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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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But when people ask "Why don't you believe in MY God?" then that's a different matter. Not only does it take a leap of faith to believe in an invisible deity, but it goes even beyond that when such a leap of faith involves all the other falderal associated with religion. I won't necessarily ask religious people to prove the existence of God, since that question has gotten a bit cliche and old hat. But I might ask them to prove that eating meat on Friday during Lent is a "sin." Or I might ask questions about the alleged spiritual properties of communion wafers or "holy water" - that sort of thing.

Zonie . . .

These sorts of questions seem peripheral and uninteresting to me.

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I would propose that even the question of the existence of a divine creator is secondary to the most important primary question that we all wrestle with in one form or another: Does my personal consciousness and personality survive the death of my brain? How we answer that question informs the structure of our religious belief or nonbelief. Some neuroscientist said the HARD question was how does our brain account for consciousness. I would counter that the REALLY HARD question is the question of survival. Well, not so hard for the faithful I guess although even Augustine and Aquinas struggled with their faith.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
It's almost impossible to consider the idea of 'God' without the big bearded bloke and the Bible popping unbidden into my head and making loud enough noises for me not to want to bother thinking about the subject at all. That, of course, is in large part because I, like most people i know, was pumped with too much sustained religious propaganda when I was too young to be able to filter it.

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The part that struck a chord with me — and many other atheists — was Winfrey’s dismissal of Nyad’s non-religious label. Nyad explained that she called herself an atheist but that didn’t take anything away from the awe she felt about the world and all of its inhabitants. To her, “God” was humanity.

Winfrey clearly didn’t understand that, responding, “Well, I don’t call you an atheist then! I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, that that is what God is!”

First of all, Winfrey’s definition of God is fairly meaningless, applying to everything and nothing all at once.

More importantly, however, was the (unintentional) implication that those of us who find beauty in plants and animals and the universe itself can’t possibly be godless. That’s a common stereotype atheists face and it’s an incredibly pernicious one, made even worse because it was repeated by a celebrity of Winfrey’s stature.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

Does my personal consciousness and personality survive the death of my brain?

Just out of curiosity, what might convince you? Or to make it more open-ended, what might tip the scales to incline you toward giving the possibility more credence? And in case it need be said, I intend that as a serious question, not as bait for responses from people who can't resist saying Jesus (or Elvis Presley) knocking on their door with a boxed lunch and a couple of beers to share.

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In the days before my father's passing, he was saying that he could see dead relatives walking across the room. My dad was not the kind of person who would just make stuff up, but during those last weeks, he was in a semi-conscious state of mind, so he may have been half-dreaming. I can't really say

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I don't know if there are any devices which can measure or detect any energy particles leaving the body at the moment of death. If we have a "soul" which survives after death, by what mechanism does it leave your body and where does it actually go?

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A particularly frightening thought is that the "soul" might actually survive and remain "conscious" even after death - but still trapped inside your body, so that you'd still be aware of what was going on around you after death.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML
I would counter that the REALLY HARD question is the question of survival.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

Unless one is a believer it's not a hard question at all. Consciousness is very notably an emergent property of the brain. We can measure it and measure how damage to the brain effects it. Asking whether consciousness survives after death is very much like asking if your Windows 8 is still running after your laptop has taken a ride through the wood chipper. For the non brain washed there's a very obvious answer.

That is not a fact, it's a theory. That you proclaim it a fact, thump it like a Bible, and call anyone who disagrees with you "brain washed," is the stuff of Sunday morning television.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Zonie63

FR

I just came across an article which might be interesting to this topic: What Oprah doesn’t get about atheists

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The part that struck a chord with me — and many other atheists — was Winfrey’s dismissal of Nyad’s non-religious label. Nyad explained that she called herself an atheist but that didn’t take anything away from the awe she felt about the world and all of its inhabitants. To her, “God” was humanity.

Winfrey clearly didn’t understand that, responding, “Well, I don’t call you an atheist then! I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, that that is what God is!”

First of all, Winfrey’s definition of God is fairly meaningless, applying to everything and nothing all at once.

More importantly, however, was the (unintentional) implication that those of us who find beauty in plants and animals and the universe itself can’t possibly be godless. That’s a common stereotype atheists face and it’s an incredibly pernicious one, made even worse because it was repeated by a celebrity of Winfrey’s stature.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: deathtothepixies

Ignore the brain washed part K and answer the rest of GS's statement

I think you're confusing a statement with a question. But since you want to play, how about if I ask one of you:

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

We can measure it

What units of measurement would those be?

K.

maybe I should have said reply, not answer.

Consciousness exists only in the brain, the brain runs on electricity so when the motor which powers that electricity dies so does the brain and consciousness with it.
Some residual electricity may cause consciousness to exist for a brief period of time but it certainly can't go wandering around willy nilly for ever.

Oh, watts

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ORIGINAL:http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-psychologists-report-new-248299.aspx
Monti and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study how the flow of information in the brains of 12 healthy volunteers changed as they lost consciousness under anesthesia with propofol. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 31 and were evenly divided between men and women.

The psychologists analyzed the "network properties" of the subjects' brains using a branch of mathematics known as graph theory, which is often used to study air-traffic patterns, information on the Internet and social groups, among other topics.

"It turns out that when we lose consciousness, the communication among areas of the brain becomes extremely inefficient, as if suddenly each area of the brain became very distant from every other, making it difficult for information to travel from one place to another," Monti said.

The finding shows that consciousness does not "live" in a particular place in our brain but rather "arises from the mode in which billions of neurons communicate with one another," he said.

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I can cause parts of my brain to enlarge, my hippocampus for example, or increase the gyrifcation of my neo-cortex