Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by sway austin on January 18, 2012 at 4:52pm

I think death more than likely just means "lights out". I believe that when the human brain dies, so does me as a person...just like a blown light bulb.

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Permalink Reply by x on January 19, 2012 at 9:22pm

I think that if we exclude magic we can exclude an afterlife.  Information theory indicates that there can be no manipulation of information without energy.  That means to me that without the energy supplied by the body the mind couldn’t work at all, no thinking, no dreaming, no nothing, oblivion.  Even just the storage of information is problematic because entropy would eventual dissipate the information.  I think we can have a high degree of certainty that there is no afterlife.  I believe the chance of an afterlife is exactly the same as the chance of a big daddy up in the sky.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Bumbalough on February 13, 2012 at 12:15pm

Hi Dave: Agreed. No life after death. Hence enjoy and prolong the life one lives in the here and now as much as possible.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Reardon on January 18, 2012 at 5:54pm

When a light-bulb dies do you think it continues to radiate electromagnetic waves that are undetectable?

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Permalink Reply by sway austin on January 18, 2012 at 10:13pm

I was using a metaphor....

But sure, something goes on. I become grass fertilizer. Animals eat the grass. People eat the animals and yadda, yadda, yadda. If matter can not be created nor destroyed, the matter I'm made up of will hang around in various forms in the same way it always has (didn't Carl Sagan say something about how we're all made of "star stuff"). I don't think this really counts as me being alive, though.

I'd never say for sure that I don't continue to go on in some self aware fashion, I just don't think it's very likely.

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Permalink Reply by UnTarded on January 19, 2012 at 9:47am

I'm planning on a green burial so that my carcass can be re-absorbed and provide nourishment to the local flora and fauna.

None of this embalming crap. Too many toxic chemicals in the ground already.

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Permalink Reply by Shanna on February 13, 2012 at 5:47pm

Nice.

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Permalink Reply by Eoganacht on January 18, 2012 at 7:05pm

I believe in life after death, just not for the dead people.
All evidence in biology states that everything that makes up 'you', your mind etc, is housed entirely in the brain. Once the neurons that make up the brain fail (ie die, lose the abilty to move/respond to charge) what makes up your mind is gone. I have no reason to believe that anything survives. If you cannot rememeber before your birth (when your brain was non-existant) then you cannot remember after your death (when the brain no longer functions and is destroyed). I process biochemical algorithms, therefore I am.

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Permalink Reply by KaraC on January 18, 2012 at 9:05pm

Correct, but not as snappy as the original Descarte ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Cornish on January 18, 2012 at 8:19pm

'You' exist only in your brain.  That is what we might call your personality, your habits, your knowledge, your experience

If you were to suffer a brain injury you would find that to a greater or lesser extent that your personality has changed.

If you were to consent to a portion of your brain being damaged on purpose, your personality would likely not be recognizable to the way you acted previously.

If you were to take a neurological-activity altering substance (alcohol, THC, amphetamine, etc) and take this substance on regular basis, again your personality would be altered (this is called addiction)

If the composite structure of neurons and other neural tissue that we call the 'brain' starves of oxygen, barring being revived with brain damage, you are gone.

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Permalink Reply by James on January 18, 2012 at 8:54pm

I believe that after you die, there is nothing. Your brain activity ceases and your conscious simply ceases. While your lifeless body is still there and will eventually decay, everything that was 'you' will cease to exist. In my opinion, the question of what it was like before you were conceived is apt. My only 'afterlife' will be in the memories of those I left behind. Only in that figurative way was will I live on, but the internal 'me' will be long gone.

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Permalink Reply by Francis Traynor on January 18, 2012 at 9:40pm

When I die I will cease to exist because my brain will decompose. I think thats pretty obvious. I have already warned my family to stay away from those parasitic bastards who claim to talk to the dead.

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