Q: Do you believe in God?

A: No.

Q: So you don’t believe in life after death then?

A: Well I believe that life will carry on after I die. If I died now, you would still be alive, as would everyone else in this room. Unless of course the cause of my death was a nuclear detonation.

Q: How about your own life? You don’t believe it would carry on in some form after your own death?

A: How could it? The word “death” means the cessation of life. How could my life end, and yet carry on, at the same time? The very concept is illogical.

Q: Well, your consciousness, your self, might continue to exist in some way. That is after all what belief in an afterlife is.

A: Ah, consciousness and self. The thing that makes me…me. Again, no. There does not seem to be any mechanism for continuing the consciousness after the body that contains it has ceased to function. That isn’t to say of course that there couldn’t be, in the future.

Q: So when we die, you believe we just stop?

A: It’s not so much a belief as a conclusion based on the evidence.

Q: But how can the Self just go nowhere upon death? How can it just cease?

A: Because the body ceases, the body that the “Self” is a function of. What we call Self-Awareness is merely a consequence of the brain’s Modelling Process. Higher mammalian brains have evolved the ability to accurately model the outside world – a kind of internal simulation if you will – in order to better interact with that outside world. This internal “virtual world” is vital to the hominid brain because it enables us to map our way round the structure of our social group. Everyone at some stage has sat there, prior to an important conversation (a job interview, meeting a prospective partner), running different permutations of that conversation through their head. That’s a good example of the Modelling process in action. It enables us to plan our social interaction ahead of time, but it also enables us to avoid potential physical hazards, plan future events, map out our whole future. In order to do this, our brain constructs a detailed simulation of the world around us, including all the people in it (or at least all the ones we are likely to meet). Hence your brain contains simulations of your home, workplace, husband, wife, children, boss, and the work colleague you fancy. But in order to work correctly, there must exist a simulation of you. The more accurately you know the person, or place, the more accurate your simulation will be. Sometimes of course our simulations are somewhat inaccurate - you’re convinced your colleague fancies you. On the contrary, they think you’re an ugly old trout…but then that’s a problem with the accuracy of their simulation of you - but generally speaking the most detailed simulation is that of you. It contains after all, a detailed model of your body (which you of course know intimately well), plus a very accurate model of your mind. So in any given situation you can make a fairly accurate guess of how you are going to react to that situation. This simulation of you is in fact so accurate that it thinks it is alive, and that is your Self.

Q: You seem to be saying that the self only exists as a product of the human brain. Couldn’t this somehow survive death?

A: Since the Self is a product of the brain, when the brain ceases to function, the Self will cease to exist. Once deprived of oxygen and nutrients, by the cessation of the heart, the cells of the brain will die. Eventually the flesh that makes up the brain itself would succumb to decomposition, leaving nothing but an empty skull. It is difficult to see how the mind could survive that.

Q: Isn’t the mind composed of a series of electrical impulses? If so, perhaps these could be recorded in some way.

A: The brain is composed of cellular material, and cells depend upon chemical processes to do their work. Some of these processes generate and use electricity, but primarily it’s chemistry that does the work. Nerve impulses travel across synaptic gaps either by chemical or electric means, depending on where the synapses are located. It would not be enough to simply “record” the electrical impulses of the brain, since you would only get the electrical part, not the chemical one. An audio recording of someone’s voice is just that – a recording. It isn’t a copy of that person’s vocal chords. A recording of a mind would have to be done onto some kind of hybrid material that allowed duplication of both chemical and electronic impulses; in short, another brain.

Q: You say you do not believe in God. Are any members of your family religious?

A: My mother goes to church as regularly as she can, but I suspect that is more for the community than the actual religious experience. No other immediate members of my family are religious.

Q: If a member of your family was religious, would you respect that?

A: Would I respect them, or their religion? What exactly are you asking here? We often hear of people in the public eye claiming that although they are not religious themselves, they do “have enormous respect for people who have religious faith”. Well, that appears to be an admirable sentiment, but let’s deconstruct it a little. There are several million people on this planet who have strong religious faith, but should they automatically deserve our respect? If they punish, imprison, or murder other people in the name of their faith, then I personally would say the answer is no. In fact I would say that anything done in the name of religion that restricts anyone’s freedom of thought and deed is questionable. If there is any restrictions that need to be placed on an individual’s freedom, that is the purview of a government, not a religion.

Q: Well would you respect the wishes of someone to be a Christian, for example?

A: Would I respect their wishes? Certainly. I would respect anyone’s right to wish for anything. I would not particularly respect the religion itself however. Although I believe anyone has the right to think anything they want, to believe anything they want, that does not mean I agree with what they believe.

Q: But isn’t that the same thing?

A: No, of course not. Let me give you an example - someone who believes that the British Monarchy should be scrapped. I don’t believe he/she should be prevented from thinking that. I believe in personal freedom of anyone to think and believe what they want. However, I don’t agree that the British Monarchy should be scrapped. Therefore I respect this person’s wish to believe what they believe, but I don’t respect the belief itself. Any more than I respect the belief in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the God of the Old and New Testament. My youngest child believes in Santa Claus, and I respect the fact that she does. I certainly don’t believe in Santa myself though. At the end of the day, it’s really down to a problem with the word “respect”. We basically don’t really know what it means.

Q: So what do you think of people who believe in a religion?

A: I think they’re misguided.

Q: Do you think they shouldn’t follow a religion?

A: There’s a difference between a belief and a religion, though not as much of a difference as you might imagine. Sometimes unpleasant things are done in the name of belief, and in the name of religion. A belief is generally held by one person (such as the belief held by someone that he should be allowed to have sex with 10-year old children). A religion however is a legitimised belief that is allowed to be taught to other people as fact, and if that religion allows its followers to perform questionable acts, suddenly you’ve got an army on your hands. If I told you that I had deep-held beliefs that I should be allowed to behead people who offend me in some way, I’m sure you would be concerned…and yet there are millions of people in other countries who do believe just this.

Q: So you’re not particularly open-minded about other religions or beliefs then?

A: No. Not at all. How could one be? If we’re talking about an opinion, like “is butter better than margarine”, then of course one could be open to debate about the matter, since we’re talking about a subjective value judgement. But when I have already stated I do not believe in God – or perhaps that should be “a God” – how could I be open-minded about a religion that does profess a belief in God? If I do not believe something, I can hardly be open-minded about people who do believe that same something.