KTHT Opposing Views Collaborative Prompt

Death is the Final Ending

Life After Death, an exercise in futility

Opposites in Collaboration

“Death is merely a change in form” versus “Death is the Final Ending”

[Note: I have been tasked (willing) with “Death as the Final Ending” because I have come from a background of logical/rational training and study in university using the scientific method. Two of the areas of study pertinent to the topic at hand was Recovery of Function in the prefrontal cortex and Psycho Neuro-Endocrinology. I act as an actor taking up the role of a “hard scientist” because of my experience and an ability to see other’s view points.

I have long since abandoned areas of psychological study of brain and endocrinology study for something “hard science” would never approve. I am more in-line with Joseph’s thinking and am playing a part. I call it interdimensional healing that touches on divine forces including medium-type of experiences of those that have passed — to which you can investigate: Frank Ontario Stories.]

There is no Empirical Evidence therefore…

Death is the end of life and the end of consciousness because there’s no scientific evidence to support a life after death. The Near-Death Experiences or NDEs and talk of Life After Death are merely talk or conjecture at best. Science has found no evidence that life after death exists. All the hard evidence of life after death does not exist because it is hearsay, anecdotal speculation that belongs in the annals of science fiction.

The people who report NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) are manufacturing hallucinatory experiences based on religious or “spiritual” fantasies that they have read, have heard, or have gleaned from childhood fairy-tales or beliefs. It could be explained by a lack of oxygen, though been hypothesized — there have been no conclusive results either way. While some of the experiential reports of hearing what doctors have said while they have “died” are anecdotally convincing, this is not proof of life after death. The difficulty of engaging in empirical research for NDEs is an ethical one. Not enough research has been done under strict experimental parameters to prove that there is not a residual biological process after brain function ceases. It’s an impossible leap in logic to extrapolate a near death to an actual death for obvious reasons.

It could be (in my opinion as a citizen — and not a scientist) that humans believe they are incapable of living a moral and good life on the planet and must have a life after death as a reward for a good life here. I am reminded of the Catholic Confession — a way to absolve sin and immoral/illegal acts repeatedly to get through the door into heaven. If we face up to the fact that we humans will cheat, lie, steal, covet thy neighbor’s wife, etc., displays a very good reason religion was invented: to keep people in line or burn in-hell in the afterlife. It’s a simple reward/punishment system to keep people in the morally good place…

Belief in God

I believe in a god, but my belief is based on observational evidence of the wonder of biological processes. God is a biological process. It does not have gender; it does not listen to prayers, etc. The impetus that began biological processes on Earth eons ago is the god I am sharing as a possibility. If there were a god that had a voice — my fantasy of what it might say would be:

Hope is fear that takes humans into a fantasy future world. Hope not for a future. Do what you can to change the present. Live life to the fullest — it’s the only one you have.

Afterlife Fantasy Worlds and Reincarnation Nonsense

I will start with offering an alternative explanation/opinion (not based on scientific experimentation) of reincarnation and work backwards to afterlife delusions. (Science would dismiss reincarnation because experiments could not be designed to replicate any hard evidence.)

Reincarnation is Based on Memory

Past Lives? Really? They seem a cop-out to me. It is yet another way religions (mostly eastern) have delayed punishment or gratification by pushing through karma it off into another life. Many people, may have had intrusive delusional thoughts of “past life” experiences. Most people prefer a fantasy explanation of past lives and have not considered the following:

That intrusive thoughts, dreams and fantasies of other lives are possible memories. After all, if you really think about it, there is no past that exists now, just memories of the past that exist in the present. Past lives don’t exist in the past, because the past is written, done, over. The memory of past lives is just that, a memory that may be fabricated. (Science has shown that memory is not necessarily an accurate accounting of a past event.) And they is no way to prove definitively or disprove that. It results in an endless, futile debate that interferes with living life in the present.

Afterlife Delusions

Human life for most of us is hard. So why do it? The afterlife, heaven, where any kind of thing you can imagine exists in the world of rewards and punishments.

We have far too few rewards and many more punishments in life on earth. I can see where it’s easy to invent a fantastical world of riches and wonder as a reward for the hellish life here.

It’s easy to get distracted here with football, baseball, iPhones, computers, internet, binge streaming rather than focus on changing life for the better. We humans don’t take responsibility for ourselves and make up the afterlife, where it’s all better.

A Caveat of Scientific Research

All experiments based on the scientific method do not find proof. They suggest a conclusion. The experiments that are replicated are not proved just correlated. All replicated experiments are always up for review based on recent evidence. One more reason why science is a living, ongoing inquiry.

Questions from Joseph Lieungh and Answers from this author

This piece is part of a collaborative point-counterpoint exercise is oppositional stances. Below are the questions from Joseph Lieungh:

1. Q: What are your thoughts on afterlife?

A: There is no afterlife from a scientifically verifiable perspective. In other words there no experiments that have been attempted or have been replicated to produce evidence of an afterlife. If I were to even consider an “Afterlife” I would need to define it. The afterlife is the death of the biological body and within the physical laws of entropy — the body decays and recycles the compost into the earth.

2. Q: Where does one come from and where do we return?

A: We are produced when a sperm (with the help of other sperm) or through artificial insemination fertilizes an egg and a collection of cells are formed out of which an embryo develops and is delivered as a newborn.

A: Our bodies decay. Our corpses return to the earth as compost. It’s a beautiful biological process of recycling.

3. Q: You spoke of illusions or hallucinations before, are we just making all of this up?

A: Let me be clear — I am only writing about possible hallucinations during the NDEs. There is no evidence one way or the other. One researcher has suggested that DMT, created in the pineal gland after death — during NDEs — produce hallucinogenic experiences. This experiment was inconclusive. So far the people that investigate these phenomena could be called Fringe Scientists or Pioneers.

4. Q: Does quantum mechanics have anything to do with our existence, or is this another attempt at the scientific world trying to quantifying something that doesn’t exist?

A: I don’t know. I do not have enough know-how in the field of quantum mechanics to answer the question.

5. Q: Final question — What is real, more specifically, can humans handle the idea that nothing is real?

A: Posing as a scientist of biology I feel this question is better left to philosophers. As a citizen I would say that most humans can handle ideas as long as they remain ideas. When an idea becomes tangible — that nothing is real — it would scare the crap out of most people (including me) and severely disrupt their lives (my life). It could result in chaos.

Thank you Diana C. for this opportunity to share thoughts with a fellow writer, collaborate and facilitate a possibility of losing our minds — deliberately to oblivion.

Thank you Joseph for working along side you. I long for peaceful repose within your world of mythic-poetic prose.

Here is Joseph Lieungh’s prompted piece regarding Change is Constant Even After We Are Dead.

Thanks to all for reading. I love Joseph Lieungh’s part in this inquiry — look at the wide view and mine — the narrow focused view.