adophis1984

I'm happy to see that most Atheists have the standpoint that they will not believe anything without evidence...So obviously there is an explanation to the universe, but no Atheist currenly believes it because so far science hasn't managed to find whatever that explanation is.

So even IF God was the correct answer...Atheists wouldn't believe it without proof. This is very different from Atheists I know who have other theories they believe (which requires as much faith as any Theist).

My question is - how can materialists of any kind be certain that consciousness ends at death? Isn't that a positive claim which should result in a burden of proof?

Logically, shouldn't we just say "we don't know" what happens when we die, without any evidence to suggest anything. I understand belief in no God is the "default" position which Atheists take, but how is belief that death is nothing also a default? Do we really know enough about the phenomenon of consciousness to make ANY kind of claim?

Hyndis

So far all evidence points to the mind and brain being one in the same. If you damage my brain, you can drastically alter what kind of person I am. And if you get really good with playing with brains, you can selectively decide what to manipulate. This can be done via a scalpel or chemestry, but the result is the same.

Illness and injury also have this effect.

Just look at people with advanced stages of Alzheimer's. There simply is no person left. And if relatively minor damage to the brain can result in such a huge change in the person (such as existing or not), then the complete destruction of the brain doesn't hold much promise.

If being hit on the head with a hammer can render me a vegetable, then having my entire brain and body rot away would certainly do much worse, no?

adophis1984

Hyndis - I understand. But can one hold the same certainty that death = nothing as they can that God does not exist?

I know it seems likely that nothing happens when we die, but is that enough reason to believe that nothing happens?

WCH

Hyndis is exactly right.

I understand consciousness to be a combination of three factors: memory, sensation and personality. Sensation is a facet of the body; as someone with a fully functional body, I am capable of more forms of sensation than someone missing sensory organs, such as eyes. That is, if you have no eyes, you can no longer see. Likewise, if you have no taste-buds, you can no longer taste.

From there we can move on to the other two: memory and personality. Both are aspects of the physical brain. This can be easily demonstrated; when an individual takes mind-altering drugs, their memories and personalities are temporarily (in most cases) altered to varying degrees. Through disease and injury, it is also possible to lose memories, or to lose personality, as in the case of lobotomized people.

From this, we can gather that, if you lack a physical body, you lack sensation, and, if you lack a physical brain, you lack both memory and personality. How, then, can someone whose physical body and brain have both ceased to function (ie, through death) be conscious? And, if we are not conscious after death, how can we experience anything from then on?

Most of us experience dreamless sleep all the time. Why should we expect death to be any different from that, when our capacity to dream has been eradicated through brain-death?

Tuvar Ane Ingolenen

Are you saying that, if it seems likely that nothing happens when we die, it is enough reason to believe that something happens??

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, too many strawmen to address, so I'll press on. Materialism does not necessarily mandate annihilation of consciousness, since energy cannot be destroyed (or created), merely diverted (or released).

Yes, Alzheimer's gives everyone else the appearance of annihilation of consciousness (as do many other brain-oriented damages) so there's a strong evidentiary case to be made, but we simply won't "know" until our bodies die the "final" death.

Keep in mind that your entire body has died so many times it's not even funny, it's just that it hasn't died "all at once," so to speak (and even that is too absolute for what is found in nature).

The fear of "death" is not the body ceasing to function so much as it is the imagined loss of communication and interactivity that we experience for the majority of our "lives," but, again, not even materialism can conclusively account for (or, "explain") what may or may not happen to the energy of consciousness when the current system that supports it ceases to function in the measured way.

Examples of transition of energy states are all around us (literally), but the question is, of course, "Will 'we' still be 'we' when our energy gets diverted?"

Interesting question that cannot be answered without experience and, from all available evidence, even with it.

Even if you think that consciousness is an emergent quality of organic complexity, that doesn't necessarily address the organic complexity of diversion of that energy as a result of the "death" of the body, considering the fact that nothing about the body actually "dies" (as in ceases to exist). Cellular activity as it once was ceases, certainly, but then other processes (activity) take over. The "dead" cells are consumed by other organisms immediately as we become worm food .

I seriously doubt that consciousness as we currently (meaning you and I right now...and now.....and now....etc) think of it remains intact in any recognizable or familiar way, but then, how could any of us know that? We can only hypothesize (aka, "guess"). But that doesn't mean that our energy doesn't become part of a much larger consciousness, as all cults use to pervert their sheep with.

If complexity of human biology gives rise to consciousness, just think how complex the Earth is, or the Solar System or the Universe. Does that mean you have a "you" or that you have free will or the like?

Well, you'll certainly find out (or not), so why worry about it?

Yes, well, the word "believe" is loaded, isn't it? Not to mention "nothing." Something happens; that's not in question. What that something is, however, we can't know until it happens and even then we may not have any guaranty, regardless of what cults put in their snake oil.

We'll just have to find out, won't we? And you know the best thing? We do. One way or another, it is the only absolute certainty in our existence. Your body will not only "die," it has already many times over.

Just ask yourself where your six year old skeleton is and consider that dynamic a salient point in favor of, at least, energy diversion.

WCH

I think I should point out one related thing to Adophis... skepticism, which is the basis for materialism (but not necessarily all forms of atheism), is a system where all truth claims are automatically rejected as false unless proof can be offered. This applies to everything... if someone makes a new scientific theory, the goal of the skeptic is to disprove it. If they fail to disprove it, and evidence can verify it, then, and only then, will they accept it as possibly being true -- and even then they won't be entirely sure.

So... if there's no evidence that something exists after death, the skeptic must automatically reject the concept of their being something after death, demanding evidence of it before behaving in as if it were true.

crocodile deathroll

I do not think many materialists are "certain" that death = nothing. After all Socrates died and I can see plenty going on when I take a look out the window several thousand years after his death. A fundamenalist may feel "certain" that they will face Divine judgement after death. That is blind faith, period. Materialist as a general rule do not share that same level of certainty.

My theory posits (and unlike the fundamentalist I do not adopt this position with with that blind leap of faith called "certainty" as I could be wrong) I treat death like as analogous to kind of cosmic reset button. Could you imagine if you type a large document and just part way through, instead of saving to your hardrive or some other disk you simply and stupidly just press "reset" All that information would be lost.

Same as when your brain dies. All that ensemble of memories you accumulated in you life time would be totally lost. If fact you will totally forget that you were ever even born in the first place. It would be meaningless to ask what is after the fact (your body rotting in the grave) and before the fact (you pre-embryonic state). As the "present tense" has no objective existence. That is only a space time frame of reference that comes to one's conscious attention.

If your lifes memories are totally negated with the death of your brain then who or what can remind you that you have already spent your one life if you switch another one?
Would that be God? hardly!

CDR

Tristen

Like socrates said, he dosen't fear death because he does not know what it is. I do see the stand point of ppl who can say they believe 100% that death = nothing. Because look at what we know of death - brain stops functioning, organs shut down, the body begins to deteriorate. Look at what we know of the life of the body, brain is the command centre of the body, organs perform functions to maintain the body. We identify ourself through our consciousness, experiences, name, beliefs, memory, persona. Brain houses all this. So if the brain stops functioning, seeing the brain as a computer holding all the information of who you are, then if the computer is destroyed, all evidence of you is thus erased = nothing. Using this theory, to state the possibility of life after death, or 'something' as opposed to 'nothing' after death, there would need to be something outside of the physical domain of our body and brain which carries on who we are, or the soul in christian beliefs. Also, we use our brain to percieve things, which in itself is the only existence we have, to experience things personally. I think im losing myself here lol, but what i mean is the only existence we know is the things we see and touch and how we interact with all of it. To state life after death would be to state an existence where we don't need the brain and body to interact and percieve things, but this is the only existence we know. So if there is something after death, it can't be anything like the existence we know, because what we know is based on the brain and body interacting with the world. And since we know that the brain and body end and deteriorate, existence as we know it, can't exist after death, because existence = brain and body interacting with world. So if there is something after death, for us, subjectively, there would need to be something carried on which holds who you are, but who we are, are people interacting with the world we live in. Take away the enivronment of our existence, and you take away who we are.
Lol i hope i didn't confuse anyone, i guess what im saying is
Life = brain percieving universe
Death = end of brain and body, end of brain perceiving universe
So Life after death would seem impossible using this approach. If anyone confused say so and ill try and re-phrase.

Space Chef

My reason: think back before you were born.