Matt McCormick wrote, “Even something as common as the effects of a cup of espresso show that those elements of consciousness alleged to survive biological death depend directly upon the brain.” This seems like missing the forest for the trees. Stimulus effects are conditions that arouse the “decision-maker” within, but they do not decide for her or him! Otherwise, it would be impossible to resist ANYTHING. And life calls for a great deal of discerning resistance! Is it safe to say that DECISION is a spiritual function, not a biological function? What is Creator’s perspective?

We would word this somewhat differently—that decision is a consequence of conscious choice, not a biologic imperative independent from consciousness itself. When one is seeing a kind of reflex action, that does not mean the mind is a slave to the workings of the machine represented by the brain itself, only that some behaviors or thought impressions might be in that category of a more primitive and low-level stimulus, producing a predictable result that seems to have a life of its own, and thus is more like a lower-grade animalistic function rather than something elegant and lofty. The quote lacks substance, it makes a sweeping statement and conclusion without supporting evidence. In fact, the investigators, and their work being portrayed here, are not looking in any way directly at effects of consciousness on display during biological death, and in no way allow drawing any reliable conclusions on the overarching question presumed to be addressed by dissecting the role of parts of the brain subject to perturbation to see what will happen. This begs the question, can there even be death if there is not a brain available to witness and experience it?

To assume that all phenomena believed to take place beyond the body, which are associated with spiritual and paranormal phenomena, and the destiny of consciousness on death of the body, can only exist with a working brain to launch them into existence, reveals the Emperor here has no clothes, because it is circular logic. The fact one can start to hack apart the brain, and see functions being destroyed one by one, and knowing that eventually that will lead to death of the body, only demonstrates what loss of the body does to consciousness, and does not prove where consciousness comes from or might go if the body is not available to experience it and illustrate its presence, through thoughts and actions that seem to be chosen and experienced solely as a local phenomenon. This will not prove or disprove that consciousness and the body are separate, and whether or not consciousness can continue to exist in an afterlife beyond death of the body.