Is there life after death, and how can we really know?

We live most of our lives trying to avoid the thought of death, but sometimes it's unavoidable  like when a loved one passes away. Only then we are forced to confront death. The reality is, death is inescapable. It is part of the human experience and will touch each and every one at some point in our lives. The question then becomes, what happens when we die? It's one of life's biggest questions, alongside "Why am I here?", "What is the purpose of life?", and "Is there a God?"

There are many ideas of what happens when we die. The materialists believe death is final, and there is no life after death. Buddhists and Hindus, among others, believe in reincarnation and that we have lived many lives. Traditional Christians, such as Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestant denominations, believe in an intermediate existence between death and the resurrection. Jehovah Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, Christadelphians, and a few other groups believe the soul "sleeps" until the resurrection of the dead.

The question is, whose right is, and how can we really be sure of anything outside of our observational experience? I hold to the traditional Christian view of a continual, uninterrupted life after death. But for the sake of this article, I will temporarily cast aside theological arguments and focus on logic, reason, and a little bit of philosophy. The reason is to not focus on what we believe to be true but rather to focus on what we know to be true, what is plausible, and what we can reasonably conclude. I will provide two primarily arguments: near-death experiences and consciousness.

Near Death Experiences

The term "near-death experience" (NDEs) was coined by author and physician Raymond Moody. In his book, Life After Life, Moody recounts the story of George G. Ritchie, who was a U.S. Army recruit in 1943 during World War II. George reportedly died of pneumonia and was declared clinically dead for about 9 minutes. During that time, he recounts leaving his body and encountering a being of light, among other experiences. He was told it wasn't his time to die and was later revived with an adrenaline injection. George G. Ritchie's story is considered one of the earliest "modern" NDEs, although in reality, NDEs are not new or novel. NDEs have in fact been recorded in ancient texts for thousands of years.

There are, of course, several objections to NDEs. One of the primary objections is that they are merely brain phenomena or hallucinations caused from blood and oxygen deprivation to the brain. If that were true, we should be able to recreate that experience by temporality restricting blood flow to the brain. This happens all the time in mixed martial arts competitions. A fighter will choke out an opponent using a rear-naked choke hold. This maneuver cuts off the blood flow to the brain resulting in unconsciousness. Yet, in none of those instances does the person on the receiving end of a choke hold experience an NDE. In fact, NDEs are unique only to those who have had actual brushes with death.

Hallucinations also wouldn't explain why they see the same or similar things or why they would see a glimpse of the afterlife at all. Why would a dying brain, if it were possible, create a vision or hallucination of the afterlife and not something else? Why specifically the afterlife? That would imply the brain knows it's dying and chooses to create a hallucination of the afterlife for no obvious reason? Hallucinations, like dreams, are random, yet NDEs are very specific. They are also very different from hallucinations. Those who have had an NDE describe themselves as being more aware and lucid than they ever have been.

It may be argued that NDEs are filtered through cultural expectations and what they see is shaped by their beliefs. To some degree that may be true, but it doesn't make what they experience untrue or necessarily contradictory to other accounts. It just means what they see is interpreted through their religious and cultural lenses and that will create different perspectives of the same experience. This means that two or more people could see the exact same thing and yet give two very different accounts. We can see this in play evens now, especially in court cases where witness testimony will differ from one another. Regardless, NDEs have common themes that transcend cultural beliefs. Atheists who don't believe in an afterlife have had NDEs as well as small children who don't have many, if any, preconceived cultural beliefs and biases.

NDEs are often dismissed as being subjective and anecdotal; however, that is not always the case. There have been instances where those who have had an NDE were able to recount things they shouldn't have been able to know, and it was corroborated by others. Not all purported NDEs may be genuine, but neither can they all be so easily dismissed either. There is simply no logical explanation for when someone experiencing an NDE sees or hears something that is impossible for them to know, and those details are verified by others. To quote Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

The Mystery of Consciousness

Why and how does the brain produce subjective experience? Why does the brain produce consciousness at all? This is known as the hard problem of consciousness and it may indirectly be the greatest plausible argument for life after death. If you were to ask scientists if all we are is our brains, most would probably say yes. If all we are are our brains, then consciousness should be in the brain. And yet, it hasn't been proven that consciousness is a product of the biological brain.

Those same scientists would be hard-pressed to explain how an organ that is made up of mostly water (73-80%) and a little fat (10-12%) produces consciousness at all. Science has gained an understanding how the brain functions and the mechanics involved. They can detect brain waves, for instance, but that’s still a big leap to go from understanding how neurons fire to understanding how the brain produces thoughts.

Science has been unable to answer this question because science deals with the material, tangible world and consciousness is very much immaterial and intangible. Therefore, it is not easy to quantify. It's not something that can be tested in a lab or examined under a microscope. All science can do is provide unproven theories of how they think consciousness works. This leads to a larger question, where does consciousness reside? If all we are is our brains, then we should be able to detect consciousness in the brain, but neurological experiments and logical reasoning are pointing to the opposite conclusion.

Before we begin, it should be established what we mean by consciousness so we can rule out what it is not. "Consciousness" can refer to the state of being awake or being aware, but it can also refer to the mind (will, intellect, thoughts, emotions). The two states should not be conflated. A person can be asleep or under anesthesia and unconscious, but their mind is still very much active, which is why we have dreams.

Likewise, a person can be in a deep coma, yet they can still have awareness. That's why nurses are told to watch what they say around patients in a coma. Therefore, consciousness is not equivalent to the state of arousal or being awake. Conversely, unconsciousness is not equivalent to death. When we refer to consciousness here, we are referring to the mind.

As it turns out, locating consciousness is quite elusive. When a brain is operated on, it is done with only topical anesthesia because the brain can’t feel pain, and they want the patients to be alert, so they don’t cut the wrong thing. Dr. Wilder Penfield, a pioneer in the field of neurosurgery, was instrumental in mapping out the brain. He did this by stimulating the patient’s brain with an electrode. He found he could stimulate the patient’s brain to evoke certain emotions, sensations, memories, and movements, but he couldn’t stimulate the mind. No amount of stimulation altered the patients' thoughts; they were fully aware of what was happening to them. Their will, reason, intellect, etc. all remained unaffected. This showed that the mind can act independently of the brain.

For those who have crippling epileptic seizures, a procedure is done where they actually split the brain in half to stop the seizures. It was initially worried this would result in severe physical disabilities and would split the mind in half. Interestingly enough, it did neither of those things. Patients were able to live completely normal lives afterward. This proved that splitting the brain in half does not split the mind. The mind, having no discernible parts, remained unified. This was also observed to be true of conjoined twins who shared 30% of their frontal lobe brain tissue. They both had distinct, individual minds with their own personalities despite sharing a brain.

There exist other examples of people who lost parts of their brain either from surgery or from birth defects. It’s true that there are those with large parts of their brain missing who are handicapped, but it is also true that many functions quite well, despite having key parts of their brain missing, including up to half. There was a little girl named Katie who was born with only a sliver of frontal lobes, a plate of deep brain tissue, and a spinal cord. The rest of her head was filled with water. Amazingly, she grew up normally and even made her high school’s honor roll.

There is a theory is that consciousness is a by-product of the processing of neurons in the cerebral cortex. Yet, that’s the part of the brain missing in children born without cerebral hemispheres, called hydranencephaly. Although it produces severe handicaps, they are still very much conscious. The cerebral cortex is considered to be the thinking part of the brain, yet some basic thinking occurs with no cortex at all.

Awareness in even the deepest level of coma is also common. An interesting test was given to a thirty-four-year-old woman in a coma as the result of a severe car accident and diagnosed with persistent vegetative state (PVS). She was fitted with a headset and put into an MRI machine. She was asked to imagine certain things, like playing tennis. When tested and compared with people who had normal brain functions, the woman in a coma had the exact same pattern of brain activation.

At least five other PVS patients were able to respond to requests to think about certain scenarios, and one was even able to answer yes-or-no questions using fMRI imaging. If the mind were completely a product of the brain, those patients should not have been able to respond at all. It demonstrates that even if the brain is altered, the mind is not necessarily altered. The mind may generally depend upon the function of the brain, but it can also function independently at times, as with dementia patients who suddenly become lucid, especially near death, called terminal/paradoxical lucidity.

The brain is clearly an important organ, but then so are other organs in the body. Certainly, if a brain is severely damaged, it can affect the intellect and will, but that is likely because brain damage impairs memory or perception areas that are needed for the mind to comprehend things. But if the mind was purely the product of the brain, then any parts missing should always result in impairment, which isn’t necessarily the case. If you were to remove a single gear in a mechanical watch, it will cease to function. But if parts of the brain are missing or taken out, consciousness can remain unified. Such things might result in physical impairments, but consciousness itself can remain unaffected.

There is clearly a relationship between the brain and the mind, but they are also two distinct substances. The human mind is unique in its ability for abstract thought. It’s one of the things that separate us from animals. That means that the mind has both material and immaterial parts. Something that is abstract doesn't have physicality, like numbers. We know numbers exist, but they do not have physical properties. They exist only as abstract concepts.

The mind is very much intangible/abstract with no discernible parts. And if the mind is not tangible, how can it be destroyed? And if it can't be destroyed, then it can exist apart from the body. Physical things die; intangible things do not. It would like to try to kill numbers, an impossibility. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be destroyed; it only transforms. Death, then, is merely the transformation from one form to another form like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Thus, we are more than our brains or bodies.