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Jacob Greene
Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-004
18 April 2016
Thesis Paper: A Whole New World
WID April 18th, 2016:
The grammar issue I tend to struggle with the most is run-on sentences. In my senior
english class in high school, I was told to make longer sentences, as opposed to several smaller
sentences, to portray an idea. Sometimes I mess up my commas though, and this leads me into
run-on sentences.
I would give this paper a 90% if I had to give it a grade. I believe it supports my inquiry
well and gives some detail about why I believe what I believe, as well as what others believe. I
think I couldve done more research and tried to include several other religions into my paper
better than I did, but all-in-all I think this is a solid paper.
First-Draft Reflection:
After finishing my Annotated bibliography, I felt good about the material I had in order
to write a really good thesis paper. As I began to write, I actually found it pretty difficult to put
my ideas on paper. I feel as if maybe my initial outline for my paper wasnt as in-depth as I
would have liked it to be, leading me to areas where I wouldnt really know what to talk about. I
feel as if there is still a lot to learn about this topic, and in order to make this paper better, I need
to continue to do more research and define a more specific outline for this paper.
Second-Draft Reflection:

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After adding the second half of my paper, I believe there is a lot more proof to support my
thesis. I feel that my paper has a lot more structure and effectively proves the point I am trying to
make. Revisions definitely need to be made, as my sentences dont flow as well as I would like
throughout this paper. With a little bit more time, I believe I can make this paper an informative
read to all people, while maintaining the interest of the reader.
Have you ever come across a moment in your lifetime where you thought to yourself,
What will happen to me after I die? Just about everyone has come across this scenario at some
point in their life; But how many of those people actually try and dig deep enough to find an
answer to their own unresolved questions? Well, with a little bit of effort and research, I managed
to put together some bigger thought processes and beliefs on what happens after we die from the
perspective of many different views, such as philosophical, theological, and scientific. It turns
out that there really isnt a definite answer, but rather several different opinions formed by
different individuals, which in part leads to the religious systems we have today. This question,
that many of us ask ourselves on a daily basis, led me to my inquiry: Why do people chose to
believe (or not believe) in an afterlife, and do they actually exist.
Have you ever wondered if there really is an afterlife? And if an afterlife does in fact
exist, are there certain paths someone can take, defined by their good and evil qualities,
such as a heaven and hell? Why do we choose to worship the thing we worship? Do we know
if supernatural gods actually exist? Is there scientific proof of their existence somewhere?
Where do religious beliefs originate from?
All of these are questions I have been developing through my own religious beliefs. As a
practicing catholic at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Denver, North Carolina, I have slowly
begun my journey into the concepts of religion through faith formation, attending church

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regularly, having discussions with peers, and just doing my own research. Unfortunately for me
though, I still dont have a very good understanding of the church and what it represents to some
people. There are many people around the world who know a lot about their own religions, but
because I was young and wasnt super interested in the church and studying the word of God, I
severely lack in the knowledge some kids my age have. For example, my girlfriend, a NonDenominational Christian, always talks about her love for God, and is always telling me stories
of how God has helped her become the woman she is today. Now, at the age of 19, I have
decided I really want to take my religious studies to a new, deeper level; A level at which I
understand more about what my church believes in. With this new passion, I also have the urge
to find out what other religions believe in, as I am always curious about the beliefs of other
people. Due to this recent change in personality, I have wanted to begin researching these ideas
for my own religious knowledge, in order to eventually reach eternal life in Heaven, my own
religious afterlife belief. With the opportunities handed to me to research any topic in my UWRT
1102 class at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, I took this to my advantage in order
to learn more about my own and others religion. A big part of many religions is their focus on
what happens after we die, in which I thought would make for a pretty good research project.
With the hypotheses of many professionals who perform religious studies, I managed to get
enough information in which to formulate a paper on the ideas of many religious groups
afterlives.
Before we start to understand what afterlives are, we need to start with their roots:
religion. Religions, according to Mircea Eliade, a historian of religion and professor at
University of Chicago, are maps of the human mind (7), referring to the idea that religions are
based primarily on our own individual processes and beliefs. Often times our ideas can be

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swayed by the opinions of people important to us such as our parents or close friends, which
leads a few select religions to become more popular than others, and allowing people to
categorize themselves so they dont feel alone in their journey. Religion dates all the way back to
the Stone Age, where the main purpose in life was simply to survive. Because they didnt have
the modern technologies we do today, they had to learn what was good and bad through their
own life experiences and stories told from those who had been around to live through the good
and bad. Because everyone in that era wanted to live, often times the less-intelligent would look
up to the smarter people in order to learn survival instincts and how to live life effectively. These
smarter individuals were the ones who began coming up with concepts of religion. Yathish
Dhavala, a student at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, states that For Stone Age
people, will was spirit, and they saw the world as filled with many spirits. These people saw
will in everything that surrounded them, and believed that spirits encapsulated all things.
Because of this, people had things to worship and look forward to. It made their current life on
Earth less stressful and gave them hope for what would come in the future.
The ideas of spirits and will has greatly evolved since the era of the Stone Age, and has
even been studied in much more detail. Many people refer to spirits as supernatural beings, a
make-up of religious afterlives. According to Donald Morse, a science professor at Temple
University, The afterlife is the purported existence after death (life after death) (154), although
not everyone may believe an afterlife exists. The afterlife is often interpreted in different ways,
depending on different religions. As a Christian, my afterlife is made up of Heaven, the good side
led by God, while there is also a bad side, Hell, led by Satan. Many religions, although not
calling them by the same names or even believing in the same beings, worship an afterlife
similar to this one, involving a good side, in which everyone who has fulfilled their duties

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goes, and a bad side, where everyone who doesnt quite follow the rules goes. There are also
several other options. Some religions dont believe that an afterlife exists at all, and that once
your natural life on Earth comes to an end, you are just dead, and that is the end. Others even
believe in reincarnation, where some, after experiencing death, have been taken to another world,
only to be put back on earth in another form, such as another animal or living entity. Several
other options are possible, and again is dependent upon each and every individual. Many views
can be different when discussing the afterlife.
There are several ways in which people today are trying to learn and prove more about
the afterlife. Individuals such as Neil Gillman, Mircea Eliade, and Donald Morse have studied in
depth on different levels, trying to understand how the afterlife works, and all that belongs within
the afterlife. Unfortunately, there is only so much information human beings can get from the
technologies we have today, as no one is truly capable of proving the afterlife exists with 100%
legitimacy. Even if detailed proof was given, some individuals would still choose not to believe
simply because of their own beliefs. Listening to someone who doesnt believe in what they
believe may not seem legitimate to them.
Eschatology, a word that greatly defines what an afterlife may be, is an idea that many
people use to try to prove that afterlives exist. Neil Gillman, an American rabbi and philosopher
who practices Conservative Judaism, discusses in great depth the many sides of eschatology in
his work, How Will It All End? Eschatology in Science and Religion. He terms eschatology as
to that sub-field of theology devoted to the discussion (logos) of the last things (eschatos)
(Gillman 39), and that eschatology can be broken up into two sub-categories: secular and
scientific. Because the term eschatology can be so vague, he tries to approach it from several
different standpoints, as others may like to interpret it. Anthropologically, according to Gillmans

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studies, the end times comes out of the need to bring cosmos out of chaos, order out of
anarchyWe need structure. We structure space and we structure time (40). I believe this is
very true, and the way he discusses his points throughout the text makes it very apparent that he
firmly believes in this. As a society, we all want a structure for everything, even for the things we
can not understand, and therefore we make up a system which we can interpret ourselves.
Unfortunately, because it has no real proof, there is still debate whether afterlives really exist.
Religious affiliation also has a huge impact on how we try to prove whether or not an
afterlife exists. Although some may not have as much support as others, all of them still have
their own faults, making any option an eligible one. According to interpretations of the Christian
Bible, there seems to be a very utopian-like community after an individuals time on Earth comes
to an end. It is a place where our subtle bodies, including our soul, mind, intellect, and ego,
move on to a heavenly place, according to the Spiritual Science and Research foundation. Our
physical body is left on Earth and the vital energy, the energy that keeps us alive, is released
into the universe ("Life after Death - Where Do We Go After We Die?"). Now in other religions,
such as Atheism, such places do not exist. They simply believe that once you are dead, then that
is the end of all time for that person, soul, and mind. Another belief system, such as Hinduism
and other Asian country religious practices, is that of reincarnation, in which someone is brought
back to Earth from the dead to relive their lives in a new form, determined by their behaviors in
their previous life. Some of these may seem completely illogical to some people, but there is no
evidence to prove these theories completely wrong. Mircea Eliade even states in her book that
no matter how bizarre some religions may appear to us at first sight, they can ultimately be
understood as the dwelling of human minds on certain hypotheses concerning nature and
existence (7). Relating to what Gillman said earlier, everyone simply wants to try to

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understand the things we can not fully understand ourselves. Everyone has their own thought
process in which they try to structure what the afterlife may or may not look like. Therefore, no
belief is technically wrong in the eyes of all humans and their studies on religion.
Some people in the world around us have gone through an interesting event in their
lifetime. For example, a man named Dr. Eben Alexander, a Harvard-trained brain neurosurgeon,
caught a very severe case of bacterial meningitis, leading him into a coma for seven days. During
this time, he experienced a place in which he knows to be the afterlife. According to Steven
Bancarz, owner of the Spirit Science and Metaphysics website containing the story that
follows second-hand, Alexander went to some very heavenly places along with some less
heavenly places. His experience was one very unique to most people, where he could talk to
people telepathically, and all the questions he had were answer immediately. The afterlife was
also run on the purest of love, and nothing could get in the way of this unconditional love
(Bancarz). Now some of you may be thinking to yourself, This just seems like a really vivid
dream; Whats so special about this and what makes it legitimate? Being as Alexander was a
brain surgeon himself, he discovered after his recovery that his neocortex was completely
dysfunctional during his coma, meaning it could not have been a dream. Before this experience,
Alexander did not believe in an afterlife, but his mind has since changed on this subject, leading
him to believe an afterlife does in fact exist (Bancarz).
Dr. Eden Alexander is not the only person to ever endure such an experience. Many
people refer to an experience like this one as a Near-Death Experience(NDE). David Filippo, an
educator at National Louis University, describes NDEs as a conscious experience in which the
individual experiences a sense of being detached from the physical world during the process of
physiological dying (5). NDEs are very rare, and according to Donald Morse, the best

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proof [comes] from NDErs (168). Since very little in the world around us today can give us
an idea about what the afterlife is like, we look up to people like these who have experienced it
first hand in order to describe us their personal experiences with death and the afterlife. These
people can describe what it is like in the afterlife and what their own experiences were like,
similar to that of Dr. Eden Alexander. Filippo also states that Near-Death experiencers are
generally positively affected by their experiences and their confrontation with death seems to
give more meaning to the individual's life (5), showing that this really does affect the lives of
those going through this experience. Like Alexander, people who experience this tend to have a
change of heart toward religion and the afterlife; Some are non-believers who then believe, while
others are people who already believed but want to take their religious experiences a step further
in order to fulfill the will of their god. This is definitely the best proof that we have to this day in
order to prove whether or not an afterlife actually exists.
There are many different opinions as to whether afterlives truly exist. Will we ever have a
definite answer as to whether it truly does or not? Depending on where the world goes
technologically may give humans the capability of finding these beings and proving their
existence, but until then, it will always be debated. I believe that these are some of the best ways
in which people have tried to come up with proof, both with experiences, theologically, and even
scientifically, but still are not quite effective enough to 100% prove the existence of an afterlife.
Therefore, it is still a mystery to all of us, but a mystery that is worth fighting for.

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Works Cited
Bancarz, Steven. "Harvard Neurosurgeon Confirms the Afterlife Exists." Spirit Science and
Metaphysics. Spirit Science and Metaphysics, 13 Dec. 2014. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
Dhavala, Yathish. "The Big Story: Origins of Religion." YouTube. YouTube, 9 Sept. 2013.
Web. 09 Mar. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9mFNgu6Cww>.
Eliade, Mircea, Ioan P. Couliano, and Hillary S. Wiesner. The Eliade Guide to World Religions.
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. Print.
Filippo, David San, Ph.D. Religious Interpretations of Death, Afterlife, and NDEs. N.p.: Faculty
Publications, 2006. Digital Commons @ NLU. 1 Jan. 2006. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
Gillman, Neil. "How Will It All End? Eschatology in Science and Religion." Cross Currents
57.1 (2007): 38-50. Academic Search Complete [EBSCO]. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.

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"Life after Death - Where Do We Go After We Die?" SSRF English. Ed. Sean Clarke.
Spiritual Science Research Foundation, 2012. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.
Morse, Donald R. "Can Science Prove the Soul, the Afterlife and God?" The Journal of
Religion and Psychical Research 28.3 (2005): 154-76. Academic Search Complete
[EBSCO]. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.