Death is probably permanent with no afterlife

I'm reversing a previous position that I used to take. I used to think it was cruel to expose people to the truth of death, but now I think it is for the best.

1. You change as you age, particularly as your brain ages.

2. Brain injuries change your choices and behavior, your mind, your emotions, your soul.

3. Death destroys your brain, therefore it destroys your soul.

4. If the soul were able to thrive without the brain it would be reasonable to believe in an immortal soul, but damaging the brain damages the soul.

5. The soul has a beginning. This is obvious from the way that babies begin life without any knowledge. They gradually learn and adapt. Their personalities also develop and change while they live.

6. The soul has a beginning, so it makes sense for it to have an end.

7. If the soul had any power to live on, people would choose not to die. They would exert the power of their soul to continue existing or to influence events. Particularly mothers who die leaving young children behind do not continue to look after their children and are helpless to affect their lives beyond death.

8. People would choose to continue existing and not to die, yet reports of ghosts are extremely rare while deaths are extremely frequent and numerous. Reports of ghosts also are generally a joke.

Brickjectivity said:

I'm reversing a previous position that I used to take. I used to think it was cruel to expose people to the truth of death, but now I think it is for the best.

1. You change as you age, particularly as your brain ages.

2. Brain injuries change your choices and behavior, your mind, your emotions, your soul.

3. Death destroys your brain, therefore it destroys your soul.

4. If the soul were able to thrive without the brain it would be reasonable to believe in an immortal soul, but damaging the brain damages the soul.

5. The soul has a beginning. This is obvious from the way that babies begin life without any knowledge. They gradually learn and adapt. Their personalities also develop and change while they live.


6. The soul has a beginning, so it makes sense for it to have an end.

7. If the soul had any power to live on, people would choose not to die. They would exert the power of their soul to continue existing or to influence events. Particularly mothers who die leaving young children behind do not continue to look after their children and are helpless to affect their lives beyond death.

8. People would choose to continue existing and not to die, yet reports of ghosts are extremely rare while deaths are extremely frequent and numerous. Reports of ghosts also are generally a joke.

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I believe your post basically agrees with what the Bible says. Death would end it all, were it not for the hope of a resurrection, Or a raising again to life. (Acts 24:15) If the soul were immortal, what need would there be of a resurrection?
As the Bible says, when a man dies, "His thoughts perish." (Psalm 146:4) The term "immortal soul" appears nowhere in the Bible.

Brickjectivity said:

2. Brain injuries change your choices and behavior, your mind, your emotions, your soul.

3. Death destroys your brain, therefore it destroys your soul.

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I'd like to point out that the typical soul-concept is, by definition, not dependent on the brain or the physical body for its existence. This means that your argument doesn't track for people who believe in this soul-concept. The condition of the brain and body is irrelevant to the soul, and they do believe soul thrives without brain and body. There are plenty out there who are not going to accept your personal truth about death because of how their soul-concept is oriented.

Quintessence said:

I'd like to point out that the typical soul-concept is, by definition, not dependent on the brain or the physical body for its existence. This means that your argument doesn't track for people who believe in this soul-concept. The condition of the brain and body is irrelevant to the soul, and they do believe soul thrives without brain and body. There are plenty out there who are not going to accept your personal truth about death because of how their soul-concept is oriented.

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Of course the soul-concept was developed long before we had any understanding of the brain. When you think about how far back the soul-concept goes back it is only natural that it is not connected to modern neurology for many people.

fantôme profane;3469801 said:

Of course the soul-concept was developed long before we had any understanding of the brain. When you think about how far back the soul-concept goes back it is only natural that it is not connected to modern neurology for many people.

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Heh, that's being more generous than I would be. Considering neuroscience isn't exactly part of the K-12 science curriculum, I'd say the vast majority of people are just plain uninformed on the discipline entirely. It's difficult to say how this might shift people's conception of souls, though. The typical soul-concept is pretty supernaturalistic, so it lies beyond the purview of science anyway, yes?

Quintessence said:

I'd like to point out that the typical soul-concept is, by definition, not dependent on the brain or the physical body for its existence. This means that your argument doesn't track for people who believe in this soul-concept. The condition of the brain and body is irrelevant to the soul, and they do believe soul thrives without brain and body. There are plenty out there who are not going to accept your personal truth about death because of how their soul-concept is oriented.

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I appreciate your pointing that out. I also appreciate what fantôme profane said about it. Quintessence, I know a lot of people living for the afterlife instead of managing the lives that they have. It bothers me.

rusra02 said:

I believe your post basically agrees with what the Bible says. Death would end it all, were it not for the hope of a resurrection, Or a raising again to life. (Acts 24:15) If the soul were immortal, what need would there be of a resurrection?

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I appreciate that many take the Bible's multiple mentions of a resurrection as a kind of analogy or imagery that is not literal. You feel that a physical resurrection is necessary for the Bible to maintain its integrity. I can appreciate the partial scripture verse quoted (Psalm 146:4) Just to test you I will ask you why does David in Psalm 146:2 say he will praise the LORD all of his 'Life' singular, rather than for all of his 'Lives' plural? This could be taken to mean that he does not expect a resurrection at all.

Brickjectivity said:

I'm reversing a previous position that I used to take. I used to think it was cruel to expose people to the truth of death, but now I think it is for the best.

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But what IS the truth of death. The teachers who I respect teach ‘you are not the body’. The physical body is an opportunity for a soul to experience and grow through the challenges of material life.

Brickjectivity said:

1. You change as you age, particularly as your brain ages.


2. Brain injuries change your choices and behavior, your mind, your emotions, your soul.

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This is true of course for the physical personality. But the soul is not the physical personality; it is the witness and guide of the personality.

Brickjectivity said:

3. Death destroys your brain, therefore it destroys your soul.

4. If the soul were able to thrive without the brain it would be reasonable to believe in an immortal soul, but damaging the brain damages the soul.

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Not in the eastern (Hindu) view of the soul. (If you destroy/damage a reflection of the moon, is the moon affected?)

Brickjectivity said:

5. The soul has a beginning. This is obvious from the way that babies begin life without any knowledge. They gradually learn and adapt. Their personalities also develop and change while they live.

6. The soul has a beginning, so it makes sense for it to have an end.

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The soul has no beginning in Hindu thought. A baby is the beginning of a new physical personality for the soul to guide and learn from new experiences.

Brickjectivity said:

7. If the soul had any power to live on, people would choose not to die. They would exert the power of their soul to continue existing or to influence events. Particularly mothers who die leaving young children behind do not continue to look after their children and are helpless to affect their lives beyond death.

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Death of a physical body can happen at unfortunate times of course, but the soul is not effected. People after death continue for some time to exist in an astral body and may subtly attempt to effect affairs on the physical plane.

Brickjectivity said:

8. People would choose to continue existing and not to die, yet reports of ghosts are extremely rare while deaths are extremely frequent and numerous. Reports of ghosts also are generally a joke.

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There is no choice but to continue existing, the body is short-lived and temporary, but the soul is not affected by death. There can be weird ghosts stories but some are not so weird. There are many sub-fields in parapsychology (ghosts, reincarnational memories, near-death experiences, communication with the deceased, among many others) that after serious consideration imo support the Soul Hypothesis.

Though many common thoughts of a soul would be compromised by such an argument (which in most cases I agree with) those however such as myself who don't believe in the 'immortal soul' which comes from pagan tradition, notably Greek, are in agreement with this. I myself do not have a very formulated hypothesis, as I believe it is irrelevant, and even if someone (which there have been many) were to dedicate their entire life to the ponderance of the nature of one's soul, they would not be able to find the perfect and wholly accurate answer. In my mind, the body and the soul are one, inseparable, and humans are in a sense a fetus of the divine spark, and when they die, there is simply nothing more of their particular 'self' because the self is an illusion (in my opinion) which exists only whence you have a physical body. Though I believe that there is some form non-biological existence after the physical body no longer harbors life, I have no idea what it is, and do not pretend to know. In some cases, I agree with the theologians who consider it Union with God- however what that means is beyond me.

Brickjectivity said:

I appreciate your pointing that out. I also appreciate what fantôme profane said about it. Quintessence, I know a lot of people living for the afterlife instead of managing the lives that they have. It bothers me.

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I can't say I know a lot of people living for the afterlife, but perhaps if I did, it might also bother me. I confess I'm not really sure what living for the afterlife would even look like, or how it could even be reliably distinguished from living for the now. I mean, the behaviors are going to be generally the same either way, aren't they?

I often feel that it matters far less what people believe and why they do it than the substance of what they actually do. The tangible things, the behaviors, that have results, you know? If the carrot of a happy afterlife dangled in front of someone's face prompts them to live a virtuous existence, go for it. It's that they're living a virtuous existence in the now that matters more to me, not what has motivated them to be that way. What motivated them is interesting to me mostly as an academic curiosity.

Brickjectivity said:

I know a lot of people living for the afterlife instead of managing the lives that they have. It bothers me.

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Living a good life in this life is the same as leading a good life for the afterlife.

George-ananda said:

Not in the eastern (Hindu) view of the soul. (If you destroy/damage a reflection of the moon, is the moon affected?)

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I think your analogy is backwards. Damaging the brain would be more similar to damaging the moon, not the reflection. So if damaging the brain damages the soul, then damaging the moon damages the reflection of the moon.

George-ananda said:

Death of a physical body can happen at unfortunate times of course, but the soul is not effected. People after death continue for some time to exist in an astral body and may subtly attempt to effect affairs on the physical plane.

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Sources? That's a pretty bold claim for one to simply assume to be true.

Quintessence said:

Heh, that's being more generous than I would be. Considering neuroscience isn't exactly part of the K-12 science curriculum, I'd say the vast majority of people are just plain uninformed on the discipline entirely. It's difficult to say how this might shift people's conception of souls, though. The typical soul-concept is pretty supernaturalistic, so it lies beyond the purview of science anyway, yes?

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Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Act 1. Scene V
To Quote Shakespeare, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; Here, as before....."

The purview of science can only reach as far as the ability of science to understand what is.....

Brickjectivity said:

1. You change as you age, particularly as your brain ages.

2. Brain injuries change your choices and behavior, your mind, your emotions, your soul.

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This would be the case if one believed the soul to be the personality, which is not something I believe the soul actually is.

And anyway, regarding the sound, if dropped a radio and the radio plays sound strangely or differently, is it because the music is damaged, or the radio?

3. Death destroys your brain, therefore it destroys your soul.

4. If the soul were able to thrive without the brain it would be reasonable to believe in an immortal soul, but damaging the brain damages the soul.

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Soul is not the brain in all philosophies. Certainly not mine.

5. The soul has a beginning. This is obvious from the way that babies begin life without any knowledge. They gradually learn and adapt. Their personalities also develop and change while they live.

6. The soul has a beginning, so it makes sense for it to have an end.

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I don't believe the soul has a beginning OR an end.

7. If the soul had any power to live on, people would choose not to die.

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Doesn't make sense.

8. People would choose to continue existing and not to die, yet reports of ghosts are extremely rare while deaths are extremely frequent and numerous.

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Doesn't make sense.

Quintessence said:

Heh, that's being more generous than I would be. Considering neuroscience isn't exactly part of the K-12 science curriculum, I'd say the vast majority of people are just plain uninformed on the discipline entirely. It's difficult to say how this might shift people's conception of souls, though. The typical soul-concept is pretty supernaturalistic, so it lies beyond the purview of science anyway, yes?

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Sure by definition anything supernatural is beyond the purview of science.

But when it comes to the soul I am not sure what it is that is beyond science, because I am not sure what it is. And I don't think anybody is sure. The soul concept has traditionally included things like love, hate, fear, courage. These things are not beyond the study of neurological science. Identity is not beyond the study of neurological science. Memory and experience are not beyond the study of neurological science. Affection, desire, love, lust. Intelligence, talent, drive, ambition. Tastes, kinks, humour, curiosity.

What exactly is it that is beyond the study of science? It seems to me if all these things can be explained by neurology then the soul concept becomes a rather empty concept.

Your conclusions are spot on as to why I do not accept the existence of the afterlife. We live and we die. That is all.

I could be one of the few god believing individuals who accepts this as even Deists believe in an afterlife of some sort or are agnostic on the issue.

life after dearth is one of the most exciting topics human wondered since their existence on earth . no one understands why life existed millions ago and whether life has always existed or started one day . we can tell about whether a life started to exist and has always existed . the beginning of this world something we cant really understand because we just don't know why God created the world and human beings . was it for punishing those who don't believe in God .

George-Ananda said:

But what IS the truth of death. The teachers who I respect teach ‘you are not the body’. The physical body is an opportunity for a soul to experience and grow through the challenges of material life.

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The major complaint from everyone so-far has been that I am not defining 'Soul' properly. It is a word that is used very differently by many religions. Asking what the truth of death is? It appears that the person dies along with their body. The absolute truth of it is questionable but that is what appears to happen.

This is true of course for the physical personality. But the soul is not the physical personality; it is the witness and guide of the personality.

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The personality is what I was calling 'Soul', including memories of events and responsibility for choices made.

Not in the eastern (Hindu) view of the soul. (If you destroy/damage a reflection of the moon, is the moon affected?)

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No, the moon is not affected when you splash the lake; but from the experience of living with mentally ill persons I cease to care what the ideal person is like since the person with me is ill. No, the ideal does not fade, but the person is still torn to pieces.

The soul has no beginning in Hindu thought. A baby is the beginning of a new physical personality for the soul to guide and learn from new experiences.

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I can accept that, but you are not speaking of what I am speaking of. You seem to be saying that 'Soul' is an ideal out there somewhere that I cannot discuss. That isn't the soul that I'm talking about but about the mind, feelings, memory and person in general of individual people.

Death of a physical body can happen at unfortunate times of course, but the soul is not effected. People after death continue for some time to exist in an astral body and may subtly attempt to effect affairs on the physical plane.

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Death seems unfortunate which is what I agree with you on. Life ought to be appreciated because of that. In my understanding the soul is what I'm talking about, and its a different thing from what you are talking about apparently. You are talking about the ideal or some kind of thing that is more than a person.

There is no choice but to continue existing, the body is short-lived and temporary, but the soul is not affected by death.

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It is unclear to me what you mean by exist. If a person dies they are no longer there, just as when someone leaves the room we say that they are no longer there. When I say 'Exist' I'm talking about whether the person is there or not any longer.

fantôme profane;3470010 said:

Sure by definition anything supernatural is beyond the purview of science.

But when it comes to the soul I am not sure what it is that is beyond science, because I am not sure what it is. And I don't think anybody is sure. The soul concept has traditionally included things like love, hate, fear, courage. These things are not beyond the study of neurological science. Identity is not beyond the study of neurological science. Memory and experience are not beyond the study of neurological science. Affection, desire, love, lust. Intelligence, talent, drive, ambition. Tastes, kinks, humour, curiosity.

What exactly is it that is beyond the study of science? It seems to me if all these things can be explained by neurology then the soul concept becomes a rather empty concept.

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I think it depends on how much authority you choose to give science over your understanding of reality. There are a fair number of folks out there who are adherents of what sometimes gets called scientism - religiously holding to science as the sole purveyor of truth on everything. It's ironically a very non-scientific attitude to hold, as those who do science are quite well aware of its limitations and certainly don't take it as a dogmatic purveyor of truth. If you understand science as but one way of knowing of many, what empirical naturalism uncovers on the affairs of reality doesn't threaten or necessarily compete with philosophical, religious, or mythopoetic ideas about reality (including concepts of souls).

To me, that science can understand certain aspects of what I would call 'soul' doesn't at all make the concept empty. Quite the contrary; it fills it and assists in the understanding of it. Then again, for me, 'soul' designates the sum total essence of all something is; it is identity, nature, reality; it is a quality possessed by everything. The full essence or soul of something can never be captured in word, nor painting, nor philosophy, nor science, nor all ways of knowing combined. But using many ways of knowing is better than using only one, IMHO. Well, perhaps not better, but certainly a great deal more interesting and engaging!

michel said:

The purview of science can only reach as far as the ability of science to understand what is.....

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Beyond which "to understand" really doesn't seem to mean much of anything, except perhaps "to invent".

Quintessence said:

I can't say I know a lot of people living for the afterlife, but perhaps if I did, it might also bother me. I confess I'm not really sure what living for the afterlife would even look like, or how it could even be reliably distinguished from living for the now. I mean, the behaviors are going to be generally the same either way, aren't they?

I often feel that it matters far less what people believe and why they do it than the substance of what they actually do. The tangible things, the behaviors, that have results, you know? If the carrot of a happy afterlife dangled in front of someone's face prompts them to live a virtuous existence, go for it. It's that they're living a virtuous existence in the now that matters more to me, not what has motivated them to be that way. What motivated them is interesting to me mostly as an academic curiosity.

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I hear you, but the problem I have with it is who is holding the carrot. Here I am, flesh and blood, and I can enjoy my life and appreciate it. On the other hand if death isn't real then it doesn't matter what I do with my time before I die. Give away all of my money for treasure in heaven? You bet! No vacations for my family? No problem! No music lessons for the kids? Ok!