A common criticism of religious belief dismisses it as mere wish-fulfillment fantasy, driven by human fear of death. But this explanation seems, at best, entirely inadequate.
In ancient Greek paganism, for instance, the souls of the dead continued to exist. But they were shorn of earthly status and position, incapable either of progressing or exerting influence, in a shadowy and essentially meaningless underworld known as “Hades.” In the 11th chapter of Homer’s “Odyssey,” Odysseus must make a drink offering of blood to Teiresias in order to speak with that dead prophet, who describes Hades as “a region where is no joy.”
Somewhat later, Odysseus speaks to the great Achilles, hero of the Trojan War, recalling his illustrious exploits in mortality and suggesting that, for him, as “a Prince among the dead,” “death can be no grief at all.” But, while the Greek gods honored and rewarded living heroes, they ignored those same heroes after death.
“Do not make light of Death before me, O shining Odysseus,” Achilles responds. “Would that I were on earth a servant, bound to some impoverished man who must pinch and scrape to keep alive! Life so were better than King of Kings among these dead men who have had their day and died.”
Hades was nothing to wish for or fantasize about.
Nor, throughout much of the period of the Old Testament, was the spirit realm called “Sheol” — the Jewish equivalent of Hades — the stuff of which dreams are made:
“A living dog is better than a dead lion,” declares Ecclesiastes 9:4-5. “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.”
“I am as a man that hath no strength,” laments the despairing Psalmist, “... like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand.” He appeals to the Lord for help, and the help that he seeks is completely this-worldly: “Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? ... Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?” (Psalm 88:4-5, 10-12.)
Famously, the Jewish religious and political elite in the age of Jesus, the party of temple priests known to us as the Sadducees, believed in neither the resurrection of the dead nor the immortality of the soul. (Paul used their disbelief to great rhetorical effect in his appearances before the Jews, dividing his judges by appealing to the sympathies of the Pharisees, who shared his belief in a life after death and the ultimate resurrection of the dead; see Acts 23:6.) Even today, Judaism as a whole pays relatively little attention to the subjects of personal immortality and ultimate human destiny.
The same must be said of both Shinto, often described as the indigenous religion of Japan, and Confucianism, the ancient Chinese philosophy or system of thought that is typically also considered, functionally, a religion. Confucius or Kong Fuzi (d. 479 B.C.) insisted that, since the afterlife is beyond human comprehension, our focus should remain on ethical life in this world. Very ancient Shinto traditions describe the realm of the dead as a dark, underground place very similar to the ancient Greeks’ Hades, with a river separating the living from the dead.
According to the understanding of Theravada Buddhism, in the sixth to fifth century B.C. Gautama, the Buddha, taught the doctrine of “anatta,” which holds that we possess no eternal souls. Instead, “persons” are temporary bundles of conjoined habits, memories, sensations and desires that merely give the illusion of stable, lasting selves. The great object of life is to achieve release by abandoning our false sense of selfhood so that our bundle of memories and impulses disintegrates, leaving nothing to reincarnate and nothing to experience suffering.
Resurrection and immortality are major themes in the Quran. But careful reading of Islam’s scripture plainly demonstrates that they were unattractive to its A.D. seventh-century pagan Arabian audience. The Quran continually argues against people who rejected the idea of resurrection as ridiculous and who regarded the notion of postmortem accountability to God as a frightening threat.
The claim that religion is mere wish-fulfillment fantasy, motivated by fear of death, doesn’t apply to many of the world’s great religious traditions.
Daniel Peterson founded the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, chairs The Interpreter Foundation and blogs on Patheos. William Hamblin is the author of several books on premodern history. They speak only for themselves.