One of the aspects of living is also dying. Many of us go about our lives as best we can, not overly regarding our own mortality, hoping that joining ‘the choir invisible’ is a long way off.
In various cultures what comes after death is important as the life here and now. Whether there is a life after death is subject to much discussion. Now with science advancing the province for the subject may not remain in the religious domain
Even in our fast paced tecno 24/7 lives, there is a steadily growing belief particularly in the west, that there could be survival after death. Some scientists, philosophers & medical doctors now question how the concious entity that defines us interacts with the physical and chemical reactions of the brain. This is not a question of whether there is a heaven or hell but whether our consciousness can exist outside of the brain.
Many cases of so called Near Death Experiences (NDEs) have been recorded over the years. Doctors and surgeons have been baffled by what patients who were clinically dead for up to two hours recount when they ‘wake’ or have been rescusitated. No real mention of paradise but of floating above their bodies looking down at the frantic efforts of medical staff to revive them. Some describe seeing aspects of the medical intervention such as the description of medical staff, clothes, medical instruments used that they should not have known about as they were clinically dead at the time with flat line EEG(heart) and ECG(brain death).
There are sites on the internet with contributions from those who have experienced NDE as well as academics, surgeons & doctors ascribing to this.
If we discount whether this external existence counts as heaven or chemical reactions that may stimulate an NDE, the chemical reaction is a weak theory, as so many have the same experience that could not be drug or chemically induced. Also when people are deeply unconcious (not NDE) because of trauma or anaesthetised, they rarery if ever remember any dreams. NDE exepriences are very lucid and remain with the person.
Heaven or Hell is not the case but now comes the interesting part, hard to get one’s head around, but basically quantum physics is being linked to the possibility of consciousness being external to a biological construct. It is widely known that we influence what can happen at a sub atomic level Schrodingers Cat experiment. An eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose (an atheist) argues that known laws of physics are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of consciousness.
Penrose proposes the characteristics this new physics may have and specifies the requirements for a bridge between classical and quantum mechanics (what he calls correct quantum gravity). Penrose uses a variant of the computer genius (first to devise programming) Alan Turin’s Halting Theorem to demonstrate that a system can be deterministic without being algorithmic. (E.g., imagine a system with only two states, ON and OFF. If the system’s state is ON if a given Turing machine halts, and OFF if the Turing machine does not halt, then the system’s state is completely determined by the Turing machine, however there is no algorithmic way to determine whether the Turing machine stops.)
Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff collaberated with Penrose to propose that consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in microtubles within the neurons of the brain, instead of chemical reactions. As demonstrated at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) quantum effects appear out of nowhere’ to disappear again in the tiniest fraction of a second. Many scientists etc. posit that these sub atomic particles slip in out of alternate realities or dimensions. Therefore consciousness maybe a quantum ‘entity’ that when released/free from the physical 3D realm travel elsewhere. Scientists believe that 11 separate dimension or bubble universes may exist outside our own physical universe and sub atomic particles move between these. That ties in with what they think happened before the Big Bang and may happend to our universe when all atoms break down again to sub atomic parcticles in billions of years time.
Atheists have had near-death experiences just like everyone else does. The philosophy of Positivism, founded by the famous atheist named A. J. Ayer, is the philosophy that anything not verifiable by the senses is nonsense. Because NDEs mark the end of the senses, Positivists believe the survival of the senses after death is nonsense. But this philosophy has been challenged by its founder A. J. Ayer himself. Later in life, Ayer had a NDE where he saw a red light. Ayer’s NDE made him a changed man: “My recent experiences, have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death … will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be” (Ayer, 1988 a,b).
Antony Flew (1923 – 2010) was a British philosopher belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion. Flew did not have a near-death experience but he was friends with Christian NDE researcher Dr. Gary Habermas who was a big influence on Flew’s conversion.
Flew was a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He also criticized the idea of life after death, the free will defense to the problem of evil and the meaningfulness of the concept of God. In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism more specifically a belief in the Aristotelian God stating that in keeping his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believes in the existence of God.
I guess we will not know ourselves what comes next until we individually shuffle off our own mortal coils.