What happens after death?

Please link your research paper on this. You must have received some type of award for this discovery.

 

What happens after death ?

I'm a 79 year old Deist, and this short short story covers what I think:

http://genefinneran.typepad.com/finneran_lane/2012/05/revelations.html

 

I've personally been around dead people and can uncategorically state that they immediately begin to rot (and that the smell will make most people sick). The only stories we have about the reanimation of the dead (i.e. life after death) are fictional such as the story of Frankenstein.

There are also fictional stories about ghosts and spirits but there is no scientific evidence of either actually existing.

Of course people will believe whatever they choose to believe but the nice thing about science is that science provides us with facts regardless of what people choose to believe.

 

BTW, not that logic effects SpaceCricket in the slightest, but....

even if you accept that identical twins' brains are "the same" at birth....the moment one twin gets a diaper change, while the other is left alone in the crib playing with Mr Pookie the bear...they differentiate. Multiply that by a thousand events in their first year of life alone....and you get two separate consciousnesses if in identical DNA housings.

 

So then at birth both twins' brains share the same consciousness - since they are 100% identical?

Again atheists still can't explain why they have their bodies' consciousness - as opposed to that of anyone else.

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"Facts" are "science" are only what people decide on upon consensus. They have changed throughout history.

 

Shiva, I don't think anyone disputes decomposition, but there is a belief (which cannot be substantiated scientifically) that body and spirit / soul are two different things-and -being separate entities, part company at time of death.

My belief - based on personal phenomena (which can't be substantiated) -is that the spirit leaves the body shortly before the body itself goes into final spasms, and that there may be communication of sorts between the spirit and the living survivors : brief and fragmentary, or more prolonged.

 

No, because each consciousness is unique. Even if the two brains are the same, it doesn't mean they would experience the same consciousness because they exist separately from each other. Think about it like this. When a factory makes TVs, they'll make thousands of the same model, but each of those models operates independently of the others. One person watching TV on one of those sets has nothing at all to do with what the next person who owns one is watching. They operate independently of each other, and in the case of humans, from the moment they are formed they begin to differentiate, albeit ever so slightly until they are born and the stimulation of the outside world puts that differentiation into overdrive.

Having the same biological make-up is not the same as having the same consciousness. Your consciousness is contained within your brain, is a product of it, but each brain has it's own unique consciousness. Just like snowflakes all form in their own unique shapes despite all being made of the same exact type of matter and even formed in the same cloud, possibly right next to each other, so too does your consciousness develop in unique ways that are specific to the brain that contains them.


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As new information is presented that challenges the old approaches. If 50 years from now, science shows that consciousness is some kind of metaphysical supernatural thing, than that's what science will consider fact. If you know something that science doesn't about consciousness, share it now!

 

Then what makes your consciousness 'yours', and not someone else's?

 

As accurately noted there is no evidence of a spirit or a soul, just like there is no evidence of the tooth fairy, so why do so many people believe in a spirit or soul when no evidence of either exists? Of course we know the answer to that question. People are fundamentally insecure so they invented a belief to placate their insecurity. In the meantime we know that when a person dies they simply begin to rot and decompose. That is a fact that is beyond any dispute.

 

Because it's a product of your own unique brain chemistry and experiences.

 

Then 2 brains at birth which are identical, would share the same consciousness.

 

Science can actually measure brain chemistry and activity that stores our "experiences" and there isn't a "spirit" or "soul" related to this. The human brain contains no "soul" anymore than a computer. In fact the human brain is very similiar to a computer with the minor differences that it is biological and not as accurate in storing memory. Scientists today are currently doing extensive research into biocomputers that would be similiar to the human brain but that would be more accurate in processing information and storing memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocomputers

 

No they wouldn't because they exist independently from each other. The electrical impulses inside each brain are unique to that brain. The only way two brains could ever conceivably share the "same" consciousness is if they were directly wired up together somehow and both had the same exact electrical signals running through them with the same exact(and I mean down to the quantum level) brain chemistry, which I don't think even identical twins have.

But seriously, you keep questioning this, but you haven't brought up what your theories are on this. What do you think happens and why do you think it?

 

Since the brain contains no spirit, why are a group of humanoids with computer-like brains debating here ?

Are there computers which debate and discuss, and laugh, and cry, and love, and worship, or ignore ?

I'm feeling --------------------------INSECURE !! INSECURE !!! INSECURE !!!!

 

Atheism is lack of belief in God only. Atheists dont all have to disbelieve life after death, in fact there are many atheists who believe in an afterlife, from new-agey spiritual lunatics to those believing on a materialistic basis (we are a computer simulation etc..). As for me, this is really a question where "I dont know" is the only answer, since I dont feel like lying to myself either way.

 

What is it that you fail to understand, which leads you to the blatantly errant conclusion that any 2 brains would have identical brain chemistry and experiences?

 

What about individual experiences are you not getting?

What are you defining as consciousness? Personality wise, folks from all over the world are very similar to each other.

 

If they are in 2 separate bodies they are not identical. There will be some differences.

 

Are you an image on a hard drive? And if that image gets deleted, are you personally diminished?

Sounds kinda creepy.

 

Nooooooooo.....both their brains do NOT share the same consciousnesss. They share the same DNA make-up of their brains, but it's a "blank slate" even before birth. And as minor and major discrepancies occur to them (things they experience), they become different consciousnesses.

Two brand new off-the-shelf Gateway PCs of the same model are not "the same" once they get loaded with different programs...are they?

 

Likely a beleif, non-scientific of course, that everybody is "issued a personalized soul" at the moment of conception or something.

 

They are identical once again when the hardrives "die" though as all memory is lost. I know, I've had a computer harddrive crash and I lost everything.

 

No...Because my files also exist in the cloud from which they can be retrieved.

You truncated that statement so much I can't tell what it is, if I said it or what your meaning is.

 

"The cloud" is just a bunch of hard drives. If your image is deleted from all of them, are you personally diminished?

You said:

You may be [] a key component in another person's thinking and actions.​

That's creepy.

Sure you can. It's just a matter of clicking the link back to what I quoted. That's what it's there for.

 

'IF' is your problem here.

OK...So....It is 'creepy' that you could have a major influence on say...your children? The point is, whether you like it or not, we are all influencing each other every day of our lives. The amount of that influence varies but your existence alone affects others as others' existence affects you and that influence does 'live on' after your death in those you leave behind.