Is science about to prove/disprove the existence of Heaven/Hell?

[ddollevoet]

Inspired by Victor's thread and the inability to fall asleep last night.

The thread contained the following article:

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Boffins create zombie dogs
By Nick Buchan of NEWS.com.au
June 27, 2005

SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.


US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.

Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject's veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.


The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.


But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.


Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.


However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours,

But even this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.

During the procedure blood is replaced with saline solution at a few degrees above zero. The dogs' body temperature drops to only 7C, compared with the usual 37C, inducing a state of hypothermia before death.

Although the animals are clinically dead, their tissues and organs are perfectly preserved.

Damaged blood vessels and tissues can then be repaired via surgery. The dogs are brought back to life by returning the blood to their bodies,giving them 100 per cent oxygen and applying electric shocks to restart their hearts.

Tests show they are perfectly normal, with no brain damage.


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We are a few years away from having the ability to have a human die for an undetermined amount of time and then bringing him/her back to life.

These people with be unquestionably dead, not just in suspended animation. Their brain activity will cease, not just slow down. Sure, their tissues and organs may be preserved through induced hypothermia, but the body is just a chunk of meat which is completely separate one's "soul" after death.

Tests shows that dogs can be brought back to life with no brain damage. Assume the same for humans.

What would the impact be on modern religion if everyone who died and came back said that "there was no heaven or hell, just nothingness or nonexistence"?

[ceskylev]

They would say that:

1) God didn't allow entrance to/knowledge of heaven or hell because he knew that the person would be re-animated.

and/or

2) God erased the re-animated person's memories of heaven/hell because specific knowledge of the afterlife is counter to God's divine plan.

I don't believe in an afterlife, but you'll never disprove it. And if you somehow could, people would find ways to believe anyway.

[drudman]

Any propositions about the afterlife are literally meaningless.

[Claunchy]

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Any propositions about the afterlife are literally meaningless.

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Wow, you just swallowed AJ Ayer whole didn't ya?

[drudman]

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Any propositions about the afterlife are literally meaningless.

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Wow, you just swallowed AJ Ayer whole didn't ya?

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Of all the logical positivists, his prose is the most attractive. I tend to use his quotes.

[technologic]

reviving the dead seems to be -EV

[SomethingClever]

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reviving the dead seems to be -EV

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POTD.

[Spaded]

Some people say that when they were clinically dead in an emergency room, they saw what they believed to be heaven. The brain releases endorphines when you are about to die, so maybe that's why they beleive that they've been to heaven.

[bronzepiglet]

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Some people say that when they were clinically dead in an emergency room, they saw what they believed to be heaven. The brain releases endorphines when you are about to die, so maybe that's why they beleive that they've been to heaven.

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I once thought I died and saw heaven... but then I realized it was the endorphins released by a wicked bad beat.

[2+2 wannabe]

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reviving the dead seems to be -EV

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POTD.

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seriously - this is awesome