Vegetable State/Heaven

[AquaSwing]

This is primarily a post directed at Catholics since that is the religion of the family in question. My wife's sister's ex-husband had a massive heart attack last week and was not found for what they believe was 30 minutes. It took four attempts but they got his heart restarted. After inducing a coma to stabilize him for a couple of days, they brought him out and ran a complete brain scan and determined that his brain was deprived of oxygen for a lengthy period of time and only has partial brain stem functionality. The rest of his brain has no activity.

Naturally he has a feeding tube and ventilator since he cannot do those on his own. Everyone is in agreement that he would not want to live like this for any length of time so sometime this week they will disconnect him.

My question has to do with his ascension to heaven. Has it happened already? Technically he is still alive but has zero brain function other than enough to keep his physical body operational. Figuratively speaking, is he hanging outside the pearly gates waiting for his body to die or is he already in heaven since his brain is essentially dead?

For the atheists here, please refrain from answering since I am already in agreement with you!

Cliff Notes: Distant family member has heart attack, currently in Terry Schiavo state, what's the deal with Heaven?

[btmagnetw]

ughhh i can't find the picture of kenny the tomato on life support.

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
Technically he is still alive ...

[/ QUOTE ]

Just so I can follow along, what does that mean? or perhaps , what did you mean by that?
It's the 'he' and the 'alive' part that seem to need a little clarification, else there'll be no way of knowing if the responses you receive relate to the concepts you have of those two.

thanks, luckyme

[revots33]

As an atheist I guess I shouldn't be answering. But I am a former Catholic, and I think most Christians would agree that the soul does not depart the body until the person is completely dead in the medical sense. Not just brain dead.

[Duke]

I'd imagine that right now he's in purgatory.

[kerowo]

I had a friend who fell off a mountain and was in a coma for a while before the harvested his organs. I figure he never left the mountain. However, that's more comforting to think than he never left whatever room your relative's ex was found in. Regardless, I'm going to go with you gots to be dead to get into heaven; not brain dead, not half dead, not mostly dead. Dead dead.

[Siegmund]

It's a good question, which I will refrain from answering myself as I don't subscribe to the idea of heaven... I do, however, subscribe to the idea that the last throes of the body after the brain has shut down are more or less meaningless.

Anyone else here read Terrel Miedaner's The Soul of Anna Klane, a scifi-ish novel that pushes that idea a bit farther than most of us would? (Yeah, I heard about it first from the excerpts in Hofstadter and Dennett's The Mind's I, and it took me years to track down a used copy of the novel...)

[im a model]

[ QUOTE ]
what's the deal with Heaven?

[/ QUOTE ]

and what's the deal with airline food?