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What Happens When We Die: An Atheist’s Explanation
Posted by William Hopper on January 26, 2010 · 6 Comments
My mother died when I was five. My father died when I was fifteen. I then moved into the home of my father’s fiancé, where I lived for three months until the house burned to the ground and she died in the fire. Suffice to say, I got to know death at a young age.
It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to figure out that this likely had something to do with my lifelong obsession with religions. At forty-three, though, I can’t say I’ve learned a lot about death that I can count on. At least, not from religions.
What I have learned is this: The brain works on an electric charge that is roughly equal to your average car battery. This electricity jumps from neuron to neuron, interacting with other bits of electricity to create a sense of self. In order to leap across the space between neurons the electricity needs stuff like Adrenaline, Dopamine, Serotonin etc.. Using one of these, a thought (the electric charge) crosses the gap between neurons and thus keeps us functioning. As long as this process keeps happening, we are alive.
The thing is, for any of this to work there has to oxygen. A lot of it. In fact, despite all the many and varied causes of death you see on tombstones, there really is only one cause of death in humans: Lack of oxygen to the brain. When the oxygen is gone, the processes grind to a halt. The electricity in your brain is unable to travel across the gap between the neurons, and everything in your brain stops. This is death.
Every electrical impulse that existed in the brain before death is still there afterward. It’s stranded, but it’s still there. The “soul” (if you believe in one) is trapped an a trillion cells, unable to make any connection to any other part of the mind. The “self” doesn’t cease to be… it’s just so fragmented that there is no coherent “being” to it. Every thought, from your first kiss to the hydro bill you just paid, remains locked inside neurons that can not communicate the information to each other.
This, as near as I can tell, is where we’re all headed. However we arrive at our own deaths, we will all eventually reach the moment where oxygen no longer flows to our brains. When that happens, our sense of self will stop as the electricity in our brain stops moving. Every aspect of our experience is going to be walled off in a brain that no longer puts the moments together into anything coherent. It’s like smashing a flat of eggs. You still have all the contents, but they will never be a dozen eggs again.
Religions offer a variety of explanations for death. I (more than most) have been very willing to find one that makes sense, given what we know of the physiology of death. So far, none have. All I’ve ever seen and learned tells me that I will eventually disintegrate into a trillion bits of electricity that will eventually dissipate and becomes worm food.
The trick, imho, is not being upset about it. Religions offer hopes and dreams that make this disintegration of the self seem a horrible thing. It’s really only these false hopes that make it all seem bad. We feel short-changed by it only because the fantasy was put in our brains that we would live forever.
Most think the belief in Heaven makes this whole process easier, even if it’s not true. Thing is, I’ve read the Holy Books. According to all of them, most of us would never see a Heaven. We’re going to fry in Hell, while a select few get to watch from a cloud somewhere. The safe and secure notions of religion only work for those who believe they are the elite: one of the pure and holy few who will get into Heaven.
There’s always a chance I’m wrong. Maybe the religions are right, and the science is incomplete or flawed. But, given the choice of what to believe, I opt for the science. Not just because it has demonstrable evidence, but because it offers far more comfort to me than the religious judgment that many believe is coming. Given what I’ve done with my life thus far, I’m going to feel a whole lot better about things at the Old Age home if I remain an atheist.
This is nothing more than other’s before you have already tried to pawn off on the human race to further their own causes =- their extrapolated from mud bullshit digital cartoons we can all now watch and suddenly khow how the brain works. Heathen indeed, as in just another dumb asshole.
Psychiatry has no more of a clue than the caveman before him, just better tact. Just ask any single one them for actual science to back up your claim, they have none. NONE. In fact they have pulled science itself into their own quagmire of mud from which they postulate life came.
You know nothing of which you speak, even by your own admission herein. Probably sounds great to your professors though. LMFAO. Yes, I am laughing my ass off.
What I present here is what we see… what we actually, measurably witness in a person who dies. Not sure where you’re seeing bullshit, but if you think it’s crap I’d say pick up a first year medical textbook.
As for psychiatry, I’d agree with you. I have no use for it myself, which is why I find it a tad odd that you brought it up… seemingly to refute what I said in the post. Psychiatry has nothing to do with it. It was simple med school pathology.
An lastly, I am 43 years old. It’s been a very long time since I sat in a theology class or listened to a professor. When I did, though, I can assure you I was never really trying to impress. (This is a good thing as I doubt that i did).
In short, I am not some idiotic freshman with a couple ideas and a hard-on. I’ve a lot of years of sincere questioning behind me (and more ahead, I am sure). But what I see in death is the same as I see in much of religions: a lot of hopeful rhetoric that’s designed to do little more than make us feel happier about the rot and decay we will all become.
theakman: I just received an e-mail asking me why I would allow a response like yours on my site. The author wanted to know why i didn’t just delete you and ban your IP.
Funny enough, I was in the process of writing you an invitation to the forum when I got the e-mail. You have opinions, and I like that. If one of your opinions is that I’m a blathering idiot who knows nothing, so much the better. No way I’d stifle that.
The forum is up. I’m going to be putting some time in on it this week to get people on. Please consider joining.
- I think there is so much more to science that we don’t know. To claim modern science as evidence for the personality or soul not surviving death in some way, is like using Stone Age science to prove the world is flat. To me, the great thing about science is that the story goes on and on. So far, scientists have no idea how the brain works.
- I’ve been reading books on consciousness studies for years: Fritjof Capra, David bohm, Robert Jahn & Brenda Dunne, Stuart Hammeroff, Roger Penrose. The idea of “brain as meat-computer” is probably the mainstream in science but there is no clear consensus.
- I think the universe is too ruthlessly efficient to destroy a personality. Even a dead star’s timeless light provokes the mystery of inertia.
- you used to believe in that, maybe sixteen years ago. or you were open to it.
- i agree that religion has little reliable to say on it. some of the Tao & Buddhist writings are interesting but they are vague. It is science that I look to for a glimpse at the myriad connections amongst things. The more I look, the more open I am to the notion that there is meaningful awareness after death. I just think, as living beings we are predisposed to a cause and effect world. The realm of the inanimate is not necessarily cause and effect, thus, your death does not necessarily cause the end of your awareness & does not even necessarily occur in what we call time. Your birth does not necessarily cause your awareness to come into being.
It’s hard to say. It’s all speculation. I don’t really know & I’m not claiming to.
- But for hell’s sake, don’t claim that science finalizes the whole matter!
- your heathen bud,
john
For me, I feel greater comfort in knowing there will be a judgement day. I know that if I truly repent and ask God for his forgiveness for all my sins, I will get to heaven. It only takes one act of humility before God, to abandon my senseless pride and worship Him. It seems that one act is too much for atheists. Why?
“It only takes one act of humility before God, to abandon my senseless pride and worship Him. It seems that one act is too much for atheists. Why?”
Umm, probably because we don’t believe in a God or gods (and other goblins). We’re atheists after all, duh.