this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2026
17 points (87.0% liked)

Atheism

5524 readers
171 users here now

Community Guide

Archive Today will help you look at paywalled content the way search engines see it.

Statement of Purpose

Acceptable

Unacceptable

Depending on severity, you might be warned before adverse action is taken.

Inadvisable

Application of warnings or bans will be subject to moderator discretion. Feel free to appeal. If changes to the guidelines are necessary, they will be adjusted.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a group that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of any other group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you you will be banned on sight.

Provable means able to provide proof to the moderation, and, if necessary, to the community.

 ~ /c/nostupidquestions

If you want your space listed in this sidebar and it is especially relevant to the atheist or skeptic communities, PM DancingPickle and we'll have a look!

Connect with Atheists

Help and Support Links

Streaming Media

This is mostly YouTube at the moment. Podcasts and similar media - especially on federated platforms - may also feature here.

Orgs, Blogs, Zines

Mainstream

Bibliography

Start here...

...proceed here.

Proselytize Religion

From Reddit

As a community with an interest in providing the best resources to its members, the following wiki links are provided as historical reference until we can establish our own.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
17
Near-death experiences and "coming back" from death, a rant (pawb.social)
submitted 1 week ago by chosensilence@pawb.social to c/atheism@lemmy.world
31 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

this is something that really bothers me. i'm wondering if others have the same annoyance:

whenever i hear about people who supposedly died and came back and reported seeing and experiencing an afterlife, all i can think about is how death is irreversible. quite literally nobody has ever died and then resurrected. reanimation hasn't been observed a single time throughout all of human history. what happened instead is they were actively dying and their brain was reacting to shutting down. "of course," you say reading this. but so many people accept the premise that this is remotely possible by not rejecting it immediately and that is the most frustrating part about all of this.

it confirms and demonstrates to me that humans are resistant to being fundamentally challenged even in the face of absolute certainty. most things in the universe are not absolutely known, but death is the rare, and perhaps only, exception. death is permanent in its natural occurrence. there is no 99.9% of the time, there aren't any other ways to be dead (literal death), every single living thing will die. period. ...unless humans figure something out.

so yeah it bugs me when people even entertain the idea that there's something worth discussing or listening to regarding claims of "coming back from death." like there are skeptics and people who are willing to listen to these assertions. ...why? there is, literally, no chance they are describing an existence after death. death can't be reversed. when a person appears clinically dead and then regains consciousness, guess what, they weren't dead regardless of medical technology saying they were lol. we just aren't able to detect the smallest indications of life.

/rant

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

biological death exists regardless of our medical and legal terms.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Does it, though? All I can find is descriptions like this one: "Biological death marks the definitive endpoint of an organism’s life, representing the irreversible cessation of all biological functions. This profound transition signifies a state where [...]"

Which leads me to believe it's a point in time. Not a "thing" that "exists". All I can see is how life exists. And we can't really talk just about the absence of life as per your initial post. Because we all transitioned from not being alive to living. That happens when we're born. I think what you were referring to is more an abstract process within a complex biological organism. And the specific effects on one particular organ. That of course exists. But even that is more of an abstract concept, made up of a plethora of real things happen.

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

i apologize but i'm not following. a biological organism will eventually cease to exist regardless of our medical and legal terms or our abstract and subjective beliefs. we did transition from not being alive to being alive, but never being alive to not being alive. you can come into existence in a different way you go out and the processes can be different as well. non-existence isn't death. death is the process of transitioning from existence to non-existence.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I think so as well. I guess I'm more reluctant to accept how people casually talk about "death" as if it was clear what that means. When reality it's many processes simultaneously in a complex organism. I don't think "near-death experience" is anything meaningful to begin with, since we're talking about a broad, abstract concept of dying. We'd need to talk specifics, like visual hallucinations on cell death in brain tissue. Or when it's deprived of oxygen. We can talk about if this vague process can be interrupted, but details really matter. And we can't confuse the process with the result. I think some people confuse these things.

[–] chosensilence@pawb.social 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

i completely understand. you make good points. a lot of people do confuse clinical and biological death and equate them or rather don't bother to separate. death isn't necessarily a precise moment but i would argue there has to be an exact point it becomes permanent. whatever that is and however it happens is the process referred to as death, and it is irreversible as we know it.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yes. That's still vague, though. I think we're talking about brain death in specific. And a point where two things have happened. Firstly a system collapse within the cerebrum (or whatever that part of the brain is called), and enough cell damage so it's irrecoverable. At least that's what I think it is. I guess what I was trying to say before: These things are what actually happens in reality. "Brain death" is more the abstract concept describing these real things having happened.

I'm not a philosopher but I guess we have people confuse more things. Ultimately most people discuss these things to find some kind if afterlife which attributes meaning to life. But isn't that confusing meaning with existence? Biological processes do exist. I don't think they necessarily have a "meaning" though. They just happen. And it's not that easy to conclude meaning from things happening.

And then I'm not sure if we even have ways to tell. Other than hindsight. Even just the brain is very complex and made up of different subsystems. As far as I know only parts of it can be damaged, leaving someone in an permanent coma without any upper brain activity, yet the basic functions still make their heart etc work. I think it's fairly arbitrary if we call them dead or not dead, if we attribute the moment of death before or after their basic life signs cease as well. And there's the added difficulty we have limited ways to look inside. And does one more dead synapse mean they've transitioned state to being dead? Do a few hundred? I don't think there's answers to that, so we're stuck with a conservative definition of a concept.