Existence After Death

In 2003, about 3,500 Belarussians killed themselves. In South Korea in 2009, more than 15,000 people killed themselves. Even in the United States, with a relatively low suicide rate, about 33,000 people killed themselves in 2005. To this list of people who consciously ended their own lives, we must also add those who attempted but failed; those who wanted to kill themselves but were too scared of the potential pain, those who wanted to die but feared the humiliation of trying and failing; those who wanted to die but felt this would be too cruel to those left behind; and prsumably others who desire death but had different reasons for not getting round to it.Clearly, the idea that everyone wants to preserve their own life indefinitely is a nonsense.

In an effort to search for commonalities and cultural differences in near-death experiences reported by different types of people, a couple of researchers from the American Society for Psyhical Research went around interviewing Indian Hindus who claimed to have had near-death experiences, to compare and contrast with the more familiar accounts of Americans and Europeans.It seems that one thing common in the Hindu accounts (though how common I can't tell - can't find the original article) is the attribution of the experience to some sort of cosmic administrative error. They'd come across a clerk of the afterlife who'd angrily complain that this was Sanjit the baker instead of Sanjit the gardener, and then be sent back. This sort of thing rarely, if ever, happens in Western accounts.I think this can tell us more about cultural beliefs and attitudes than the afterlife, but I thought it was interesting, anyway.

If you mean never historically, this isn't true - and some of these are still sometimes enforced today. Some of the theocratic regimes of the Middle Easy have laws against idolatry and blasphemy - even Ireland, in modern secular Europe, has blasphemy laws - which they've recently strengthened in contradiction to everywhere else in Europe (though I don't reckon a charge would stand up to legal challenge).There are all sorts of laws in various US states about 'keeping the Sabbath holy' - prohibitions against the sale of alcohol on Sunday, for example. Adultery carries very strict punishments in some countries - Malaysia, for example.dyluck's certainly wrong that all, or even most, law is based on the ten commandments, but most of them have made it into secular law here and there.

I don't know if there's ever been a law about coveting (how could it be enforced), but the rest that I'm talking about are hardly obscure. Of course laws are abandoned - many countries have completely rewritten their legal codes. The Czech Criminal and Civil Codes, for instance, are very recent - they're amended from the Communist era codes, which were themselves de novo creations. Sure, they are influenced by old legal traditions and older laws, but some bits - such as laws regarding blasphemy, are simply gone.Amongst countries like Britain with different legal systems, where the ancient bits cling around in statute law long after they become enforceable, the laws are still on the books. Old laws about blasphemy and the preservation of the Sabbath are still there to read, even if they've been superseded by recent laws. There was an attempt to bring a blasphemy prosecution in England fairly recently, which the judge angrily dismissed as a waste of time, so the law was formally abolished as part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.It's all well and good to say that these laws (murder and theft and whatnot) are part of standard human morality, but I'm not so sure that blasphemy is. When Christian people put these things in the legal codes, quoting the Bible as they did so, I think it's safe to argue them as coming from the Ten Commandments.