Is there an afterlife for a person that has been frozen?

Post by **otseng** » Thu May 20, 2004 9:34 am

Suppose science is able to freeze (cryopreserve) a human and later in time unfreeze that person. Since a frozen person is not technically dead (since he can be brought back to life), what happens to that person's soul while he is frozen? Will that person have an afterlife if he is permanently left in a frozen condition?

agnostic_pilgrim · Post by **agnostic_pilgrim** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 1:59 am

otseng wrote:Suppose science is able to freeze (cryopreserve) a human and later in time unfreeze that person. Since a frozen person is not technically dead (since he can be brought back to life), what happens to that person's soul while he is frozen? Will that person have an afterlife if he is permanently left in a frozen condition?

This presumes that man actually has a soul. But assuming there is one, that person's soul should be still intact in/with his body since he is not yet dead.

using reason · Post by **using reason** » Sat Jul 10, 2004 4:27 pm

The person is dead. The procedure is hardly a confirmed process. It is an attempt to come back later. The question would really be, assuming there a soul, if they can bring you back to life, does the soul leave heaven / hell and come back to the body. If it does, then the afterlife would take on a whole new context.

logic · Post by **logic** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 3:39 pm

using reason wrote:The person is dead. The procedure is hardly a confirmed process. It is an attempt to come back later. The question would really be, assuming there a soul, if they can bring you back to life, does the soul leave heaven / hell and come back to the body. If it does, then the afterlife would take on a whole new context.

It seems funny that we're debating a topic such as cryopreservation but... using a little reason we could determine that within cryopreservation the person is kept alive in a sort of hybernation state. Because the person is still alive, and assuming he/she does have a soul, the soul would stay intact with the person (just like agnostic_pilgrim said). "Bringing the person back" isn't implying that they're bring brought back from the dead but rather "woken up" from an insanely deep sleep in which the death or deterioration of their cells has been slowed or stopped leaving them in a very young physical and mental state for the amount of time they've been alive.

Corvus · Post by **Corvus** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 10:29 pm

logic wrote:
using reason wrote:The person is dead. The procedure is hardly a confirmed process. It is an attempt to come back later. The question would really be, assuming there a soul, if they can bring you back to life, does the soul leave heaven / hell and come back to the body. If it does, then the afterlife would take on a whole new context.
It seems funny that we're debating a topic such as cryopreservation but... using a little reason we could determine that within cryopreservation the person is kept alive in a sort of hybernation state.

No, the person is physically and mentally dead. There is no rest or hybernation. It is the equivalent of being frozen to an icicle while traversing the alps, and to say that, since their body is not decomposing, even though their respiration, circulation have stopped and they haven't had the time to give a last suspiration, they are not dead, seems to me far too optimistic.

The process cannot currently be performed on living people, so the only people who get snap frozen are already dead. The whole point is that some time in the future, the technology to revive the dead person will become available. Should a living being be legally able to be snap frozen, then they are just as dead as a corpse the Egyptians would have prepared for an afterlife.

Say someone fell into a vat of liquid nitrogen. Since their body is intact yet frozen, would their soul still be in there? At what moment, due to what conditions and under what circumstances, does the soul leave the body if it isn't when the brain ceases to function, the heart stops beating and the lungs stop puffing?

Post by **otseng** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:13 am

using reason wrote:The person is dead. The procedure is hardly a confirmed process. It is an attempt to come back later. The question would really be, assuming there a soul, if they can bring you back to life, does the soul leave heaven / hell and come back to the body. If it does, then the afterlife would take on a whole new context.

The question is more philosophical in nature and more on the level of philosophers discussing metaphysics around a table in a bar.

Anyways, yes, I should've stated on the outset that this also assumes that a person has an eternal soul. And also that the soul leaves a person when a person dies.

So, suppose a person gets thrown in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Our current technology cannot revive such a person, so he is dead. So, his soul then experiences a afterlife. But, what if we had the technology to revive the person? Then the soul would have to "come back" to the body. What happened to the soul while the body was frozen?

fonso · Post by **fonso** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:09 am

otseng wrote:
using reason wrote:The person is dead. The procedure is hardly a confirmed process. It is an attempt to come back later. The question would really be, assuming there a soul, if they can bring you back to life, does the soul leave heaven / hell and come back to the body. If it does, then the afterlife would take on a whole new context.
The question is more philosophical in nature and more on the level of philosophers discussing metaphysics around a table in a bar.

Anyways, yes, I should've stated on the outset that this also assumes that a person has an eternal soul. And also that the soul leaves a person when a person dies.

So, suppose a person gets thrown in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Our current technology cannot revive such a person, so he is dead. So, his soul then experiences a afterlife. But, what if we had the technology to revive the person? Then the soul would have to "come back" to the body. What happened to the soul while the body was frozen?

When this day comes.... the Church is going to have a lot of explaining to do

Kidding aside, you've actually left me dumbfounded. Perhaps this is the day scientism declares victory over religion?

Post by **otseng** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:21 am

fonso wrote: Kidding aside, you've actually left me dumbfounded. Perhaps this is the day scientism declares victory over religion?

Really, how so?

Here's another scenario. Suppose that reincarnation is true. After someone dies, the soul gets transfered to another body. If it does get reincarnated into another body and then the original body was unfrozen, how does the soul decide which body to go to? Or if the soul does not get reincarnated when the body is frozen, then what happens to the soul?

Saskia · Post by **Saskia** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:36 am

Interesting questions. Perhaps the soul goes to some form of store house like a fort nox

There is something about that in Islam though, isn't there - a place where souls are "stored" (for want of a better word) before they come to earth as people. So maybe souls of semi-dead/frozen people go back there for a while.
Then again, maybe it's just a case of really long near death experiences. People have reported getting hear a sort of fence or boundary and then being told to go back. So perhaps they would linger at the borders. Maybe that's what limbo is.
The reincarnation one is really a question of which body has priority over, or "dibs on" the soul. You could argue that the old body had it first, so they should get the soul. Or you could say that the old body has had its time and it's the new body's turn now. I would say that it's up to God but if you don't believe in a conscious/involved god that's not an option I guess.

fonso · Post by **fonso** » Wed Jul 21, 2004 12:18 pm

Good question. In the absence of an explanation, this would, in my book, make me a disbeliever of reincarnation, pre-existence, and totally shed whatever traces of Christianity I have left.

The day we start pulling souls from Heaven back into their bodies is the day we let science show us how our creator has such a sick sense of humor.

Then again, there's the possibility that if this happened to me, it might not be me (my soul) who comes back.

Going back to the topic, as I said -- you've left me dumbfounded. My answer at the moment is: this will never be possible

Debating Christianity and Religion