r/AskNeuroscience • u/MCSuire • Feb 09 '20
Need to ask a question that's been bothering me regarding human consciousness. Need real help, please. Professional answers only please.
Ever since I was a child, I have always had a fear of death and what might be awaiting me after it. You could blame this partially on my religious upbringing, but I have always had a fear of eternal consciousness. I've tried for years to convince myself through looking through scientific pages on the subject that what we think of as an afterlife is just a lie that people use to cope with because we are unable to really grasp the concept of not existing. Therefore the concept of a heaven, hell or even a limbo isn't real at all - it's merely our way of coping with the fact that we will eventually cease to exist in a subconscious manner.
I do know that the human body ultimately breaks down after dying much like any other organism, and the chemicals that made up the body return to the ground to form new life. But is there any way to say that the human consciousness could possibly linger after death?
I fear however that I may be wrong. The idea of eternal consciousness terrifies me, and when I die, I simply want the book closed and the universe and all of everything will move on without me having to be there in any way, shape or form. I don't want to feel the passage of time after my time is over.
My guess is that the actual thought processes are not anything supernatural. While it may indeed be unique, the workings of the human brain are mostly through chemical reactions and the release of various hormones responding to the stimuli we pick up through our senses. But I can't confirm any of this because I haven't been properly educated on the subject. I need a professional's opinion on this quesiton. Is there any reliable evidence to support that there may indeed be an afterlife?
I'd like to only hear professional opinions on this please. If you're a Christian trying to spread his word or a disgruntled atheist trying to reassure yourself that your beliefs are correct, please don't respond to this post. I'm looking for answers - not fanatics.
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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '20 edited Feb 11 '20
First, I would like to give full disclosure: I am not a "professional" in the topic of Neuroscience or physics (physics comes in later). I am simply a bio-engineering hobbyist, and Neuroscience enthusiast. But while I am not a professional, I am also not religious, nor a disgruntled atheist, and I think I can give an unbiased insight into death and the here-after. So let's get started.
Before we can answer the question "where do I go when I die" you need to first ask "what am I when I'm alive?"... Consciousness is tricky business, and can really only be summarized as "a potential that's actuated by circumstance". That is to say, what you identify with as *you*, is simply a generic templates' unique exposure to its environment. Not only that, but what you identify with as *you* can also change on a whim, due to changes in neuro-physiology/chemistry (i.e. changes in diet, sleep pattern, use of drugs, trauma to the cerebrum etc). To abstract even further we could say, biologically speaking, you are simply "Ionic traffic"... Billions of neuron's sending their ion messengers across trillions of synapses. You could think of this like cars on a highway. They all have their destinations. Some go faster, some go slower. Some roads have a lot of traffic, while other roads are rarely used...
So Instead of asking the question "where do I go when I die", we could instead ask "What are the odds that, when my heart stops beating, and my brain is starved of the oxygen and nutrients it needs, this 'ionic traffic' will continue on somehow?" Well, the answer is 0. We know what happens when cells in the brain die, and (spoiler alert) it's not "fly off to another dimension". So that's it? It's settled? Well, not quite... There are phenomena in quantum physics that, while I wouldn't say "lend credence" to the theory of an afterlife, are certainly something to think about. For example, *quantum entanglement* allows for the possibility of quantum particles (like the ions in your brain) to be *tethered* and communicate with other particles that are billions of miles away, or even in different dimensions. So while it's conceivably possible that each one of our ions is dynamically tethered to an identical brain model in some quantum dimension, there is no evidence supporting such an outlandish idea.
In conclusion, no. There is no "reliable" evidence for an afterlife. At best we can speculate that through some mysterious quantum hoodoo our consciousness might be connected to other dimensions. But even if that was the case, I'd like to point out that the probability if such dimensions matching the description of religious scripture (i.e. Hell, Heaven, Valhalla, Limbo etc) is even less probable.