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What is death?

Article Excerpt
The ending of life for both Terri Schiavo and Karol Wojtyla, a.k.a., Pope John Paul II, highlighted the widespread misunderstanding of the nature of both life and death on the part of the legal and religious 'experts' as well as among members of the general public. To focus better on the realities of dying, we have decided to republish an article by Frank R. Zindler that appeared twenty years ago in these pages--American Atheist, April, 1985.

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It was probably the last college biology course I would ever teach. The first laboratory session began in the same way as had almost every other first one I had taught over the course of seventeen years.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Modern Biology, a course devoted to the scientific investigation of the nature, origin, and evolution of life. This is the laboratory session, and it lasts three hours. Instead of actual, hands-on experiments, today we shall indulge in some thought experiments. Since we shall spend the rest of the semester on life, today, by contrast, let's talk about death. What is death, anyhow?"

What follows is a distillation of the discussion that ensued, with arguments from previous years being mixed in as artistic license has been found necessary.

A Class Discussion

TOM: Death is when your heart stops beating.

ZINDLER: I see. Does that mean that poor Smedly here [petting a potted philodendron] is dead? He's never even had a heart, let alone had it stop beating!

TOM: Well I thought we were talking about people.

ZINDLER: Biology deals with all living things, plants and microbes as well as animals.

TOM: I don't know much about plants. I'd rather talk about people. I think a person is dead when his heart stops beating.

ZINDLER: What if a doctor starts his heart up again? Cardiopulmonary resuscitation happens all the time.

TOM: Well, he's been dead for a while. Then he's come back to life.

ZINDLER: What if his heart is removed surgically, and he's kept going on an artificial heart-lung machine of the sort my brother-in-law builds?

TOM: For practical purposes, he's a goner. I think he's dead.

ZINDLER: [Holding an imaginary microphone up to an imaginary patient on a coronary replacement unit] Excuse me, sir. Tom here tells me you're dead. Is that really so?

[Ghostly voice replying]

Would I be doing the TIMES crossword puzzle if I were dead? The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

ZINDLER: Tom, this dead man here seems to disagree with you.

[Laughter]

CAROL: I don't think the heart has anything to do with it. The heart is just a pump. A man is dead when his soul leaves his body.

ZINDLER: Does that happen instantaneously, or is it a gradual process? How do we know when the soul has left?

CAROL: Instantly. Either you're alive or you're dead. At the instant your soul leaves, you're dead.

JIM: What about a guy who's been in a coma for a month? Is his soul still there, and how do you know it?

CAROL: I think he still has his soul.

ZINDLER: That means we can't disconnect him from his life-support system? What will we tell his heirs who are ready to inherit his estate? How will we convince them that this guy still has a soul?

HAROLD: I just read in THE ENQUIRER that they once did an experiment where they took a guy who was dying and put him on a scale. The moment he died and his soul left him, he lost weight.

JIM: How did they know the change in weight was due to the loss of the soul? Maybe he just became more dehydrated. Maybe he just lost bladder control!

HAROLD: I don't know. They must have had some way of knowing when his soul left him.

ZINDLER: [Speaking to entire class] How would we know in advance how much weight change to expect if the soul is leaving? How could we know if we should expect a weight change of an ounce, or something less? If the lungs collapse a bit and some air is lost, might that affect the body weight as much as the loss of a soul? How heavy is a soul, anyway?

CAROL: I don't think you can weigh a soul. I don't think you can detect it. It's just there, that's all.

JIM: Then how will you ever know if someone is dead or not? I don't think there is such a thing as a soul. I think life and death have something to do with chemical changes.

CAROL: You'll know when it's your turn. Then you'll find out!

ZINDLER:...

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