s, the hope for martyrdom motivated many of the fundamentalist Islamic soldiers who enabled the Taliban to take over and control most of Afghanistan. The Taliban became a supporter of terrorists, including the ones responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

If people did not believe in life after death and realized there is absolutely no scientific evidence for it, the thought of dying a warrior's death would be less appealing to them. Instead of welcoming death or viewing it casually, they would likely value this life more by knowing that, as far as we can tell, it is the only one we have.

Promotes Murder

Belief in an afterlife can also lead people to commit murder. The Humanist philosopher Corliss Lamont asserts that some ancient societies would kill their aging members before they reached a state of decrepitude. The idea was that they could therefore go to the afterlife in a body that was still in relatively good shape.

A more modern example is the case of John List, a New Jersey accountant and Sunday school teacher who killed his wife and three children in 1971. When finally caught many years later, List explained that his wife was drifting away from Christianity and his children were likely to do so when faced with worldly temptations as they grew older. So he decided to kill them while they were still Christians, thereby ensuring that they would go to heaven instead of hell.

A lesser-known case occurred in Baytown, Texas, in the mid 1980s. A 31-year-old mother killed three of her children with a knife, while a fourth child survived the attack. The mother had written that she wanted to send her children to Jesus.

Similar motivation appears to have been present in the infamous case of Andrea Yates, the devoutly religious Texas housewife who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001. According to Newsweek, Yates told a jail psychologist that her bad mothering had made the kids "not righteous," which would cause them to "perish in the fires of hell." She explained that because she killed them while they were young, God would be merciful to their souls and "take them up" to heaven.

Belief in an afterlife was also held by Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons in 1994. While parked on a boat ramp and deciding whether to send her car into a lake while the toddlers were strapped in their seats, Smith believed that the boys would go to a happy existence with Jesus immediately after their deaths. As she sits in prison, she still believes that's where they are.

Northeastern University criminologist James Fox indicates that belief in a better world beyond the grave is not unusual among parents who kill their children and themselves. "Frequently, the parent thinks this life is miserable and rationalizes that the family will be happily reunited in the hereafter," he states.

Clearly, such motives for murder could not exist absent belief in an afterlife.


Promotes Suicide

Not only terrorist suicide attacks and murder-suicides within families, but also other types of suicide can result from the notion of a heavenly abode. Corliss Lamont relates an incident from the 1930s involving a U.S. congressman who killed himself shortly after his wife died.
The man explained in a suicide note that his wife had been calling him to join her and their young son in heaven. Lamont reports that, rather than this being an isolated incident, there are "numerous cases on record of people killing themselves to preclude being parted from the beloved dead."

Belief in an afterlife also caused the mass suicide of the religious group known as the People's Temple. Rev. Jim Jones, their leader, relocated the group from the U.S. to Jonestown, Guyana, in the mid 1970s. Jones believed that he and his followers would eventually die together and go to a place of eternal bliss, and they practiced mass suicides.

In 1978, after his security guards had killed a visiting congressman and several others, Jones feared retaliation and decided it was time for the group to do the real thing. He then led them in a mass suicide that caused his death and that of 913 of his followers, including nearly 300 children.
Belief in the hereafter likewise incited the 1997 mass suicide in the Heaven's Gate religious organization in Southern California. The group believed that accompanying the Hale-Bopp comet was a spaceship that would take them to a higher realm of existence. So 39 members killed themselves, believing that by shedding their earthly bodies they would be transported to the spaceship.

Rejecting belief in an afterlife would surely eliminate these motives for suicide.

Wastes Time, Energy and Resources

The idea of an afterlife causes people to engage in nonproductive activities instead of actions that improve the world. This can be seen among many ancient peoples, but a famous example involves the Egyptians and their practice of mummifying the dead. The Egyptians felt that preservation of one's corpse was necessary for a satisfactory existence in the great beyond.

For the purpose of preserving their bodies in the afterlife, members of the Egyptian nobility and the wealthy class spent huge sums for mummification and other means of maintaining their remains in perpetuity. And tremendous amounts of labor and resources were used to construct the pyramids, the purpose of which was mainly to protect the bodies of deceased Egyptian kings.

Robert Ingersoll describes the wastefulness of these practices by stating that the Egyptians "were believers in immortality, and spent almost their entire substance upon the dead. The living were impoverished to enrich the dead. The grave absorbed the wealth of Egypt. The industry of a nation was buried."

To some extent the same type of problem occurred in czarist Russia. Many members of the nobility and upper classes bestowed vast wealth on the Russian Orthodox Church for the purpose of having daily prayers recited and other intercessions made for their departed souls. The riches and time spent praying could have been much better used to benefit the millions of Russians who lived in dire poverty.

Similarly in the Catholic Church, considerable emphasis has been placed on prayers and masses for the deceased. These practices have been a source of immense income for the church, as have the indulgences the church sold supposedly for improving the well-being of people's souls or those of their relatives in the afterlife.

Mormons spend an enormous amount of time and money studying genealogical records in order to baptize deceased relatives, ancestors and others into the Mormon Church. The founder of that church, Joseph Smith, taught that departed souls can accept what is done for them on earth.

Edmund D. Cohen points out that preoccupation with an afterlife leads some orthodox Christians to devalue and ignore many important matters in this life. He says that for such persons, "all but a few aspects of earthly life are reduced to unimportance, and the next life is 'where the action is.'" That attitude could hardly be less conducive to solving the world's problems.

In fact, extreme focus on an afterlife is often welcomed and encouraged by the "powers-that-be" in this world. They know that people engrossed with thoughts of other worlds are less likely to notice or care about exploitation and abuse on earth.

Likewise, when persons believe that injustices will be punished in another world, they aren't so concerned about correcting wrongs or seeing that the perpetrators of it are punished in this world. These views make it much easier for evildoers to prosper with impunity in the here and now.
In summarizing the problem of people wasting this life for the sake of an alleged afterlife, Corliss Lamont states: "As long . . . as a future life is conceived to exist, people will devote to the thought of it much time and attention that could be used for earthly enterprises."

Conclusion

The unfounded idea of an afterlife leads to much unnecessary evil. If people were taught there is no more evidence to believe that humans are immortal than there is to believe that trees and insects are, a great deal of harm would be avoided and much more focus placed on improving this world.

Of course, believing in an afterlife is a source of consolation for many, in that their pain from the loss of loved ones can be alleviated by the notion that they will all be reunited in the hereafter. But the serious harm caused by that idea appears to far outweigh the beneficial effects.

Today, the terrorism that the belief produces - particularly if the terrorists obtain nuclear weapons - is a threat to the lives of millions around the world and to the continued existence of the United States and Western civilization.

For those who cannot bear the thought of the final extinction of themselves and their loved ones, the hope for an afterlife - as opposed to the belief in one - can be a harmless source of solace. As Robert Ingersoll said, "Hope is the consolation of the world."

In the nineteenth century, the agnostic Thomas H. Huxley seemed to leave room for that hope by saying: "I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it."

Simply hoping for a life after death, rather than presuming to know that it exists, brings consolation to some and need not result in a devaluation of this life. People who employ a scientific outlook and have that hope know that it is very possible, or even highly probable, that this is their one and only life. They therefore will not throw it away or think little of throwing away the lives of others.

But it is important that this hope - which was held by great humanistic thinkers such as Robert Ingersoll and Thomas Paine - does not develop into a belief and the accompanying evils. The results in today's world could be catastrophic on an unthinkable scale.

Those who cannot give up the idea of the hereafter would be wise to follow Cicero's advice that a future state is "to be hoped for rather than believed."