Re: ca[r]rol and lou on religion

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Comrades,
    Gyan writes some queries to Carrol which I wanted to reply to in my own
way,

Gyan, (in response to Carrol's quote)
>The dead do not know they are dead, and hence
>death is a tragedy only for the living.

How do you know this? Is this fact or is this
assertion without concrete investigation?

Doyle
Lack of consciousness is lack of brain activity.  There are various ways in
which this is defined in terms of the effects of comas in people which some
doctor will be trying to diagnose brain death.  This is an important area in
the debate about how the brain actually works.  Not in the sense you write
about above that someone's mind is immortal, but in the sense of where do we
truly differ from organisms like insects who have elementary nervous systems
but no consciousness.  This area in natural history is a good place to begin
to dispel the transcendental meaning of what consciousness is.  The
literature about what is consciousness is pretty interesting from a
scientific point of view.  See Oliver Sacks, or V.S. Ramachandran.

The exciting thing about materialism now is how close we are coming to
understanding what people do when the think religiously in their brains, and
therefore to give insight into what is being done in a materialist manner.
I think the biggest problem for Marxist is to see how this is a work process
of some value.
Doyle