The 'souls' of those who are cryonically frozen and are later resuscitated.

STBR

Hey everyone.

Personally, I have no belief in any deities, so I have chosen to be cryonically frozen when I die.

I'm just interested in hearing what Christians think happens to the souls of people who undergo this.

As far as I know, according to Christian belief, when a person dies the soul leaves the body and goes to heaven, or burns/suffers in hell. And whatever about purgatory, etc. it doesn't matter in this case.

Is it possible for the soul to come back to the body?

I highly doubt that this view is supported. Surely when you get into heaven you can't just leave and comeback some other time. Even more so with hell.

For those that do not know; cryonics is the process of preserving humans/animals at a low temperate until medical science has advanced sufficiently to resuscitate them in the future. So when I die and my 'soul' goes to heaven [most likely hell as I'm a non-believer], what happens when I'm resuscitated in anything from a few years to thousands of years? Does my soul return? Or am I a 'soulless' being?

Thanks a lot guys!


Here's the Wikipedia page for those wishing to read more about cryonics.

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

STBR

Plowman wrote: »

Wouldn't the lack of oxygen cause permanent brain damage anyway?

Given the possibility of near-death and out-of-body experiences, if God wills it I suppose it could be done. I still sounds like sci-fi, though.

Taken from Alcor's site: http://www.alcor.org/AboutCryonics/index.html

"a series of medications are administered to protect the brain from lack of oxygen. Rapid cooling also begins, which further protects the brain."

Sorry, but what is it that you are referring to god "willing"?

Do you mean if he wills the return of the soul? What happens if he doesn't will it? Am I soulless?

PDN

I admire your faith, but I don't share it. I suspect, if you are thawed out in the future, that you will be a mindless vegetable.

Anyway, you can hardly expect the Christians here to speculate on something that is not revealed to us in Scripture and which lies in the realms of science fiction.

rohatch

PDN wrote: »

I admire your faith, but I don't share it. I suspect, if you are thawed out in the future, that you will be a mindless vegetable.

Currently when you are defrosted your cells dissolve into gloop

chozometroid

First of all, you don't go to heaven or hell the moment you die. Secondly, your current body won't live through the process of going to heaven or being consumed by fire.
If you are asking if your spirit could return to your thawed body before
Christ returns, I think the answer is no, because the thawed body will be dead.

Zombrex

SirDarren wrote: »

As far as I know, according to Christian belief, when a person dies the soul leaves the body and goes to heaven, or burns/suffers in hell. And whatever about purgatory, etc. it doesn't matter in this case.

Is it possible for the soul to come back to the body?

People have died before and been brought back to life. The only difference between this and freezing yourself would be time (assuming that the technology exists to repair any damage to your body from the freezing process and revive you)

The people who died and were brought back to life would I imagine still have spirits, so if you believe in this sort of stuff I would imagine you aren't going to trick God into thinking you are dead for good and calling your spirit.

Fanny Cradock

Oddly enough I was talking to a friend about this only last night. Ice crystals are only the start of the problem. The whole "conquering death post death" part seems like one of the larger elephants in the room.

I'll believe it when it happens.

Anyway, Alcor have a section on cryonics and religion.

Incidentally, according to one former employee of Alcor, Ted William's frozen head, a can of tuna and a carelessly wielded monkey wrench don't mix.

PDN

I had a brain freeze while drinking a milkshake in MacDonalds once - and my spirit seemed to survive the experience quite well.

chozometroid

Here is a quote from the website:

Another kind of medical rescue now possible is a “suspended animation” brain surgery for aneurysms . A medical team lowers the patient’s body temperature to about 50 degrees F, shunts the blood out of the patient’s brain, and performs bloodless surgery on the brain for about 50-60 minutes. There are no brain waves during this time. The team then warms the individual back up and restarts the cerebral blood flow. The patient survives with his memory and personality (and presumably his "soul") intact.

One cryonics laboratory, building on what Alcor did several years ago, can now take a dog, begin cooling it, replace all the blood in its body with an organ preservation solution, cool it to about 3-4 degrees above freezing, and hold it at that temperature for nearly six hours. At that time the dog can be warmed and his blood reintroduced, and he survives. He still answers to his name and he knows the same commands as before. We assume that surgeons will apply similar techniques to many human operations in the next decade.

What this proves as much as anything is that we don't know much about life and death. It seems apparent that physicians of the late 21st Century will define the point of death much differently than most people do today. A doctor from the future traveling back to today would no doubt be saddened by the hundreds of thousands of patients we call dead when he could see they were repairable with future knowledge. If this is true, then we should consider them "alive" now, and arrange to get them to that doctor in the future.

Cryonics should be viewed as an extension of clinical medicine, not a new kind of dead-body storage. The entire purpose of this technology is to save lives. From that point of view, religious beliefs are irrelevant as far as cryonics is concerned. Cryonics success would not prove or disprove Christianity, anymore than heart transplants or other life-saving treatments do.

I never heard of those two procedures (the aneurysm patient and the dog) before.

Daftendirekt

PDN wrote: »

I had a brain freeze while drinking a milkshake in MacDonalds once - and my spirit seemed to survive the experience quite well.

Must've been a good milkshake :pac:.


By the way, wouldn't you have to be frozen before you die to have any chance of being revived in the future?

Joe1919

SirDarren wrote: »

Hey everyone.

Personally, I have no belief in any deities, so I have chosen to be cryonically frozen when I die.

What sort of money does is cost?
Can you trust the company doing it?
Why do you fear death? It cant be any worst than a deep sleep.

STBR

PDN wrote: »

you can hardly expect the Christians here to speculate on something that is not revealed to us in Scripture and which lies in the realms of science fiction.

Ah yes, "science fiction".
Just like cell phones, computers, and stem cells were "science fiction" not very long ago at all.

chozometroid wrote: »

if your spirit could return to your thawed body before
Christ returns, I think the answer is no, because the thawed body will be dead.

Okay. So will it be a soulless body walking around?

Wicknight wrote: »

I would imagine you aren't going to trick God into thinking you are dead for good and calling your spirit.

Thanks for the well-structured answer which is actually relevant to Christians' religion.

Daftendirekt wrote: »

By the way, wouldn't you have to be frozen before you die to have any chance of being revived in the future?

No, but as soon after as possible is obviously the best scenario.

Joe1919 wrote: »

What sort of money does is cost?
Can you trust the company doing it?
Why do you fear death? It cant be any worst than a deep sleep.

Costs anywhere from €20,000 via the Cryonics Institute, to €100,000 or so with Alcor or the American Cryonics Society’s most expensive plan.

I will trust scientists/skilled professionals any day over some fiction-writing control freaks from thousands of years ago who are telling me I'm going somewhere else.

I have absolutely 100% no fear of death or the like.
I fully accept it. In fact, I'm very sure that those who believe in a heaven after death have a much greater fear of death.
I understand that when anyone who I know dies, I will never see them again [unless they're cryonically frozen]. And I can fully live with that.
But imagine - even for yourself - how hard it must be for believers-in-heaven to come to that realization. Especially the longer they've believed it, the harder it will be to accept.
It's like me telling you right now, everyone you ever knew who died/will die - you'll never see them again.
Of course you're not going to be able to accept that. You'll dismiss it at all causes.
I'd love more than anything to be able to re-meet all the people I know who have died, but I know it's not going to happen.

Fanny Cradock

SirDarren wrote: »

Ah yes, "science fiction".
Just like cell phones, computers, and stem cells were "science fiction" not very long ago at all.

AFAIK, no one here has ever claimed that such things are impossible. No more strawman arguments, please.

SirDarren wrote: »

Costs anywhere from €20,000 via the Cryonics Institute, to €100,000 or so with Alcor or the American Cryonics Society’s most expensive plan.

I will trust scientists/skilled professionals any day over some fiction-writing control freaks from thousands of years ago who are telling me I'm going somewhere else.

I have absolutely 100% no fear of death or the like.
I fully accept it. In fact, I'm very sure that those who believe in a heaven after death have a much greater fear of death.
I understand that when anyone who I know dies, I will never see them again [unless they're cryonically frozen]. And I can fully live with that.
But imagine - even for yourself - how hard it must be for believers-in-heaven to come to that realization. Especially the longer they've believed it, the harder it will be to accept.
It's like me telling you right now, everyone you ever knew who died/will die - you'll never see them again.
Of course you're not going to be able to accept that. You'll dismiss it at all causes.
I'd love more than anything to be able to re-meet all the people I know who have died, but I know it's not going to happen.

It does appear that you don't easily accept death - not if you are telling us that you are willing to invest a large lump sum and yearly fees into a company that has had zero success rate with its clients. In light of this, I think it rather cheeky of you to make metaphysical proclamations about death while using this to undermine belief in afterlife. If you actually have no fear of death then I suggest you channel your riches into improving the lives of those who come after you.

Given that you have just had one thread locked, if you make any further derogatory remarks about the bible, it's authors (see the highlighted section from your text) or Christians you will be banned. Read the charter and stick by it.

STBR

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

AFAIK, no one here has ever claimed that such things are impossible.

I never referred to here.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

It does appear that you don't easily accept death [...] I suggest you channel your riches into improving the lives of those who come after you.

No, because it's nothing to do with the fact of fearing death. It's to do with the fact of loving life, and any chance I have to continue living as long as possible, I will most certainly take it.

mdebets

SirDarren wrote: »

Daftendirekt wrote:

By the way, wouldn't you have to be frozen before you die to have any chance of being revived in the future?

No, but as soon after as possible is obviously the best scenario.

No, if you want to be revived in the future, you need to be frozen before you die.
However for us today it might look as if the freezing happens after death, because we yet don't know when a person really dies.
To make this clearer, take a look at CPR.
100 years ago, someone who had a cardiac arrest was death. He could no longer be revived. Nowadays, with CPR this is possible. But was someone who received CPR dead? No, he was jus very near death, but not really death (as in his soul hadn't left the body yet). However, if you start CPR a day after the cardiac arrest, the person will not be revived, no matter how long CPR is performed.
It will be similar with cryonically frozen. If people will be revived in the future, they were not really dead when they were frozen, similar to someone receiving CPR, and being revived. If the freezing starts to late, the person was already dead and no medical procedure will bing him back.
So there really is no problem with soulless bodies or the soul needing to come baack, because the soul hadn't really left the body when the person was frozen (and has ben revived) or the soul already left, but then the body can't be revived.

wolfsbane

mdebets wrote: »

No, if you want to be revived in the future, you need to be frozen before you die.
However for us today it might look as if the freezing happens after death, because we yet don't know when a person really dies.
To make this clearer, take a look at CPR.
100 years ago, someone who had a cardiac arrest was death. He could no longer be revived. Nowadays, with CPR this is possible. But was someone who received CPR dead? No, he was jus very near death, but not really death (as in his soul hadn't left the body yet). However, if you start CPR a day after the cardiac arrest, the person will not be revived, no matter how long CPR is performed.
It will be similar with cryonically frozen. If people will be revived in the future, they were not really dead when they were frozen, similar to someone receiving CPR, and being revived. If the freezing starts to late, the person was already dead and no medical procedure will bing him back.
So there really is no problem with soulless bodies or the soul needing to come baack, because the soul hadn't really left the body when the person was frozen (and has ben revived) or the soul already left, but then the body can't be revived.

I think mdebets is correct. It is not the tests we apply that make a person dead or not. They are or they aren't.

We do our best and are usually right, but many folks have awoken on the mortuary table - or worse!

One famous case occurred here in Lurgan over a century ago. The coffin was buried but uncovered that night (robbers?) and the woman got out and returned home. She lived on for years and her later tombstone recorded the fact of her double burial.

Nowadays embalming removes the prospect of waking up in the coffin - but not of lying paralysed but aware on the embalmer's slab. :eek:

If this sounds too much like a Christmas ghost story, let's get back to the subject. We already have humans frozen and revived years later - embryos. They do not go to gloop. And if they were ensouled at conception or anytime before being frozen, we have proof that deep free does not necessarily kill the body or spirit.

Genghiz Cohen

This is a nice and interesting topic.

It raises the question; if someone dies and their soul does indeed leave them, but then somehow the body is revived, how would that person behave?

Is the soul linked to the persons mind and personality?

STBR

wolfsbane wrote: »

I think mdebets is correct. It is not the tests we apply that make a person dead or not. They are or they aren't.

We do our best and are usually right, but many folks have awoken on the mortuary table - or worse!

One famous case occurred here in Lurgan over a century ago. The coffin was buried but uncovered that night (robbers?) and the woman got out and returned home. She lived on for years and her later tombstone recorded the fact of her double burial.

Nowadays embalming removes the prospect of waking up in the coffin - but not of lying paralysed but aware on the embalmer's slab. :eek:

If this sounds too much like a Christmas ghost story, let's get back to the subject. We already have humans frozen and revived years later - embryos. They do not go to gloop. And if they were ensouled at conception or anytime before being frozen, we have proof that deep free does not necessarily kill the body or spirit.

Thanks for the well structured and mature reply.

This reminds me of a story I was told once, about when there was a large-scale fever in a town and hundreds of people died. But since so many people were dying at such a fast rate, they were being pronounced dead very offhandedly, and buried the same way. Then, for one reason or another, some of the coffins needed to be re-opened a few months/years later and they found the inside of the lids were covered in scratches from the people trying to claw their way out as they weren't actually dead in the first place.

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

This is a nice and interesting topic.

It raises the question; if someone dies and their soul does indeed leave them, but then somehow the body is revived, how would that person behave?

Is the soul linked to the persons mind and personality?

That's what I've been asking too.

wolfsbane

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

This is a nice and interesting topic.

It raises the question; if someone dies and their soul does indeed leave them, but then somehow the body is revived, how would that person behave?

Is the soul linked to the persons mind and personality?

Yes, no spirit, no life. So no revived body without its soul/spirit.

STBR

wolfsbane wrote: »

I think mdebets is correct. It is not the tests we apply that make a person dead or not. They are or they aren't.

We do our best and are usually right, but many folks have awoken on the mortuary table - or worse!

One famous case occurred here in Lurgan over a century ago. The coffin was buried but uncovered that night (robbers?) and the woman got out and returned home. She lived on for years and her later tombstone recorded the fact of her double burial.

Nowadays embalming removes the prospect of waking up in the coffin - but not of lying paralysed but aware on the embalmer's slab. :eek:

If this sounds too much like a Christmas ghost story, let's get back to the subject. We already have humans frozen and revived years later - embryos. They do not go to gloop. And if they were ensouled at conception or anytime before being frozen, we have proof that deep free does not necessarily kill the body or spirit.

Thanks for the well structured and mature reply.

This reminds me of a story I was told once, about when there was a large-scale fever in a town and hundreds of people died. But since so many people were dying at such a fast rate, they were being pronounced dead very offhandedly, and buried the same way.

Then, for one reason or another, some of the coffins needed to be re-opened a few months/years later and they found the inside of the lids were covered in scratches from the people trying to claw their way out as they weren't actually dead in the first place.

STBR

wolfsbane wrote: »

Yes, no spirit, no life. So no revived body without its soul/spirit.

So are you of the belief that if you are going to be revived, then your god sees that in the future and doesn't let your soul into heaven/hell?

wolfsbane

SirDarren wrote: »

So are you of the belief that if you are going to be revived, then your god sees that in the future and doesn't let your soul into heaven/hell?

Your soul stays with your body until it dies. As above, deep-freeze is not necessarily death. Those who die in deep freeze go to the appropriate destination.

STBR

mdebets wrote: »

No, if you want to be revived in the future, you need to be frozen before you die.

Alcor:

"Exactly when such restoration is no longer feasible is a matter of some debate and could be many hours [after death]. "

wolfsbane wrote: »

Your soul stays with your body until it dies. As above, deep-freeze is not necessarily death. Those who die in deep freeze go to the appropriate destination.

I'm asking about those who die and are THEN frozen.