Life After Death

"the last enemy to be destroyed is death." Jesus took care of that and has laid claim to life. Death is simply the end of the body...not the real you...that part that lives on and is ever transforming. It is true...we can keep getting younger....a spring in our spiritual step...a dance with the divine...a giddy heart....a "can't wait" attitude to see what is going to happen next...it is such fun...

This is a post taken from a Facebook friend.  Rather than respond there I'll just briefly comment here.  As much as I disagree with statements like the above, it's not worth risking a connection.  Actually I may speak a little to the complexity of navigating such relations, that is, those relations in which there is a radical difference in philosophical and/or religious beliefs.  A friend and I have started writing a book regarding just such a relationship but it remains to be seen when it will be completed.

It was Feuerbach who criticized statements like "the last enemy to be destroyed is death" for being entirely too convenient for a creature who longs for the certainty of its own immortality.  Freud, developing the observation, wrote in his Future of an Illusion:

It will be found if we turn our attention to the psychical origin of religious ideas. These, which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of experience or end results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. 

For those Christians who might dismiss Feuerbach, don't forget it was Karl Barth, one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, who took Feuerbach quite seriously, even writing a preface to a later edition of Feuerbach's most provocative work The Essence of Christianity (and let us not forget that Feuerbach himself was a theologian).  

Now this is what we might call a psychological critique of the notion of an afterlife or life after death.  But what about a scientific one?  I have written elsewhere about the importance of keeping in mind the connection between personality/consciousness and brain.  One can observe, even in the most basic of human experiences, this connection. For example, when someone is struck in the head with great force there is a loss of consciousness, that part of us that is our personality, our self-awareness etc.. that part of us that Christians and others believe will transcend the limitations of our bodies.  But if trauma to the brain causes an immediate loss of self-awareness, the consistent conclusion to draw is that the ultimate trauma to our brains, death, will result in the same thing.  What will it be like after we die?  Nothing.  The same as when we are struck in the head and lose consciousness.  There is not even any darkness, let alone angels and a light at the end of the tunnel (an experience brought about by a brain starved of oxygen as it turns out).  There is simply nothing.  How can we imagine this?  It was once said by Alan Watts that one simply needs to think about what it was like before one was born (and had a brain).  In the same way that "death" before birth meant our complete lack of existence, so too death after birth will mean the same thing.  If this is unsettling to some, consider Feuerbach's words, and those of Freud. Could it be there may be a grain of truth in there somewhere?  Life and existence paid scant attention to the needs of our ego before our birth, why should they after?

Claudio Ianora

How does one really honour the dead? It has a hollow sound.. "honour the dead," like the emptiness of an apology to a tombstone. Yet there exists a need to give honour to those who are worthy of it, even if it is too late for the honoured to received their praise. There is nothing left to do in any case.

I give honour to Claudio Ianora, to Cain who wandered the earth, who wasn't afraid to shake his fist at the host of heaven on occasion, who in fact was the most faithful man I have ever known. He was the salt of the earth. He was a Van Gogh in many ways. His colours were words. Like Beckett's man who always wanted rest and was never able to find it in this life, he finally did find it on All Saint's Day, 2011. I for one will never forget this man. I shall miss our talks.

Sarkozy

In the wake of the Toulouse siege and the killing of self-proclaimed al-Qaeda operative Mohamed Merah, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stated:

From now on, any person who habitually consults websites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be punished by the law. Telegraph.uk

Of course we might ask the President what precisely constitutes "terrorism" or how one should understand "advocate." Does activity calling for a new form of government fall into the category? We might also wish to inquire as to the content of the term "consults." At what point, Monsieur President, does a consultation become "habitual?" After two times? A dozen? Is it merely the observation of a website, perhaps out of curiosity, or is it only observation with malice? How can one tell the difference? He does not say, for example, that anyone who consults a certain website and then commits a crime will be punished, but rather that consulting a website is itself a crime.

The logic here is Christian but with a twist. In Christian teaching, one can look but not think (looking at a woman to lust after her is the same as committing adultery), for Sarkozy, one perhaps might think, but they certainly cannot look. They are two sides of the same coin. What the ultimate totalitarian ruler would demand is that one not look or think. To achieve this one might meld together the right leaning secular state (France) and Christian moral teaching. One will deal with the outward appearance of things, while the other will monitor the inner condition of its citizens. Only then can we be safe.

Pascal on belief (A translation)

Vous voulez aller á la foi, et vous n'en savez pas le chemin; vous voulez vous guérir de l'infidélité, et vous en demandez les remèdes. Apprenez (les) de ceux qui ont été tels comme vous, et qui parient maintenant tout leur bien. Ce sont gens qui savent un chemin que vous voudriez suivre, et guéris d'un mal dont vous voulez guérir. Suivez la manière par où ils ont commencé: c'est en faisant tout comme s'ils croyoient, en prenant de l'eau bénite, en faisant dire des messes, etc. Naturellement même cela vous fera croire et vous abêtira. Pascal, Pensées, 233

"You want to have faith and you do not know how; you want to heal yourself of unbelief and you ask for the remedy. Learn from those who have been like you, and who are now betting all their possessions. These are people who know a way which you would like to follow, and who are healed of an evil that you want cured. Follow the way by which they have set out: that is by doing all as if they believed, by taking the holy water, by saying masses, etc. Even this will, naturally, make you believe and deaden your passion."

In Pace Christopher Hitchens

So long Christopher Hitchens.. you loved justice, cut through the fog of superstition, hated tyranny. Goodnight good sir.

Niwuzzles!

Check out the latest from the creator of Niwuzzles.

A Copenhagen Rendezvous

Those two familiar violin strains! Those two familiar violin strains here this very moment out in the street. So it is to you that I owe this joy, you two unfortunate artists. -One of them was probably 17 years old, wearing a green kalmuk coat with large bone buttons. The coat was much too large for him. He held the violin tightly under his chin; his cap was pulled down over his eyes. His hand was concealed in a fingerless glove; his fingers were red and blue with cold. The other one was older and wore a chenille coat. Both were blind. A little girl, who presumably guided them, stood in front of them, thrust her hands under her scarf. We gathered one by one, a few admirers of those melodies – a postman with his mail bag, a little boy, a maidservant, a couple of dock workers. The elegant carriages rolled noisily by; the carts and wagons drowned out the melodies, which emerged fragmentarily for a moment. You two unfortunate artists, do you know that those strains hide in themselves the glories of the whole world? - Was it not like a rendezvous? Kierkegaard, Either/Or.

Reminiscence

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..."

For some reason the truth of this statement has hit home on a number of levels lately. From completing one degree and starting another just days after my thesis defense, to caring for a dear friend whose past had a head on collision with her present, to other new beginnings which are not my own, but which contain the sign of an end, one I know and feel all too well, that is closer to my heart than any other.

There is no easy transition from one to the other.. the articulation of a "beginning" is completely subjective. It is only possible from the perspective of a subject. It is a choice. It is the end of a scene.

We have our stories don't we? You have yours and I have mine. We hear a little of each other's, we sometimes fill in the gaps with our own inventions, our own assumptions. Won't you sit for a while and help clear up the misconceptions? You are after all a brother.. a sister. Will we continue to play host to demons of our own design? We were once friends, we could be still.

Who has had a radical break? Tell me who has lost a multitude of worlds in a moment of time? Whose beginning has been an end? Who has seen that the promises of friends and religion are chaff in the wind? For who has truth been a sword of Damocles? I know a man. When I am old I will know him.

There's no use in raging. In poetry there is a kind of solace.. silence is better.

The Cost of War

This is taken from Steven Pinker's new book.  He provides some interesting comparisons.

*Deaths were calculated against global population at time, then scaled up to mid-20th century level

*Median/mode of figures cited in encyclopaedias or histories. Includes battlefield and civilian deaths

Conflict	Century	Death toll*	Death toll (20C equivalent)	Rank ▴
An Lushan revolt	8th	36m	429m	1
Mongol conquest	13th	40m	278m	2
Middle East slave trade	7th-19th	18m	132m	3
Fall of the Ming dynasty	17th	25m	112m	4
Fall of Rome	3rd-5th	8m	105m	5
Timur Lenk	14th-15th	17m	100m	6
Annihilation of the American Indians	15th-19th	20m	92m	7
Atlantic slave trade	15th-19th	18m	83m	8
Second world war	20th	55 million	55M	9
Taiping rebellion	19th	20m	40M	10
Mao Zedong (mostly government-caused famine)	20th	40M	40M	11
British India (mostly preventable famine)	19th	17m	35m	12
Thirty years' war	17th	7m	32m	13
Russia's “time of troubles”	16th-17th	5m	23m	14
Josef Stalin	20th	20m	20m	15
First world war	20th	15m	15m	16
French wars of religion	16th	3m	14m	17
Congo Free State	19th-20th	8m	12m	18
Napoleonic wars	19th	4m	11m	19
Russian civil war	20th	9m	9m	20
Chinese civil war	20th	3m	3m	21

Source  Steven Pinker, Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011).  Amazon.

Current Reading

In keeping with a practice I began while maintaining an older blog (some of you might remember), every now and then I'll post my current reading material (I've not included journal articles here). I've always enjoyed seeing what others are reading and have found it can lead to some interesting conversations.

School related

On Human Rights, James Griffin

The Law of Peoples, John Rawls

Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark Taylor

Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History, Susan Buck-Morss (I've enjoyed reading this one)

Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth

The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub-continent Before the Coming of the Muslims, A.L. Basham

Personal Interest (any free moment I have)

What Is A Thing?, Martin Heidegger

Out of Our Heads, Alva Noe

The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know about Human Evolution, Ian Tattersall

A day of departure

When a boat is rotting on the strand, the one who pushes it out into the waves may be said to be unconcerned by its loss, but at least not by its destination.

Le Rivage des Syrtes, Julien Gracq

Brain Dead (Fragment of a letter)

The brain is the size of a grapefruit. It weighs about 3lbs (Einstein's was 2.75lbs), and has the consistency of custard. You could scoop it up with a spoon. It is the single most complex system in the universe, perhaps more complex than the universe itself. It has over a hundred billion neurons in it, each with hundreds or even thousands of connections. It has evolved at an incredible rate over approx. 300 millions years, growing in size and complexity. It is here, inside the skull, that all emotion, sensation, all human art and science, all gods and angels are created.. and for the most part we are not even aware of it.

A person has a heart attack and lives, they get shot in the liver and survive. Throughout they maintain their consciousness, their personality, their sense of "me." But then they get shot in the brain. They either die instantly or live. If they live, and depending on where the bullet strikes, they are no longer the person we used to know. Their personality is radically different. Anyone who has known a person with Alzheimer's understands how a disease that effects the brain can erase a person's former personality, in a sense, killing the person we loved so dearly, leaving a body that on the surface looks like our loved one, but essentially is a different person, sometimes not recognizing who we are as if they had never known us, even ill treating us.

What implication does this have for any notion of an afterlife? A philosopher once said: "If we can be dead when we're alive (the complete loss of who we psychically are due to disease or injury), we can be dead when we're dead." In other words if physical damage to the brain can erase our personality, what makes us think that the physical damage of brain death and decay once we die is any different? It seems clear that there is no continuation of personality or awareness after death. It will be the end.

Someone once asked me, but what do you believe happens after we die? I asked them "what was it like before you were born?" Here is the answer.. It will be a radical nothingness that we cannot be aware of. Somewhere, sometime in the universe, a new consciousness will be born from a young mother.. the light at the end of the tunnel is in a sense the light at the end of the birth canal.. a new beginning.