What Happens When We Die: An Atheist’s Explanation
A lot of religion’s power lies in the laity’s fear of what happens to us when we die. The “flaw” in atheism (they say) is that it can not explain the “afterlife”. Well, here ya go: an atheists explanation of death:
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.
Written by Wm. Hopper, author of “The Heathen’s Guide to World Religions”
Not for Sheep
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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.
Even if you run, you cant run forever from the truth. if you dont change your mindset you;ll only end up like Titanic the great ship whose builder said even God cant sink and it ended up in the bottom of the ocean on its first trip. God loves you thats why youre still breathing. man, am sorry for you, really sorry for ya.
Hi William. I’m an atheist, and have been since my teens. However, when feeling stress or anxiety over a perceived misfortune, I have noticed that I feel a slight temptation to want to believe in a friendly supreme being who’ll “make things right”. Any thoughts why that may be? This want disappears once I have applied myself to the issue and solved it (rather than wasting time praying for some fictional entity to solve it). Still, the slight temptation to want to believe in a problem-solving supreme being does arise in times when I’m stressed about something.
Mark: Same thing happens to me. Same thing happens to most people… but some really jump on board and keep believing it.
Think about it… you spend the first 18 or so years of your life living under the authority of parents or guardians. When things go bad, they are always there to step in and take care of things for you. They are benevolent. They are caring. And, in a child’s mind, they seem all-knowing and all powerful.
At some point we get thrust out into the real world and our support systems fall away. We’re left to our own to deal with the problems of life. Still, when the problems arise, it’s nice to fantasize about going back to a time when all these troubles were handled by someone else. Enter: GOD… “the father”. Benevolent, caring, all-powerful, and able to make your problems go away.
It’s a nice fantasy, and many, many people work very hard at believing it.
So, if God didn’t love me I would not be breathing? Death is a punishment then? Seems awfully un-religious of you to say so.
I went to the ROM on Sunday with the kids. Looked at the T. Rex and the triceratops skull. Ultimate predator and ultimate herbivore, respectively. If that asteroid hadn’t hit the earth when it did none of us would be here – they would still be ruling the planet. One random cosmic event wiped out the dominant species and gave the mammals a chance to flourish. Makes you feel small. That’s a healthy feeling.
I think people in general have a hard time with things like death and randomness. They look for connections and meaning where there may not necessarily be a need for such things.
What I like most about what you wrote in the main post above is “the trick is being OK with it” —–
If people could just be OK with the fact that they are physical beings, they wouldn’t need to invent these stories to tell to each other about the magical place they came from before birth and are going to after death. It’s like the saying “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” – our self-awareness is incomplete, and that what makes it dangerous.
Hello,
I am a neuropsychologist (from Switzerland, that’s maybe why my english isn’t that good).
Considering the facts we know about the human brain, one thing is sure, we know almost nothing about the way it works. Now I didn’t say absolutely nothing. The little we know is already quite complex and helps understanding a lot of things from the human behavior. But you see, the human brain is the most complex object we know in the universe !
But scientific knowledge grows exponentially nowadays (maybe because scientists aren’t tortured or killed for their “unholy” ideas anymore), so we may get to understand it one day and perhaps even simulate its behavior on a computer. If that happens, formating its data would be a homocide. Don’t you think so ? And recovering it would be a resurrection.
One last thing, one can’t “believe” in science, as science never promised to hold the absolute truth about anything. Science is not a religion. It can be discussed and argued by anyone, it can be wrong, it is only a way of acquiring knowledge with the best available tools and theories. Science is the most humble and careful way of searching for answers.
Your sincerely,
Roger Sprüngli
What happens after you die? Easy: it’s exactly the same as it was before you were born.
When someone wants to (or has a medical complaint that makes them) live in a delusional world it is almost impossible to shake him or her of this delusion (or at least from one conversation alone). The mind will complete mental somersaults in order to make that which is obviously irrational to others rational to them.
Generally this is because to the irrational, the world they have created is less fearful to them than the real world.
For example imagine you have an elderly but bewildered lady in a hospital ward. She thinks she is a manager in charge of a business. You try to tell her she is in hospital and she replies no she is in her office. You ask her why she is in bed then. She says she needs to rest so she can do a good job for the business. You ask her about the nurses in uniform. She says they are her secretaries and managers going about their jobs as instructed by her. You ask her who are the people in the ward with her. She will tell you they are her employees. When you ask why they are in bed she will tell you that they like to keep their employees comfortable and looked after. Totally nuts, but not to her. In the same way religious people rationalise the world to fit their image of their God and religion regardless of evidence to the contrary.
Most people who believe in the Christian God see him as totally benevolent generally because this is the message that has been presented to them by their religious leaders and parents. The cuddly god who always has a place in heaven. Does anyone have a loved one in hell?
Most people follow the faith of their parents even thought there are over 4,500 ‘one true faiths’. Most have not read their religious texts and so can easily ignore the threat of the God that can destroy cities and entire planets at a whim as in the Sodom or Noah story.
According to the Bible Gods right hand man Satan has killed 6 people. God has killed millions but seemingly has a better PR machine. However the Bible is so full of contradictions that it is impossible for anyone (ANYONE!) to meet the requirements to enter heaven. Of course, in a delusional world, there will be an explanation that circumvents this. Usually by only quoting the bits of scripture that the believer either likes or fits the moment in time.
At the end of the day I really don’t care what people believe as long as they do not insist, often by threatening my own life, that I believe it too and do not get enormous tax breaks (which they do) to subsidise their particular imaginary friend belief.
Tosin says:Even if you run, you cant run forever from the truth. if you dont change your mindset you;ll only end up like Titanic the great ship whose builder said even God cant sink and it ended up in the bottom of the ocean on its first trip. God loves you thats why youre still breathing. man, am sorry for you, really sorry for ya.
Yeah well Tosin the the future remember that you are not better then us for believing in a god,
first of all be a rational human being and explain your point with your brain, do not spout random rhetoric.
Second of all i do not worship your god, or any god, so that proves your statement that god keeps me alive with his love wrong. Or you are right and he loves me so i am getting into heaven without worshiping him because he loves me anyway, so your worship is unneeded for his love and gifts, and by that extension the bible is wrong because i will get into heaven without worship. or your god loves me and i am going to hell, so god is crazy because he burns things he loves alive and i will not worship such an insane god. pick one HA.
also why would the devil punish the “wicked heathens” in hell when he himself is one of the “wicked heathens”, i believe if he existed he would treat the people sent to hell with respect and welcome them, not randomly for no reason torture them, so even if i do go to hell i am fine, explain that one away.
Tosin: The Titanic is a bad example to use. Far, far more ships have been blessed by ministers, rabbis, and popes and sank.
@Tosin: If God loves me, and wants to keep me safe from an eternity in hell, then all he has to do is make me believe in him.
Simple.
I’m not asking for any miracles, any divine appearances or poignant symbolic mysticism.
All god has to do is make me believe. Reach into my mind and change it so I KNOW he exists.
But that is not going to happen is it?
Because:
a) God doesn’t care
or b) God doesn’t exist
And YOU said that God loves me – so that rules out option (a).
This is the simplest explanation I have read so far. Its direct to the point and shows beyond any reasonable doubt all that needs to be said to a layman about the issue on death and religious afterlife.