Neuroscience and Afterlife

Faith & Science Conversation
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I have been doing some research, and recently I have found out that neuroscientists say that once the brain shuts down, your consciousness shuts down. Doesn’t this disprove an afterlife? Or is there other explanations? Please respond, thank you

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Belief in the final Resurrection doesn’t necessarily require belief in the existence of disembodied souls.

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I mean when anyone dies- Like when I die, if my consciousness goes away, how will there be an afterlife?

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You would have to be re-created immortal. We were just discussing this topic over at the bottom of this thread: OT & NT + Jewish/Christian views of afterlife and resurrection

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So essentially, if I’m understanding correctly, after we die, God will basically transfer our consciousness to a different body in heaven, right?

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That thread really needs to be split. Perhaps the conversation could be merged into this one.

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I split it into its own thread. I think we’ll keep this one distinct so the OPs question doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

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Or on the New Earth. Depends on your eschatology. One idea I kind of like is that when you die, you exit time, so the very next moment of your existence is your re-creation at the Resurrection at the end of time as we know it. The idea of disembodied souls floating around heaven while we live here on earth is not that well-attested in the Bible.

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Well, you know when you go to sleep your consciousness also dies. I think that there’s a lot that neuroscientists still have to learn. For one thing neuroscience has not proven that the soul/mind/ consciousness is totally material. That’s an assumption, currently fashionable by those who would model mind as a meat computer; for objections to mind and consciousness as algorithmic processes read Roger Penrose’s “The Emperor’s New Mind” and succeeding volumes, or go to "The Empty Brain" by Robert Epstein.
Or better yet read some of the early Catholic theologians and philosophers, St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas

"Such great and wonderful things would never have been done for us by God, if the life of the soul were to end with the death of the body.” St. Augustine (Hippo), Confessions

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