Atheism 17.Life after Death

The continued belief that some part of the human being continues after death is inconsistent with known facts. It seems that there is a mistake in the thinking of believers who either out of sheer faith or through some lack of comprehension of the nature of physical reality,propose that the human body is inhabited by a homunculus - a ghost in the machine. It might be easy for those who believe such things to understand that a PC or TV which runs on electricity can seem "alive" or functional when electricity is supplied to it,but which seems dead and inanimate when the power is removed,and that when a critical part such as a power supply component fails due to wear and tear (entropy) that the said device is broken or "dead". So why then,persist in supposing that a human being (or animal) does not function this way,when all the evidence shows that it does? When the heart fails or the brain fails,normal functioning of the body ceases,and for some unknown reason believers presume to ask "Where did the person go?" when they do not ask "Where did the TV picture go?" or "Where did my PC files go to?". They are unhappy with materialist explanations with life,because it seems lacking in some way and they think there must be more to it,but upon this supposition they go on to presume that there MUST be something more,whilst providing NO evidence that there is. The problem comes down to one of consciousness.People cannot accept that a thinking ,feeling being can be borne of a wholly material construction,they feel intuitively that life is something more than biomechanics,and yet cannot say why they believe this,or if they believe they were made by God(s) they resort to saying things like "God made me to be more than a sponge". If one reads "The Emperor's New Mind" we find a tentative explanation for our consciousness,or at least an in principle way of explaining it materially. The fact is there is no place left for the soul to hide,every conceivable thing that could have been "the soul" or "the mind" comes down to the physics of the brain,there is nothing of a human being left after death that could legitimately be called "alive".There is no reason why any portion of the original material construction of the body should continue in terms of data correlation after death. Death means ceasing to exist. Nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to the contrary,and so - via Ockham's Razor - the only viable rational position is to presume there is no life after death. Mediumship,presumes that there are spirits and we are led to believe that these spirits can continue into some other realm,we must ask why it is that when a material body cease to function in gets recycled in this world via the chemical elements and yet some wholistic part of it is presumed to continue. This means that the rotation and recycling of human material continually produces new spirits from the same material,and thus that this "realm" is inhabited by all those who have lived at any time in the past. It must therefore be an extremely cramped place. Also one hardly ever hears of the spirit of a dolphin being contacted,and yet,even if one presumes the limited notions of consciousness that many believe to be the sole domain of human intelligence,such mammals must also be imbued with the same "ghost in the machine" that is presumed to inhabit the human body.Therefore,the spirits of dolphins,and maybe any other form of DNA based life - or even life extraterrestrial may exist in spirit form in this other realm - it is odd then that only human beings ever seem to come forth to contact their relatives. The limited responses to queries of this kind show that the believers have not actually analysed the shortcomings of the belief that they have and it's logical inconsistencies. They cannot say how mediums come to be able to contact the dead,or whether in fact they are only providing succour to those in psychological need by saying what they wish to hear. A really true phenomenon would be readily seen and not just the domain of some "gifted" few. Either there is a realm that is contactable or there is not - if there is- then in priciple,anyone ought to be able to contact it. It is also odd that mediums maintain that the connection is sometimes like a fuzzy phone line connection - and the data does not come through easily, but cannot tell us why this is the case - they cannot say where the other side is - or how it relates to known physics. On balance of probability - if one pre-believes in spirits and/or an afterlife one will interpret events and experiences in those terms and therefore conclude that a dead person is living in the afterlife - science shows that the person who one knows is alive only when blood is coursing through their veins - and at the point at which the life processes cease - the person cease to exist. If there is evidence that there is more to this than is supposed - the onus is on those who claim so,to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt - they never do. There is no reason to presume that an afterlife "spirit body" should maintain the same shape and form as that of the DNA made body on earth and yet one hears of dead teenagers that have been mangled in car accidents being perfectly formed after death - old people who have died and had no teeth suddenly have intact bodies - are we to believe that the existence hereafter allows some kind of re-constitution of that programme of morphology provided by DNA such that no imperfections can arise? If so,then what are the criterion for what constitutes a perfect body? As the song says "If my eye gets poked out in this life,will it be waiting up in heaven with my wife?" - such questions never receieve an answer,because believers do not know,they just say that such things are beyond our understanding. If it was left to them and their lack of enquiry the whole human race would still be living in the dark ages wondering what stars were. Their belief in an afterlife would be laughed out of a scientific enquiry as a theory with no evidence and no way of being proven one way or the other. I suppose I will have to wait until I die to find out the answer,in which case I won't be able to tell anyone,quite a neat little trick isn't it?