When death is we are not

So says Epicurus, explaining why death is nothing to us.

But no modern materialist accepts that.

The broken toaster - or computer - still exists, as does the dead man.

But his central point seems right, anyway, that life on the whole and consciousness in particular cease when we die.

The dead have no pain, do not suffer, have no regrets, feel no loss, etc.

In traditional societies in which souls are believed in it is said of the dead that they "are gone."

Those skeptical that there was anywhere to go tend to say they are no more, that they no longer exist.

But if we think of life and consciousness as properties - or perhaps better as activities or functions, or congeries of activities and/or functions - of our bodies and our nervous systems we will think that he who has died has stopped, and not that he has gone somewhere or ceased to exist.

Like a computer that has crashed or some other sort of machine that, for whatever reason and whether permanently or not, has stopped working.

Eventually, as medical science progresses, we may find ourselves able to resuscitate - the temptation to say "reanimate" will pass - the dead in more and more circumstances, after greater delays and worse damage.

We may see this start to happen long before medical science, or genetics, or what-you-will has progressed to the point of, say, as much as doubling the human life-span - assuming we are ever able to very much stretch out our duration.

At first, many in our culture will want to simply change the medical definition of death so as not to face the truth: it will have become possible for someone to die, be clearly and indisputably dead for some length of time, and then be raised from the dead.

The very same person in the very same body, so to speak, not still alive but undeniably alive again.

Admitting any such thing would fly in the face of specific beliefs that have been integral to Christianity since its beginning.

Religions that teach reincarnation will find such a development less of a shock to their traditions and dogmas.

They will just decide it's a case of reincarnation of the same soul in the same body.

But Christianity?

Another hammer blow to its popular credibility from advancing science.