Dying

I had the most trivial of exchanges with a fellow blogger in which he described what would happen to me at the rapture ... including something about my "bug-eaten corpse". Since death doesn't seem that frightening, and the rapture is howlingly preposterous idea, I thought I'd summarize what a quick scan through the interwebs can tell me about my impending corporeal demise.

When I die ...

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I'll stop breathing ... my heart will stop ... brain activity will stop ... blood will recede from my skin and will settle in the lower portions of my body ... my corpse's temperature drops ... my limbs stiffen ... eventually I decompose.

Immediately after the heart stops, nutrients are no longer delivered to the cells, the pH level changes, and the cells own digestive enzymes begin to consume the cells themselves. Blisters may appear on the skin.

At the same time, oxygen that remains is consumed by aerobic organisms - paving the way for anaerobic organisms to flourish, and basically make a mess of things. The body starts to putrefy - and external organisms (flies and other carrion insects) arrive to join in the fun.

Once putrefaction has released enough gas into the corpse, it begins to bloat. forcing fluids out through the natural orifices, plus any blisters that may have emerged during earlier decomposition. If things get out of hand, the skin may rupture.

It's all downhill from here ... decay accelerates ... the corpse loses mass ... maggots are extremely active ... fluids are consumed or evaporate ... eventually there's not enough left for the cadaver to sustain pests and anaerobic organisms, so it is now essentially just dry skin, ligaments and bones.

How I'll Feel About It

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A personal note - once I stop breathing, my heart stops, the chemical and electrical processes in my brain stop, and my cells have been deprived of oxygen long enough to prevent successful resuscitation and resumption of normal life, I will have ceased to exist. The ethereal entity I refer to as "me" or "my spirit" or "my soul" will have vanished from this existence, never to interact with it again. All that will remain of me will be the now-meaningless possessions I had, the loved ones I left behind, the memories they have of me, and the few kindnesses and good works that I was able to share with my fellow travelers on my way to non-existence.

I hope I made life more liveable for my loved ones and my fellow travelers while we were in this world together.

Postscript

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As for resurrection ... it appears that as recently as the late 1800's, hundreds-to-thousands of people were buried alive by accident every year. What are the chances that bronze age goat herders also encountered this? Do you think that this might be the source of resurrection stories?

From Wikipedia:

Writing in 1895, the physician J.C. Ouseley claimed that as many as 2,700 people were buried prematurely each year in England and Wales, although others estimated the figure to be closer to 800.

Run!!!

After decades of contemplation, reflection, and agonizing reappraisal, I've arrived at the true reason why i'm an atheist ... Because they can be PRETTY DAMNED FUNNY:

[sic]:

The bible records the taunts and comments of the Roman soldiers, at the time of Jesus’ death, and not a single one said, "Holly shit, corpses are coming out of the fucking ground! Run!!!"

See Jesus’ Resurrection, According to the New Testament at Evil Theists for the whole story ... most of which is serious.

Tolerable conceptions of God?

Going back a few weeks, I wandered down the road of how one might argue for and characterize god ... not quite examining arguments for its existence, as I may have intended, but lightly skimming over claimed characteristics for the big gal.

My summary was that we're left with a god of the gaps.

Today I want to revisit other conceptions that I can be tolerant of.

The first conception is the deist one ... god created the universe, then was never heard from again. This argument suffers from the idea of god as the "efficient cause" of the universe - and since we're so early into real research into high energy physics, we can't say whether the big bang was really the start of the universe, or just a point in transition from an earlier form.

Second is the panentheist view - that god exists and we are within him. This is pretty tolerable, in that god is not separable from the universe, thus not requiring special pleading to argue.

Third is that we're in a computer simulation ... a fun concept, but rather weak, because it apparently requires a creator, programmer and operator of the computer.

Fourth is that I am god ... and you guys are my imagination.

I like it!

The Skepticali Cosmological Argument

The probability of existence ranges between 0 and 1 - essentially it is between impossible and inevitable.

The ways that non-existence can occur is one. The ways that existence can occur are infinite.

Therefore, existence is infinitely more probable than non-existence.

We exist in one of an infinite number of existences. The observations and reasoning about those observations of an apparent beginning and end of "the universe" is merely a limitation in our ability to observe and reason about such things. It may be that what we can observe ("our universe") does have a beginning and end, but that only speaks to whatever this universe is. If existence is absolutely guaranteed to occur some "time" and some "where" in some "form", then the individual instantiations of existence may be transient when considered against the background of an infinite number of instantiations, but it does not imply that there is a creative impulse behind any single occurrence of existence, only that it was inevitable that it happen.

Upon a framework of infinite instantiations of existence, the phenomena we call life is inevitable even if merely by chance due to the infinite number of ways that existence can occur. That we are self-aware and wonder about life's improbability is a coincidence of the configuration of our universe and our emergence in it to observe and reason about it.

Concepts of god and the supernatural are irrelevant in this context - only that which we can observe and reason about, and real things that which we cannot yet observe and reason about, are meaningful.

Invocation

This is too good to be true ... via Pharyngula:

Book Review - The Moral Landscape

I'd mentioned that I was reading "The Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris some time ago. I finished it last weekend - it was a book to be savored, much like reading the "Return of the King" in high school, I was sad to see it end.

My experience of the book revolves around having heard Harris speak in numerous videos ("Does Good come from God?" and this vid at AAI 2007 - for starters) - his calm cadence, the thoughtful pauses, the sly and very understated humor that he throws in - sometimes undetected by the audience. As I was reading this book, I was hearing it in his voice - it has the same characteristics.

I've forgotten what some of the formal reviews of the book said, which is good, but I believe one criticism was that it was too philosophical. Whether or not anyone in fact criticized it for being too philosophical, I found that aspect very engaging. For example, Harris talks about our ability to imagine maximizing human well-being.

...maximizing human well-being...

I let that sink in, because it's has overtones of both idealism and practicality.

What does it mean to maximize human well-being? Although he doesn't prominently address the political and policy implications of such a project, you can imagine this being a fulcrum around which debate could lever back and forth for centuries ... but it's worth considering now, and Harris makes the case that we can know what it is.

Morality, Harris states, has right and wrong answers that are objectively true, and can be discerned. This differs from a general feeling (in the media, at least) that morality is either relative to people and groups, or absolute in terms of religious texts. He goes on to distinguish "answers in principle" and "answers in practice" - saying that the "answers in practice" may not be possible. I presume this to mean that the political, logistical, efficacy and economics of such a project would be implausible in the present world.

Clearly this is a book worth reading - both for its explorations of human misery and well-being, good and evil, and the direction needed to begin understanding and acting on what he claims are universal questions of morality.

Rapture post-mortem

Now that the "rapture" has come and gone with the expected result, and we non-believers have hooted in derision, blog-posted, tweeted, facebook-posted, rapture-partied, or just plain enjoyed another day in this wonderful world of ours, what's next?

It's always condescending to say "I feel sorry for ______". The folks that believed the rapture was coming yesterday probably feel bad today. They should. We should all feel bad when we believe and act on things that have no basis in reality. When we make bad decisions about our lives, we feel bad, we learn, we modify our behavior, and we hope to do better next time. We repeat this process throughout our lives.

Why do people believe in prophecy, and supernatural beings and forces, and the events that prophecies claim will occur? I think the first few chapters of "The God Delusion" says it better than I can. But it's worth repeating - we perceive things that are not there because it confers evolutionary advantages. If we jump and run because we perceive a poisonous snake out of the corner of our eye, we insure that ***if a snake is indeed within eyesight*** we will be difficult to attack. Not responding in this way means that if we fail to perceive a threat, that threat may have an advantage. Over time, the threat wins. Being fearful and acting on that fear insures our survival. We are fearful creatures.

Things get complicated because humans are self-aware, have emotions, can remember the past, anticipate the future, and can imagine how things could be under different conditions. We have hopes and dreams. Sometimes, our fears and feelings of helplessness combined with our hopes of transcending these unfortunate feelings (and the conditions that generate them) cause us to want to believe in transcendence that defies physical cause and effect.

Yesterday, thousands, maybe millions of people had their hopes of transcendence from present circumstances dashed on the rocks of reality. There is no such thing as prophecy. There is no heaven. There is no god. There is no judgement by a supernatural agent. There is no rapture and no tribulation and no damnation that springs from anything beyond what exists in the universe.

Some very, very nasty things exist in this universe - many of them man-made right here on earth. When things are incomprehensible and bad, it's no excuse to look for magic to deliver you. It's time for you to deliver you.

Some very, very, very beautiful things exist in this universe. They are there now. They were there yesterday. They will be there tomorrow. There is no reason not to participate in this life, and make your life better, and make your family's and neighbor's and fellow human's lives better ... and enjoy the beauty and wonder along the way.