moral reasoning for LAD

moral reasoning

• A very different argument for life after death starts from the observation that if life does not continue after death, there could be no justice. In 

• this world, the innocent suffer, and often the good receive no reward while the bad go unpunished. If this moral imbalance were not balanced, 

• the universe would not be rational. It would be unjust, meaningless and absurd. Therefore, the unfairness of life in this world indicates that life 

• must continue after death, for only if life continues can the scales of justice be balanced. 

kant

• Immanuel Kant argued that moral reasoning implies belief in the summum bonum (the highest good), where virtue and happiness are perfectly aligned. Since this ideal is not achieved in this life, Kant posited that an afterlife is necessary for moral fulfilment to occur. 

•  In Critique of Practical Reason, Kant suggests that the existence of an afterlife (and God) must be postulated to make sense of moral striving: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration… the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” 

• This does not claim empirical proof but claims rational necessity: that we must assume immortality for the moral project to be meaningful. 

STRONG

John Hick supports this in his concept of eschatological verification—we may verify the afterlife if it exists, and the hope of posthumous justice makes moral sense of suffering and unfulfilled virtue. 

WEAK

• Critics like J.L. Mackie argue this assumes what it sets out to prove. Just because humans want justice does not mean an afterlife exists. 

• Furthermore: It is far from obvious that life is fair, and there is nothing irrational or contradictory about a universe that is unjust by human standards. Unless we have good reason to believe the universe is fair, the justice argument fails