Does the afterlife require brain functionality?

Question

This is for those that believe in the afterlife, of course.

Seeing as after you die, you lose your brain and I would suppose it's functionality. Your memories, experiences, what you've learned, etc. would cease to exist without the mind being able to process cognitive information. So after death, do you expect you, or your soul (the form of you after death) to keep the memories? Or do you expect a clean slate of memory, almost as if you were reborn?

Another question along the lines of the brain and it's functionality (this is slightly more for the Christians), would a person with Alzheimer's, who used to be a devout Christian still receive access to heaven, even though they no longer really believe/actively participate in the religion? I ask because when some people with Alzheimer's lose their memory, their religious beliefs can be lost as well.

English question: Is functionality really a word or was it something I made up in my head?

I knew I should've paid attention to that movie in 12th grade psychology!!!!

I used the time to do homework for other classes, stupid other classes.

Thank YOU Rachel!

Answer 1

You were just asking for the puns about Christians and brain functionality with this one.

The approach I take towards questions like these, and the reason I don't usually answer them, is because there is really no way I would know. It's like talking about the end times. It bothers me to no end when Christians think they have it all figured out and planned, with their only source a really vague book full of allegories and metaphors, half of which our culture doesn't understand (Revelation). But I'll take a crack at it anyway, because you wanted a Christian perspective.

The question as to whether I will maintain my memories, and even my personality, in the afterlife or if I will be a clean slate has been something I've wondered about quite a bit. On one hand there's the rebirth/tabula rosa argument, thinking that we'll have new bodies, perfect bodies, and along with those would naturally come new brains. I don't like that, mainly because I like myself, my memories, and my personality quite a bit and I don't really want to lose all that in the afterlife...but just because I don't like it doesn't mean it won't be that way.

I tend to think that we will maintain some sense of identity in the afterlife, that's what makes us individuals. I don't know in what capacity this would be, and I really can't justify it using any Bible verse or logic, it's just what I think on the subject. As I said, it's one of those things that I believe we won't and can't know until it actually happens.

As for people with Alzheimer's, that is a great question and I've never really considered it. My grandfather had Parkinson’s with dementia, which really is similar to Alzheimer's, at least the dementia part. He was a completely different person before he died, and I'm sure that he did lose his memories/beliefs. But I also do believe that was an illness and not a representation of who he was as a man. I think people with such sicknesses/disabilities do maintain their religious beliefs on a spiritual level, even if they lose them on a physical/cognitive one, and that the end result will be the same.

Now am I saying that because I believe it's true, or because it makes me feel better? That has yet to be determined.

Thanks for the thoughts.

(EDIT: Another reason I usually avoid these types of questions is because I feel like I'm being baited and I really don't want to get into a fight. So thanks for not baiting...I think.)

Answer 2

Ah the physiology of the soul... Does the soul have eyes with which it can see? Does the soul have a heart whose beat quickens with joy? Does the soul have lips with which it may kiss the ones it loves? Does the soul have a brain with which it enjoys the pleasures of heaven or pains of hell?

Or is perhaps the soul merely a metaphor for the human body, which though briefly alive, has always existed and will continue to exist as an eternal part of the cosmos?

It's hard to say. But I'd say that you must have lost your brain while you were still alive in order to truly believe that you don't need it in the afterlife :P

Answer 3

This is a wonderfully great question. I believe there is no need for brain functions or any other bodily functions in heaven. I do believe, however, we shall have our memories. Heaven is a perfect place, there is no need for explanations or reason to anything. I believe if a person upon entering heaven, wishes to remember his memories, he will. Along with having his pets with him, seeing his family on earth. Anything his heart desires.

Any person that had an illness of any sort on earth would no longer have that illness in heaven. A person who had Alzheimer's did not choose to have the illness. Therefore they do not choose to no longer 'participate' in their religion. They can not help what has happened to them. Their beliefs were not lost. If God was the type to not allow that person to enter heaven because they had an illness, he is not a god worth spending time on. That simply is not true.

A person, any person who decides to worship God, and no others is welcome in heaven. This was a wonderful question. I hope you find the answer you are looking for.

Answer 4

This is a great question! Would you mind terribly if I answered from a heathen point of view rather than an xian or atheist one?

One of the distinctive features of Northern European heathenry is that my ancestors did NOT see the soul as separate---or separABLE---from the physical body. This is borne out by burial practices, Sagaic accounts of "life in the mound," and draugr (walking dead) tales. A community was made up of both the living and the dead; the remains of the praiseworthy dead were looked to, prayed to, and sacrificed to for the "Luck" they still contained, and the earliest conceptions of the afterlife were metaphorized as being "gathered into the folds of one's ancestry" and centered almost completely on the physical remains themselves, which were thought to continue to experience SOME form of life or awareness from within the mound.

We still believe this, in a way. People go to the graves of loved ones who have passed away to talk to them, leave gifts for them, tend their memorials and so forth. Even traditional xian theology, like Jewish theology, believes the dead "slumber" in their graves, albeit only until some future event or judgement.

Some might think this a dismal view of the afterlife, but I find it oddly comforting. Who knows how long the energy that holds our consciousness together *really* takes to fade, even if it is ONLY a biochemical brain function after all? Does some ghost of "us" remain as long, for example, as DNA does? Or do we live on *only* in the memories of our friends and descendants, in stories and in deeds, which my ancestors saw as the only sure form of immortality?

Bauschatz, in "The Well & The Tree," points out that the famous "boat burials" were all securely *moored* . . . but he theorized that my ancestors perhaps felt that, once the person in the grave had passed from all living memory, they might, if indeed some form of life or spirit DID persist, at long last slip their mooring and set sail for the Great Unknowable Beyond.

We'll never know until we go. :-)

Answer 5

Hmmmmm this is a very good question for the xians. Of course, as an atheist, I don't think anybody will be in a heaven or hell or maybe anywhere else either. But this is just like one of the many questions I asked that put me on the path to my atheism due to a lack of anyone's xian ability to answer. Good question. :)

Answer 6

In Heaven we will be spirits.Since the Brain is part of our physical body, i'd say the brain won't be present the way it is today. We will have new bodies, functioning in an entirely different way. IMO

The Bible calls it a Ressurected Body.

Answer 7

Are you sure life requires Brain function, I'd swear most of the people i work with are brain dead! Interesting question concerning Alzheimer's, I wonder if regular dementia patients would fall into the same loop hole?

Answer 8

you know I have wondered about the alzeimers thing because my grandmother has alzheimers and in her later years she became atheist but when you was younger she was catholic. so with alzheimers she can easily remember long ago past events, like when her children were little, but she can't remember me. She doesn't remember being an atheist but she remembers the catholic mass.

i think, and this is just my two cents. that everything that makes us who we are, our feelings our emotions, our memories, all that stuff that is stored in our brain (even though we say our heart) goes into our soul when we die. and we all go to meet god with all that stuff in our soul.

and then only god can judge us with all that stuff there. the good and the bad.....

at least thats my thoughts....

so as far as my grandmother goes...... i still don't know. only god does.

Answer 9

Apparently the aftrlife does not require a functioning brain. In fact, THINKING about the afterlife requires almost none either.

Answer 10

No. The current life doesn't require brain function so why should the afterlife?