You sound a lot like me Brian in that you can't escape the conclusion that death is the inevitable terminus of life but are having emotional issues in making peace with that. You are among the strictest of us atheists regarding rejecting anything unproven so you have virtually nothing to comfort you during this difficult time.
I can understand your frustration with religious platitudes coming from well-intentioned caregivers. I'll throw a few scientific tidbits your way which may be more to your liking if only in a limited way.
1. According to General Relativity, the past, present and future all exist. That means your mother doesn't really stop existing when she dies. It just means she doesn't exist in the slice of time you now inhabit. You don't have any capability to go back to a time where she is alive and lucid and that sucks but according to General Relativity, she is there, finger-wrestling with you and that slice of time will exist to the end of time. The conclusions of science are not as bleak as they are made out to be.
2. Our knowledge of physics is extremely limited. We don't have the tiniest idea of what conciseness is. There is a great deal of evidence telling us that it is generated by the brain but we don't have the tiniest clue as to how. We have a good enough understanding of electro-chemical reactions that we have built sophisticated technology around it. Solid-state electronics has been built around this since 1948. But we are utterly clueless as to how you go from there to "I think, therefor I am." That doesn't mean there is room for mindless faith but I think it does prop open the door for hope. Since we haven't a clue as to how electro-chemical reactions result in consciousness, we can't definitively say at this point that death of the brain = death of consciousness. Based on what we know now, it probably does mean that but people once thought a flat Earth was propped up on the back a turtle.
I can understand your frustration with religious platitudes coming from well-intentioned caregivers. I'll throw a few scientific tidbits your way which may be more to your liking if only in a limited way.
1. According to General Relativity, the past, present and future all exist. That means your mother doesn't really stop existing when she dies. It just means she doesn't exist in the slice of time you now inhabit. You don't have any capability to go back to a time where she is alive and lucid and that sucks but according to General Relativity, she is there, finger-wrestling with you and that slice of time will exist to the end of time. The conclusions of science are not as bleak as they are made out to be.
2. Our knowledge of physics is extremely limited. We don't have the tiniest idea of what conciseness is. There is a great deal of evidence telling us that it is generated by the brain but we don't have the tiniest clue as to how. We have a good enough understanding of electro-chemical reactions that we have built sophisticated technology around it. Solid-state electronics has been built around this since 1948. But we are utterly clueless as to how you go from there to "I think, therefor I am." That doesn't mean there is room for mindless faith but I think it does prop open the door for hope. Since we haven't a clue as to how electro-chemical reactions result in consciousness, we can't definitively say at this point that death of the brain = death of consciousness. Based on what we know now, it probably does mean that but people once thought a flat Earth was propped up on the back a turtle.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
