Explaining What Happens After Death

[brewer]

Howdy Art.

If you want me to consider consciousness after death you're going to need to supply some evidence. Until that time it's just a wish. 

How much of a Joe M devotee are you?

---

After death you will only exist in the memory of those who knew you, asking where you go after that is like asking where the music goes when the band stops playing

Yeah? So why do I keep hearing voices in my head if no one is around talking to me?

That's your implant. Only pay attention when it's my voice.

[GUBU]

 So, as an atheist, how do you explain to others that when we die we simply cease to exist through explainable science and that we don't migrate to any kind of afterlife?

I explain it through the fact that our consciousness is an emergent property of the complexity and organisation of the human (and to lesser and greater extents other animals too) brain.

---

What is it that makes you think consciousness is anywhere but a brain?

Several articles I've recently read. I will link one specifically: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014...ver-of-it/ I will link more if need be. Nor am I suggesting the source is trustworthy per se

And the scales fall off my eyes with you linking this. You're as much of an atheist as I am the Queen of Sheba.

You want to make believe that contentless woo reflects reality. Well then, fuck off back to the woo websites you've come from.

[zebo-the-fat]

Silly question.  Everyone already knows and doesn't like the answer.

It's exactly like before you were born.  You're dead.  No consciousness, no thought, no you, nothing, zero, nada, zilch.


Not even a dial tone.


You've already done it, and you go back to that exact state.

I agree with that, you can either be alive or dead, so before I was alive I must have been dead... I don't remember any problem with it.

[Brian37]

While much about consciousness is a mystery, a causal relation between an active, living brain and consciousness has been demonstrated. There is no reason to think that consciousness can exist without a living brain.

When the battery in your phone dies, is there any reason to think your phone "goes on working" in some further capacity? So it is with the body.

Edit: And welcome to the forums!

Actually this analogy is well intended, but not complete.

If that battery is still in tact, it can be recharged. 

In terms of the brain, it is about having enough in tact cells with just enough juice, that even if vitals cannot be found, you can come out of it. 

It is more like that if you take the cell phone battery and smash it into smithereens. 

Clinical death can also only mean "flying under the radar", but not really dead. That is when you might still be in the window, but your vitals cannot be found. But that is not the same as permanent death.  Permanent death is when you are beyond the window to which enough cell and neurological damage has been caused that all of your body dies as well.


Bottom line is that if you come out of a "near death" event, you were never permanently dead, thus the word "near".  Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. With death, you either are dead or you are not. If you come out of an event, you never were dead.

[Succubus]

...Bottom line is that if you come out of a "near death" event, you were never permanently dead, thus the word "near".  Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. With death, you either are dead or you are not. If you come out of an event, you never were dead.

ffs, you've just given our new woomeister a handy jump off point for introducing... No need to spell it out.

[Jenny A]

What is it that makes you think consciousness is anywhere but a brain?

Several articles I've recently read. I will link one specifically: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014...ver-of-it/ I will link more if need be. Nor am I suggesting the source is trustworthy per se.

Please tell us, in your opinion why you think consciousness can live independently outside the host body?

I'm saying my definition on what consciousness is has changed. I am not saying emphatically that it can live outside your body. Logically, I would think that it could not. But since the definition is so varied, I can't seem to pin down a consensus idea of what consciousness is.

At least your link isn't quote mining Wigner.  Eugene Wigner believed that the observation of photons affected their movement.  His conclusion was that countiousness must exist outside the brain in order to effect the photons. See: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments/wigners_friend/

The refutation is simple.  Observation reveals  whether the cat is alive or dead.  It doesn't actally cause the result. 

• Since Wigner does not know the actual outcome, he only knows the possibilities and can estimate ordinary probabilites, for example, that there is a 75% chance the cat is dead and 25% probability the cat is alive.
  
  
  
• But here is the resolution of Wigner's paradox. These probabilities are no longer about superposed quantum states interfering with one another. They are no longer quantumprobabilities. The cat is either dead or alive! The chances are no longer ontological. They are epistemic, just human ignorance.
  
  
  
• So Wigner is wrong to conclude that the cat remains in a quantum superposition of live and dead cat states.
  
  
  
• Nor was the cat ever in such a superposition! After all, the cat in animate - and conscious. It was our calculations of nuclear decay that used the quantum superposition as our best estimates. And it was important to include the possible interference effects while the wave functions (for the decaying nucleus) were still coherent. Once we get information about the nuclear decay, the wave functions decohered and we must switch to "classical" probabilities.
  

 
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/wigner/

[Whateverist]

Oh my gawd, there doesn't seem to be complete unanimity regarding the nature of consciousness. How, oh how, will I ever prevent myself from adopting absurd beliefs under such circumstance????

[Minimalist]

 So, as an atheist, how do you explain to others that when we die we simply cease to exist through explainable science and that we don't migrate to any kind of afterlife?

I insist that the shoe is on the other foot.  Humans have this compelling need to be special.  Therefore those who claim special status must demonstrate the validity of their claims.  Let them produce evidence of an afterlife.  So far, no one has done it which by this point has become a fairly epic level of failure.  I am secure in the understanding that just like every other animal on the planet when the light goes out that's the end.  The idea that the universe cannot move forward without us is pure human ego run amok.

Welcome.

[Little Rik]

Bottom line is that if you come out of a "near death" event, you were never permanently dead, thus the word "near".  Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. With death, you either are dead or you are not. If you come out of an event, you never were dead.

BS.  
Bottom line is that whether it is an NDE or a permanent death there is not an inch of difference as far as the consciousness is concern.
There is however a difference in permanent death because in this case the consciousness is not going back in that body.

Because the NDEs already demonstrated that the consciousness never die what you can see in an NDE is the same of what you can see in a so called permanent death.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Ah good. Little Rik is here. Won't take long for everything to be explained and for us to be shown the error of our ways.

I'm hoping that he'll use some emoticons but I know that he likes to keep it concise and unambiguous.