BeatBiter

I don't know if someone already started a topic on this subject(I'd be happy to receive a link) so I started this one anyways.
I've been having a lot of discussions about atheism and theism lately and one of the questions theists always ask me is: "How would you define death?"

It makes me wonder, because I'll be honest enough to say I can't find a sufficient anwser to the question. Their anwser is as follows: "It's the absence of the soul; when the soul leaves your body(vessel) you die."(or something in that direction)

It sounds kind of interesting, but I don't believe in matters that are eternal. 'Forced' nostalgia and the non-acceptance of the thought that there might not be life after death is what I tell them. Just because science(I know science isn't always the best way to get anwsers) can't provide a good definition, it's not logical to assume that religion has all the anwsers to the questions. The most common anwser I hear from theists is: "God's ways are mysterious." Very appauling answer with 0% satisfaction.

Anyone able to help me out?

Amie

Hi BeatBiter
I agree that it is not logical to assume that religion has all the answers, and I would definitely say science has more logical answers than religion.
Death: our hearts stop, our breathing ceases, our bodies shut down and our souls move on to another place. Thats my belief anyways...

Nataraja

When brain activity ceases completely.

Infinity Lover

Death: the end of life. Does that work for you? The problem of scientificly determining when death occurs, I think, is that there can sometimes still be lifesigns too faint to register with what's available (in the form of medical equipment, monitors etc.). The thing with the religious approach, is that it insists on including the elements of a soul and an afterlife, and the existence of neither has ever been properly scientificly proven.

Asha'man

Life is nothing more than an extremely complex, self-sustaining chemical reaction.

Death is simply the failure of that chemical reaction to continue.

It's really just that simple, no need for an imaginary "soul" or anything else that will remain forever invisible. It is just chemistry. Because it is so complex, sometimes it breaks down. The more complex it gets, the more ways for it to fail.

This answer may not be very comforting, but it's very real. You can bet your life on it.

Undercurrent

"Life" and "death" are not really that well defined. "Aliveness" is not a binary property where everything is clearly alive or dead. It's probably sensible to say that mammals have a higher "aliveness" than bacteria, which are more alive than viruses, which are more alive than prions, which are more alive than rocks.

The only reason we need to have a firm binary distinction between life and death is that, at some point, we have to bury or cremate the body. But that point is completely a social decision -- a person is dead when it becomes prohibitively difficult to restore him/her to a certain minimal level of vitality.

No doubt in the past people were counted as dead under conditions which, given technology today, they could be revived. If there is some absolute, naturally-defined, point of death (perhaps mediated by the presence or absensce of a soul) this speaks against our having any understanding of it.

doghouse

In the past, death was often defined as when the heart stopped. This is easy to understand and actually works well for many cases. But now we recognize there are many instances where this is not a good definition, for instance heart transplants and heart/lung machines.

From a medico-legal standpoint, death can also be defined as brain death. This is often important in situations such as organ donation. Brain death is defined as the irreversible absence of all brain activity, including brainstem function. Criteria include total unresponsiveness and absence of brainstem reflexes, such as breathing, gag reflex, pupil reflexes, etc. for a certain period of time, usually 6-24 hr. It’s also important to rule out know reversible conditions such as shock, certain drugs, and hypothermia (“you’re not dead till you’re warm and dead”).

There are other situations that are less clear-cut such as persistent vegetative state. As with many things in biology (for example, when does life start) the lines are fuzzier than politicians and religious groups would like.

Demosthenes

I'd define death to have occured when an individual is irrevocably unrevivable, i.e the brain has deteriorated beyond any present and conceivable future technologies' ability to repair.

Ockhamite

If the absence of the "soul" is equated to "death"...and yet we see death occurring in life forms that don't have souls, how is the death of a human any different?

crocodile deathroll

Maybe when you are standing in nuclear ground zero.
Athough I think death is when you lose your perception of time so that eternity will subjectively pass you by in an attosecond