Catch 22 And Life After Death
July 15, 2000
The most reasonable among the religious minded would likely speculate that we may never know if there is an afterlife until we actually die. Yet the brain is commonly understood to be our instrument of knowledge. Without the brain, indeed, how can we come to realize if there is any form of integral survival of ourselves into a life-after-death situation? This becomes a kind of "Catch 22" when we speculate about an afterlife.
If when we die the brain also dies, which, as far as we know, is the only source of our knowledge, there can simply be no information or knowing about life after death. Thus, the brain, which is also dead when the body dies, becomes defunct, non-functional and unknowing; so as our only source of knowledge or knowing, when there is no brain there can be no knowledge or knowing, when there is no brain there can be no knowledge of an afterlife.
In dear-death experience, or out-of-body experience as another case in point where the brain must function, there have been no emphatic cases where brain death was truly evident. Here, too, with valid brain death no such experiences could be possible.
Those of us who have doted on the prospect of surviving life after death can still take comfort in knowing that there is a kind of afterlife. For in our life, as we have lived it and left it, we have caused memories to be stored up in our survivors, of our deeds, the people we have pleased and have made happy and the good works we have left behind for them to enjoy.
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