What happens when we die???????

Last night, I contemplated the death of my mother.

At age sixty-seven, she suffers from decompensated heart failure. Not enough to require constant regulation from machines, but enough to require a built-in defibrilator. She’s doing quite well at the time of this writing, but I feel that at her age (and beyond) any future treatment (that preserves her life long enough for the family to enjoy her presence until the seemingly inevitable), seems only the quintessential “temporary fix”.

Considering her condition, and the fact that she is not to be around forever, I pondered the concept and existence of death, attempting to reductively settle upon a circumscribed number of conceivable possibilites of what might (for all we know) occur to consciousness when the psychophysical (mind/body) connection is lost.

The “brain-death” criterion for a declaration of death states that an individual has died when there is cessation of electrical activity within the neocortex of the forebrain.

(The “brain-death” criterion supercedes the old determination of death by to cessation of respiration and heart function, given the possibility of mechanical support of respiration and heart function regardless of persistent vegetative state of the individual)

Given this “brain-death” criterion and real experience of the death of human beings across time and place, I moved forward to settle upon three distinct possibilities of the fate of consciousness after death (with such reductionism narrowed to my Judeo-Christian belief and prejudice and intellectual respect for the simplicity of atheism: as far as other religions and their theories of the afterlife are concerned, the jury is still out, and remains out):

(1) The Atheistic View Of Death.

In the absence of the existence of God or gods, (according to pertinent physical theory) human existence and biological mechanism is controlled by the blind and unconscious forces and substances that constitute a mind-independent physical realism, the possible existence of which is assumed through the conviction that arises due to the vagaries of subjective experience.

The human brain, due to it’s unique appearance, chemical structure, and bioelectrochemical function (compared to every other object within the universe) is believed to possess the power to create a virtual reality first-person subjective experience that seems to express the ever-changing and inexorable dispositions of the external reality.

This inexorable disposition of the external world controls the physical nature and fate of the experiencing being, such that the possibility of the loss of consciousness and subjective connection to the world remains a constant threat, due to the unconsciousness (and resultant accidentalness) of the life-sustaining physical medium.

If electrical activity to the neocortex ceases (due to the unconscious physical mechanism accidentally yielding physical circumstances that disrupt biological homeostasis to the point that the brain ceases to function),consciousness (according to the atheist view) ceases to exist.


This irreversible cessation of consciousness is the expected consequence of the death of the person (within godless views of the world), unless informational continuity exists—such that the deceased individual continues to exist in the form of information (knowledge of the neural schematic of the deceased remains—containing information concerning relevant neural chemical substrate, statistical positioning of synaptic connections, ion channel voltage between neural membranes that existed to enable the consciousness of the deceased individual, etc.).

The informational continuity of the individual, combined with empirical technology and knowledge, allows reconstruction of the individual’s brain and a return of the individual’s personality and mental life (with the relevant brain perhaps connected to a suitable body that supports the continuous function of the new brain and allows the “resurrected” person to physically navigate it’s new environment—see Max More: “The Terminus Of The Self”).

Aside from this lucky informational and technological circumstance, any hope of “resurrection” of the deceased (within godless explanation) depends upon the astronomical “impossibility” of the odds of an unexpected “violation” of the 2nd law of thermodynamics that accidentally yields a spontaneous resurrection of the dead (see atheist Victor J. Stenger’s surprising defense of the possible yet highly improbable notion of accidental resurrection from the dead in his article: “Intelligent Design: Humans, Cockroaches, and the Laws of Physics”).

(2) The Fundamentalist Christian view of death.

Within Fundamentalist Christianity, a supernatural template of the mind and personality of the deceased individual (the “soul”), which acts as a “recording” of the original person, survives the destruction or decomposition of the physical brain. This epiphenomenal “recording” now qualifies to be regarded as the identity of the individual (with the physical body and normative consciousness of the original discarded), and is transported instantaneously before the Throne of God to face the final Great White Throne Judgment at the end of time (Revelations 20: 11-15), in which the Judeo-Christian God “separates the sheep from the goats” to determine which individuals are to be cast in the “lake of fire” and which are to enjoy eternity in “heaven”.


If the “judged” individual: (a) possesses pre-death knowledge of the existence of Jesus Christ and Christ’s sin-sacrifice for the sins of mankind while dying upon the cross, and: (b) believes in the truth of (a) and accepts Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior, the “soul” is verbally praised and complimented for it’s faith by God before it is allowed entrance into Heaven.

If the “soul” fails to accomplish (a) and (b) above, regardless of the moral goodness and age of the “soul”, it is considered cursed, receives a verbal reprimand and lambast from God (who dismisses the damned individual by speaking the famous horrific words: “Depart from me ye cursed…into the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels!” [Matthew 25:41]), and is finally thrown into the lake of fire (an attendant angel seizes, carries, and tosses the individual into the flames if the person refuses to go willingly).


(3) The Superchristian view of death.

In Superchristianity, the Grand Primordial Nihilism is the sum total of natural and deliberate evilsl foreknown to God by reason of his omniscience (if God knows the past, present, and future of all conceivably possible worlds, and if this foreknowledge is infallible in terms of that aspect of God’s mind that is replicated by external reality). The Superchristian Hypothesis holds that humans are “cartoon characters” of God, external world replications of the imaginary characters perceived by God within his omniscient mind.

According to SC, the goal of God is the ultimate psychomoral (psychological/moral) evolution of the GPN-characters (us) into psychologically and morally transcendent beings whose psychomoral aspects are derived from the very mind of Jesus Christ (thus one “mutates” from a simple GPN-character into a version of the psychological and moral paragon that is Jesus Christ).

If SC is true, then death is ultimately “freedom” from the reenactment of the GPN.

This follows from Paul’s statement within the New Testament: “Those who have died have been freed from sin…” (Romans 6:7)

Thus the Superchristian hypothesis can interpret the above verse to mean that humans who die (with the exception of the “wicked”, or sociopathic humans who unapologetically feel no concern for the Golden Rule or the necessity to practice it) are freed from the GPN, as their role within a re-enactment of the GPN exhausts and comes to an end.

The consciousness of the (GPN-freed) individual, according to the Superchristian hypothesis, are “uploaded” by God into what Nick Bostrom called: “the next simulation up”—an afterlife virtual reality, in which the individual is educated concerning the true nature of the universe, and evolves (peacefully) into psychological and moral derivation from and causally dependent connection to the mind of Jesus Christ.


My concern for my mother and what occurs to her consciousness after death (or my concern for myself, and the fate of my consciousness after death), I think, reduces to the three hyothetical possibilities presented above (other religious afterlife hypotheses notwithstanding: in my view, if Shiva, Zeus, Odin, or Quetzacoatl turns out to run the cosmic circus, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it—if possible).

Death is the final mystery, and like the question of the existence of a mind-independent physical reality, it may fail to answer the questions of the conscious (if the atheists are correct, we go back to the subjective “non-state” of the “non-experience” before birth).

Then again, against the odds (from the conceivable point of view of the atheist) “death” might not turn out to be the irreversible cessation of consciousness, and the human mind enters yet another VR which one least expected or dared to believe exists.

At any rate, I’ve settled things (at least within my own mind). Armed with this conceptual reductionism (of a limited number of conceptual possibilities), I have granted myself a measure of psychological comfort in the possibilities that may face the consciousness of my mother (or my consciousness, or the consciousness of any other conscious physical being)—when electrical activity finally ceases within the neocortex.

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity
superchristianity.com

It is my general opinion that we should focus on where will we go while we’re living, rather than ask, or ponder on where we go after we die.

I think as a whole, humans tend to “worry” about this question way too much.
If we are worried, or bothered by what becomes of us after death…then maybe we should focus further on our current state, living.
This isn’t to say this idea is silly, or anything like that, its quite a serious question man has been asking for generations…

But I’m under the conclusion that…maybe its the wrong question?

Taos Dunne:

Good post.

While it is very important to focus on where we are in life and where we are going in life, the ultimate mystery, and the curiosity that goes with it, nevertheless remains as a natural philosophical phenomenon.

As for the question: “what happens when we die?” being the “wrong” question?

Hmmm. Aside from considerations of value judgment, in which one thinks that others should be busy thinking of x rather than y, I think the question is neutral, being neither “wrong” nor “right”…it simply exists as a natural consequence of humanity’s curiosity about the nature of it’s existence, with death and “what comes after” (if anything) the proverbial “elephant in the room” that begs consideration in the spaces in between the business of “living one’s life”.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

Don’t you think you should be asking a dead person?

southerngurl:

Wish I could.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

I emphatically understand your concern and inquiries and admire the intellectual process in which you ‘pinch’ them

This past June I’ve had the most unfortunate opportunity to ponder questions similar to yours as the death of my Grandmother brought the first passing of a relative in my family circle.

She was diagnosed with cancer that was attacking her pancreas and decided to spread throughout her liver. Within 2 weeks of this diagnosis her body had endured enough, she was gone.

Witnessing a body struggle to remain while the mind was seemingly absent bewilders me. This was the case on her day of passing, her body was still alive and yet her mind was completely absent. During this process the continuation of consciousness lingered within my mind. Where her mind was I have no idea, where ‘she’ was I have no idea. Viewing this first hand was fascinating yet emotionally confusing, bewildering.

Sorry if I seem to be only reflecting on an emotional experience I’ve had, I can offer my prayers and good wishes to you in your family.

Hopefully within time some of the most mysterious questions about ourselves and were we attend after death may be unveiled through science and other means. May hopefully these findings show that to be human is much more powerful than we could have ever imagined.

May love be with you and your family.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the magnitude of the question…

Yet, I feel man has been asking it for far too long without anything other that hypothetical ideas and “what if” factors. Perhaps we should ask it in a different way?

Could there be a different way of asking this question?

A dead person would say nothing.

Maybe that dead person would be right.

Living_In_Abstract:

Thank you for your prayers and concern, and I offer condolences for the loss of your grandmother. I believe that she is in a better place now.

It is strange and fascinating to wonder what is happening to the mind when certain physical processes take place. The psychophysical connection is implied due to the seeming fact that what happens to the body is reflected within the mind.

Yet, given the fact that our experience of reality is what I call a virtual reality experience, who is to know that this “psychophysical” experience is simply a “lower” experience of a certain sort that gives way to “the next simulation up” after it disrupts?

Or, if the atheists have it right, this psychophysical connection is all that there is.

At any rate, I think that it is worthwhile to play around with the possibilities, and to form a reductive (yet conceptual) explanation for what might go into the process of the mind during death. Despite the fact that lack of first-hand experience threatens falsification of these reductive possibilities, they are satisfying, and they agree with the evidence.

Thank you again.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

Taos Dunne:

I don’t know. What do you think would constitute a “better” question than: “what happens when we die”?

Is science capable of answering this question? I don’t know. The conclusions or assumptions of science are more reliable when there exists a consensus of experience that verifies and agrees with the findings of science, and as far as we know, the subjective state of death is known only to the dying (as well as what, if anything, happens “after”).

Science can only look into the extrinsic and physical aspect of things, and move forward to conceptual inductions (based upon verbal report of living subjects concerning their experiences) of the subjective consequences of changes in the physical state of the person.

Given this, and given the fact that one can form logical possibilities counter to the neccesary cessation of consciousness upon cessation of brain function, I think that we are stuck at hypotheticals and the “what if”.
Asking the question in a different way may not yield anything more than that, and at the end of the day, some might find it interesting and psychologically necessary to ask the question anyway—and come to form their own conceptually and logically possible “conclusions” to their satisfaction.

Anyway, your curiosity for a deeper and more satisfying epistemology of death and dying is intriguing, and shared.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

Thanks phenomenal_graffiti,

Now, in the case of a dying person…do we believe moments before their death that they can answer any part, or even give us hints of what happens when we die?

I’m sure if we did ask this of dying people they would all have varied experiences, which would lead us to make more open-ended questions about what happens when we die. Thus, continuing another cycle of questions which have no answers, and can branch off onto another group of questions, etc.

So, when we are born…do we know that are alive? If not, when do we being to notice this nature of being alive?
Then, when we die, do we know we are dead? If we die a slow death, do we learn what it is to live? Or, do we learn what it is to die?

Anyways, hope we keep this going

Where do we go after death? That all depends if your cremated or buried.
As for conciouseness, ‘‘oblivion’’.

Enjoy what’s left of this life. That’s all there is. #-o

Did you have any consciousness before you were born? No? Death is the same. We didnt exist for billions of years until your parents made love, and one little sperm was lucky enough to fertilize the egg. And out of the millions of possible beings to be born, you were it. So think yourself lucky and I repeat; enjoy what’s left of your life.

Angelo:

But how do you know that all that there is is “oblivion”? Did you die?

Taos Dunne

Good post, and a smart idea. In the same way that consciousness is inferred to be controlled by brain processes through verbal report of subjects of experience (when their brains are manipulated through neuroscientific process) --one could ask dying patients what they are experiencing as they die (although there might be problems with the patient’s articulation, mental concentration, and outside complaint of the questionable ethciality of this type of scientific research).

That’s interesting. Still, for those with religious beliefs, what might one make of the observation of a real patient during such research who actually mirrors the statement made by Bill Paxton’s character (as he lay dying in the arms of Kurt Russell’s “Wyatt Earp”) in the cowboy western film: “Tombstone”?

“Say brother…you know what about all that stuff I was talkin’ about seein’ bright lights on the ‘other side’ when you die? Well, I’m dyin’…and you know what? I don’t see nuthin’, brother…nuthin’ at all…”

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

phenomenal_graffiti

Yes, I totally follow what you are referring to with the dying patient etc, its exactly what I was talking about with the different perspectives on death etc.

Now, I may be be going beyond my knowledge of the medical field here…but isn’t the “bright light” merely something going on with the eyes/mind near the time of death?

It comes to my understanding that…life is again what we should focus all of our questions on, as well as all of our thought because we don’t know what happens when we die, and excuse my 21st thinking, but I believe its a question we the living will never know.
As for the dead, excuse my realist attitude towards the subject…but I feel the dead know nothing, for they are dead!

Now in terms of science, etc we can explain what happens in death with the levels of decay the body goes through. But through means of divine definition I don’t believe we can explain death, or an afterlife.

Now, someone from religion could possibly give their opinion on the matter, but it holds no better sway than anyone else’s opinion.

So, shall we further this discussion with talks of different idea’s of where we go when we die? Or should we come up with a new idea, question?

I just think it’s weird that your ‘fundamentalist Christian’ portrayal didn’t include a bodily Resurrection of the dead.

Interesting!

When I die

Will you miss me when I die?
When the earth and the grass cover me over;
when the sun and the moon take turns
proving me no more?

Never cry,
Don’t mourn.
I am the Robin and the worm,
The Heron and the fish.
The earth that covers me,
is nothing less than me,
and the stars, just my soul,
reflecting life
in the dark night sky.

Life shares more than one flesh,
and like moss,
I grow on
the nearest stone.
Shaded, by the trees,
I reach across
time.
I am one with the rain,
and need no tears.

Dave

Hamlet:
[i]To be, or not to be : that is the question…

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country
from whose bourn no traveler returns,
puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’[/i]

No I didn’t die as far as i know. But thruout the history of civalization, not one soul, spirit or whatever you wish to call the surviving entity has ever returned to the world of the living in any way. Who would want to live forever anyway, would it not become a huge bore. Furthermore, where would all these trillions of people who ever lived on this planet, let alone other possible inhabitants of other planets out there fit. #-o

Taos Dunne:

I think that we all are stuck at an analysis of the physical aspect of death, as the subjective aspect is, as you suggested, beyond anything save speculation. We could go on, but it would only be in circles.

What I have done above is simply, “said my peace” on the subject, by reductively explaining my speculation of what happens when we die into three distinct possibilities: (1) The Atheist Speculation, (2) The Fundamentalist Speculation, and (3) The Superchristian Speculation.

These “afterlife” speculations are simply that, and they exist due to my Judeo-Christian prejudices. For those who are non-Christian, they are free to form their own afterlife speculations and offer them here, as they are invited to do.

The realist attitude of the 21st century is positivist, requiring empirical proof and knowledge in order for a proposition to be considered: “rational”. I sympathize with such positivism, as humans are attempting to progress beyond the “supernatural” and the “myth”, through reliance upon a definition of the world that comes only from the information gained by the senses (and that which is inferred by that information, such as the going’s on in the microscopic world). John Locke (the “father” of Empiricism) and Karl Popper (the “father” of the Scientific Method or the Criterion that enables Scientific Proof) “carrying us into the future”, as I call it.

However, as a theist I make no effort to “convert” the atheist or the positivist, but due to my convictions I feel that it is my duty to remind the positivist and the empiricist that our “realist” perception of reality is ultimate just a virtual reality simulation of a type of reality that might exist beyond any perception (a mind-independent reality).

Given the nature of the subjective world and how it appears and behaves, we form what I call: “essentialisms” (we define for ourselves the “essential” nature of the world based upon what we are convinced is the truth) concerning the nature of the VR, the most accepted and popular essentialism being that the external world (that world that is believed to exist beyond anyone’s perception) is somehow a facsimile of the VR (or the VR represents, reflects, or corresponds to the nature and “appearance” of the outer reality).

My contention with what I call: “facsimile realism” or “facsimile physicalism” is that it seems odd that we possess physical brains, shaped as they are with the particular chemical substrate and electrobiochemical function that they possess—that fortuitously generate, simply through electricity flowing through a particular area of this physical object, a virtual reality simulation of the outer reality.

One can ask why such an object is able to achieve a “doorway” into the outer world simply through electrical flow through it’s material, and why (beyond simply the belief that it does) this power of such an object is an objective necessity.

Ussicore:

My “Fundamentalist Christian view of death” did not include a bodily or physical resurrection of the dead due to a combination of oversight and a conditioning of Jack T. Chick religious tract representation of the fundamentalist view of the afterlife:

There are different perceptions to the “bodily” resurrection view. Some hold that the bible’s description of bodily resurrection in the Old Testament is merely figurative of a spiritual resurrection, as spiritual resurrection seems implied to be the actual case in the New Testament.

But I will not belabor the point.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com