[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by kingbuxton

Good answer. We are all made of stardust.

Indeed that could be said, however that does not make us immortal nor give us any kind of immortal life so I would question the quality of the answer. The Bible would have us believe that those who believe in God will have eternal life, science suggests that consciousness exists due to the biochemical and bioelectrical processes within the brain, those which cease when our bodies die.

Excuse the morbidity: no real electrical activity within the brain, neurons and other cells losing their form and dying, neural pathways that form memories depolarising breaking down, the cessation of processing. Of course the matter and energy doesn't just disappear, that's impossible, but that's as far as the science goes. The electrical charge and residual heat dissipate into the surroundings, cells break down into biproducts and residual proteins, etc, etc, etc.

To say that science and religion are in any way compatible in this regard is a strong misrepresentation of the science. Science suggests very strongly the opposite:

Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
Metabolism: Consumption of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of synthesis than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter. The particular species begins to multiply and expand as the evolution continues to flourish.
Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of higher animals. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and chemotaxis.
Reproduction: The ability to produce new organisms. Reproduction can be the division of one cell to form two new cells. Usually the term is applied to the production of a new individual (either asexually, from a single parent organism, or sexually, from at least two differing parent organisms), although strictly speaking it also describes the production of new cells in the process of growth.

I'm unsure how a corpse fulfills all of these though would welcome correction, either way to suggest that science in some way supports the concept of eternal life seems bizarre. We are certainly eternal in one form or another but to describe us as being alive seems a bit of a stretch!

Originally Posted by Russ B

It just made more sense to me - as I understood it science has proven we don't actually 'die', forms of energy just move on to a different form.

Then those forms of energy are no longer configured as required to be sustaining life. Science asserts that we are alive due the configurations of the cells within our bodies and the biochemical and bioelectrical processes that are the results of the configurations and operations of our cells.

If someone is cremated they have certainly moved on to a different form though you could hardly consider the ashes to be alive. To say otherwise is to redefine death. Though then you end up redefining life and the universe and everything in it become alive as that's the only way that it could be said science describes us an undying.

I'll still stick with that the root of most of these religions is the 'human condition' - I like this paragraph:

Humans, to an apparently superlative degree amongst all living things, are aware of the passage of time, can remember the past and imagine the future, and are intimately aware of their own mortality. Only human beings are known to ask themselves questions relating to the purpose of life beyond the base need for survival, or the nature of existence beyond that which is empirically apparent: What is the meaning of existence? Why was I born? Why am I here? Where will I go when I die? The human struggle to find answers to these questions — and the very fact that we can conceive them and ask them — is what defines the human condition in this sense of the term.