We began to wonder: Is there really another plane of existence? We bowed when we were told to bow. Setting aside this approach, however, does not Hawking shortchange what human beings are? Yes, our brains are an intricate complex of neural connections that resemble what a computer chip does. These extend beyond the confines of the brain.
How do you computerize love? Yes, death is a fearsome thing. So why, then, do some people want their bodies to become compost, coral reefs or mushroom food? A major motivator seems to be concern for the environment. The embalming fluid used to keep remains presentable for typical American funerals is good at preserving dead things but can also make other things die if, for instance, it's ingested by underground organisms — though U.
Plus, traditional funerals and burials can be prohibitively expensive. Add to that a general decline in people practicing organized religion , and it means that more people in the United States are not restricted by the rules and regulations of faith traditions that might prohibit certain post-death practices. Cremation, then, is often seen as a more eco-friendly and much less expensive alternative to burial, but burning the deceased's remains releases greenhouse gases and mercury into the atmosphere — although a relatively new form of cremation produces fewer emissions and uses less energy.
The opportunity to help others is the ethos behind the similar, but much older, practice of Tibetan sky burials though, in a sky burial your body provides sustenance for vultures instead of hydrangeas.
You can make compost out of human remains or the leftovers you forgot at the back of the refrigerator, but only one of those can save lives when used in a different way. First and foremost, you can register as an organ donor. Donated bodies are used to train the next generation of doctors in medical schools, provide insight into human variation and even reveal how our bodies naturally decay — to help forensic anthropologists identify murder victims and catch their killers.
But that is not how memory works. Memory is not like a DVR that can play back the past on a screen in your mind. Memory is a continually edited and fluid process that utterly depends on the neurons in your brain being functional.
It is true that when you go to sleep and wake up the next morning or go under anesthesia for surgery and come back hours later, your memories return, as they do even after so-called profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest. Under this procedure, a patient's brain is cooled to as low as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes electrical activity in neurons to stop—suggesting that long-term memories are stored statically.
But that cannot happen if your brain dies. That is why CPR has to be done so soon after a heart attack or drowning—because if the brain is starved of oxygen-rich blood, the neurons die, along with the memories stored therein. Second, there is the supposition that copying your brain's connectome—the diagram of its neural connections—uploading it into a computer as some scientists suggest or resurrecting your physical self in an afterlife as many religions envision will result in you waking up as if from a long sleep either in a lab or in heaven.
But a copy of your memories, your mind or even your soul is not you. Third, your unique identity is more than just your intact memories; it is also your personal point of view.
He believes that if a complete MEMself is transferred into a computer or, presumably, resurrected in heaven , the POVself will awaken. I disagree. Welcome to Talkabout, the magazine which aims to support and inspire conversations about dying, death and grief. What happens when we die? Is there an afterlife? These are the big questions humans have been pondering since we first climbed down from the trees. Almost every major religion across the world has a defined belief on what happens when you die, and yet the question is still widely debated and discussed.
Most people in the English-speaking world are familiar with the Christian belief of Heaven or Hell awaiting people when they die, but what do other religions and belief systems say about what happens after death?
And how does this impact their attitudes towards death and dying? There is an eternal life that follows after death, so when a person dies their soul moves on to another world.
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