"We can't know what happens to you after death."
This is one of the cheesiest one-liners that you will hear whenever there is any sort of pseudo-philosophical discussion taking place. Why in today's day and age is everyone so very keen to display their agnosticism on this topic and in addition to mystify it further by categorically stating that we will never know? Didn't we manage to answer enough questions which were originally thought to be forever bound in the realms of mysteriousness (ranging from the origin of lightning to the origin of the entire known universe) to teach us a lesson that asserting eternal ignorance in a subject is just silly as asserting complete knowledge?
Well I for one am bold enough to assert that I know there is no afterlife for us to exploit. Not absolute knowledge, that would be silly and indefensible, but simply a reasonable degree of certainty that is sufficient for any other person in any other topic to declare knowledge on a subject.
Let me introduce you to a simple syllogism that proves my point:
- The existence of human mind is sustained by brain activity.
- Upon death brain ceases to be active.
- Therefore upon death human mind ceases to exist.
This syllogism is valid because the conclusion necessarily follows the two premises. What's more is that both premises are empirically verifiable which means that my little logical construct is opened to feedback from scientific research and is a subject to falsification which is always a good place to start.
Let's examine the two premises.
Premise 2, the minor premise, should cause no controversy. Take any living person and look at their brain activity using an EEG. Compare the result to the EEG of somebody that is dead. Surely even a mouth breathing buffoon will be able to tell the difference between a squiggly line and a straight line.
Premise 1, the major premise, is usually where the battle is fought. Mostly because the proponents of an afterlife realise that the second premise as well as the conclusion, as they currently stand, are pretty much impenetrable. The common counter-argument to the first premise is the claim for the existence of a soul or a spiritual mind. This argument fails on several levels.
First of all there is not a shred of evidence for the existence of souls. As far as I am concerned souls fall into the same category as many gods do; They are untestable, not demonstrable and they lack the benefit of having a precedence. Naturalistic explanation are always more compelling and will continue to be so until someone manages to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural. I ought to warn you: Don't hold your breath. Therefore I believe that I am justified in dismissing this claim based on the its vast improbability and lack of evidence.
Secondly scientific research may already provide evidence against the existence of a soul. The video below should be self-explanatory.
Ramachandran's is absolutely right when he says that this should have sent tidal waves throughout the theological community.
Thirdly we have positive evidence that human mind is indeed the product of the brain. As someone who is not a neurologist I will not attempt to construct an essay riddled with scientific citations showing the examples in scientific research that links human mind to the corresponding brain activity, I will leave that to people like Ramachandran or Sam Harris; However even in laymann terms it is undeniable that our thoughts, emotions, decision making processes and memories are very much related to what is happening to our bodies. Hit yourself on the head and suffer memory loss. Inject yourself with the right hormone and experience emotional roller coaster (pregnant women will know what I am talking about). Use the wrong narcotics and your entire personality may be recognizably changed. Split your brain in two and... hah.
So why are proponents of an afterlife still willing to force William of Ockham to turn in his grave? Unfortunately as the only known species to be self-aware enough to know that it is inevitably going to die we have large emotional investment in staying alive. No matter how sound or unsound my argument may be most people will hardly be affected by rational argumentation or even empirical evidence that points to the contrary.
People like me are the Bruti of our time. We argue the facts, the rationality and perhaps even the truth but we are no Marcus Antonius who is able to appeal towards the crowd's emotional needs.
Which is funny because if I am right there is nothing stopping humanity from reaching a technological point where death as we know it will be nothing but a mere inconvenience in your journey through life. Although admittedly nobody who is reading this blog will live long enough to see that day.
