{"id":44717,"date":"2017-10-28T23:12:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T05:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=44717"},"modified":"2017-10-28T23:12:45","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T05:12:45","slug":"science-minds-still-function-bodies-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/10\/science-minds-still-function-bodies-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"Science: Do our minds still function after our bodies are dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Heat<\/a>
It won\u2019t be much to look forward to, if some scientists can be believed. But others are now suggesting a quite different view. (Wikimedia CC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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From one of my manuscripts:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Most of us have a feeling, deep inside, that this world isn\u2019t all there is.\u00a0 That death will not be the end.\u00a0 The great English poet John Donne (d. 1631) summarized the long-standing view not only of Christendom but of the world of Islam and beyond when, in striking and memorable imagery, he wrote that<\/span><\/p>\n

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated: God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God\u2019s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.<\/strong>[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

But is this mere self-deception?\u00a0 Nothing more than outdated superstition?\u00a0 Once, in Christian communities and very much similarly in religious communities around the globe, death was accepted, even welcomed, as the \u201chappy harbour of the saints,\u201d a rest and reward for the travails of life.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 However, as God was \u201cevicted from the world\u201d under the powerful influence of naturalism and materialism, \u201cthe story of death took on new meaning, or rather it suggested the absence of meaning entirely.\u00a0 In time, dying signified leaving everything and arriving nowhere.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 (One thinks of the description of the atheist\u2019s funeral:\u00a0 \u201cAll dressed up and nowhere to go.\u201d)\u00a0 The early twentieth century Spanish and American philosopher George Santayana announced, simply, that \u201call doctrines which adult philosophy can entertain are more or less subterfuges and after-thoughts by which the observed fact of mortality and the native inconceivability of death are more or less clumsily reconciled.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Thus, says the contemporary scholar Carol Zaleski, \u201cthe will to believe in immortality is easily reduced to a will to deceive oneself about death, and from this self-deception arises the whole fantastic panoply of compensatory paradises invented by the world\u2019s religions.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> John Donne, Devotions<\/em>, Meditation 17. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> The phrase is from an anonymous sixteenth century poem entitled \u201cHierusalem,\u201d anthologized in Donald Davie, ed., The New Oxford Book of Christian Verse<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 31.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Arthur Krystal, Harper\u2019s<\/em> (February 2001).<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> George Santayana, The Life of Reason<\/em>, 2d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, 1942-51), 3:237. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Carol Zaleski, The Life of the World to Come: Near-Death Experience and Christian Hope<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 12.\u00a0 It should be noted that Professor Zaleski does not, herself, accept such a reduction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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***<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I\u2019m eager to learn more about this study:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen you die you KNOW you\u2019re dead: Scientists discover the mind still works after the body shows no sign of life and reveal people have heard their own death announced by medics\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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Posted from Jerusalem, Israel<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 From one of my manuscripts: \u00a0 Most of us have a feeling, deep inside, that this world isn\u2019t all there is.\u00a0 That death will not be the end.\u00a0 The great English poet John Donne (d. 1631) summarized the long-standing view not only of Christendom but of the world of Islam and beyond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nScience: Do our minds still function after our bodies are dead?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"      From one of my manuscripts:   Most of us have a feeling, deep inside, that this world isn\u2019t all there is.\u00a0 That death will not\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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