SCIENTISTS SAY THEY CAN DOWNLOAD YOUR BRAIN: But Can They Download Your Soul?
While scientists race to freeze brains and extract memories by 2125, they’ve overlooked one terrifying question: what happens when you successfully download everything except the one thing that makes you… YOU?
The 40% Promise
The idea that scientists could pull memories from a dead brain sounds like something straight out of science fiction. But 312 brain researchers just said there’s a real chance it could happen. They’re talking about freezing brains in special ways, turning them into glass instead of ice. About 40% of these scientists think we might actually extract memories from dead tissue someday.
They’re even talking about copying entire people — personality, consciousness, everything—into computers. Some think it could happen for humans by the year 2125. A hundred years from now, death might not mean what it means today.
The scientists call it ASC freezing. Regular freezing destroys brain cells, but this method preserves the tiny connections where memories live. Those connections are physical things, not just electrical signals. When surgeons stop someone’s brain activity completely during certain operations, the person still has their memories when they wake up. The memories were there all along, built into the brain’s structure.
The Ancient Fear
But let’s be honest about what’s really happening here. This isn’t just scientific curiosity. People are desperate to cheat death. They’re willing to have their heads frozen, their brains turned to glass, their memories stored on hard drives — anything to avoid facing the one appointment we all have.
Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to outsmart death. The Egyptians mummified their pharaohs, surrounding them with gold and servants for the afterlife. Ponce de León searched for the Fountain of Youth. Now we’re trying to upload ourselves to computers. The methods change, but the motivation stays the same — we’re terrified of dying.
Death’s Perfect Record
Hebrews 9:27 cuts through all our schemes of immortality: “People are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.” No amount of technology changes that destiny. You can freeze your brain, map every neuron, copy every memory — but you still have that appointment with death. Science might be able to prolong your life, but the mortality rate remains stubbornly at one per person. Death still has a perfect record.
The rich young ruler in Mark 10 had everything. Wealth, youth, influence. He came to Jesus asking about eternal life, but when Jesus told him to sell everything and follow Him, the man walked away sad. It’s not that we have to give away everything we own to be saved, but Jesus knew that the man’s wealth was his stumbling block – that it was more important to him than anything else, even eternal life. He wanted eternal life,.. but on his terms. He wanted to keep control. (And don’t we all?)
The Oldest Lie
These scientists suggesting the possibility of digital immortality are selling the same false promise. Keep control. Preserve yourself. Live forever without surrendering to God.
It’s the oldest lie in the book. Literally. Genesis 3:4 records Satan’s words to Eve: “You will not certainly die.” And our enemy is still peddling that same deception, just with fancier packaging.
Think about what Jesus told the thief on the cross in Luke 23:43: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” That thief had no time for brain preservation. No chance for memory extraction. He was dying on a cross. But in his final moments, he did the one and only thing that actually defeats death — he put his faith in Christ.
Gambling on Maybe
The scientists in this survey admitted they don’t really understand how memories work. They can’t agree on what level of detail you’d need to capture. Memory experts were even more doubtful than other researchers — only giving it a 30% chance of working. But people are so desperate to avoid death, they’ll gamble on those odds.
Look at how much they’re willing to invest. Someone’s offering $100,000 just to read one memory from a preserved brain. People pay tens of thousands to have their bodies frozen after death. They’re literally banking on maybe, possibly, someday, perhaps, being brought back to life. All because they can’t accept what Ecclesiastes 3:2 plainly states: there’s “a time to be born and a time to die.” The ratio has always been and always will be 1-to-1.
Death as a Doorway
The apostle Paul understood this perfectly. In 2 Corinthians 5:8, he wrote about being “absent from the body and present with the Lord.” Paul wasn’t trying to preserve his body or upload his mind. He knew death was a doorway, not a dead end. But only for those who know Christ.
You see, the fear driving all this technology nowadays makes perfect sense if this life is all there is. If death really is the end, then of course you’d do anything to avoid it. Freeze your brain. Copy your consciousness. Download your personality and memories into an android and get upgrades whenever needed so you can keep going on forever. Whatever it takes. But 1 Corinthians 15:19 warns us, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Or, to simplify that, “If our hope in Christ is only for this life here on earth, then people should feel more sorry for us than for anyone else.”
Certainty vs. Percentages
The real tragedy is what this technology promises versus what God promises. These scientists talk about maybe achieving this by the year 2125. Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. With a 40% chance. If everything goes right. If they figure out problems they don’t even understand yet. People are putting their hope in a big “maybe”. But even then – how much longer do you really get? I buy a new smartphone and it’s already outdated by the time I reach my car in the parking lot.
But Jesus offers certainty. In John 11:25-26, He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” That’s not a percentage. That’s a promise from the One who actually defeated death.
The Missing Piece
Think about Lazarus — the one Jesus raised, not the poor man in the parable. Lazarus had been dead for days… four days to be precise. His brain wasn’t preserved. His memories should have been gone. But Jesus called him out of the tomb. No technology needed. Just the power of the One who created life in the first place.
The scientists worry about which details of the brain matter for memories. They debate about synapses and neural connections. But they’re missing the biggest detail of all. James 2:26 spells it out: “The body without the spirit is dead.” You could have the most perfectly preserved brain in the world. Without the spirit, without the soul… it’s just tissue, a giant clump of cells.
The Horror of the Copy
Here’s an unsettling thought. What if their technology worked perfectly — and that’s a massive if — but let’s just suppose. What would they really accomplish? Would you truly live forever? Remember – they made a copy of your memories, they maybe even cloned your body… but is that really you? Or… is that just a digital copy that thinks it’s you… but isn’t you. It’s a sophisticated echo. That sounds like a horror movie to me. The real you, the soul God breathed into existence, can’t be uploaded to a server or copied to a hard drive.
Building Digital Barns
In Luke 12:16-20, Jesus told about a rich man who built bigger barns to store all his wealth. He thought he had years of easy living ahead. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” All his planning, all his storing up, meant nothing when death came calling.
These people freezing their brains are building digital barns. They’re storing up their memories, hoping to cheat the inevitable. But Proverbs 27:1 warns, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” You don’t know if you’re gonna make it to 2125.. You don’t know if the technology will work. You don’t know if the company freezing your brain will even exist in fifty years… or five years… or five months from now. What happens to your digital memories if the company goes bankrupt?
God Already Knows
But here’s what really kills me about all this (no pun intended) — while people are spending fortunes trying to preserve their memories, they’re ignoring the One who already knows every thought they’ve ever had. Psalm 139:16 tells us, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” God doesn’t need to extract your memories. He had your memories before you did.
The same God who knit you together in your mother’s womb, who knows the number of hairs on your head, who sees every tear you cry — He’s offering you actual eternal life. Not a digital copy. Not a maybe. Not a perhaps. Not a possible. The real thing.
The Root of Our Fear
Romans 6:23 lays out the choice for us: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Sin brought death into this world. That’s why we’re all so terrified of it. Because deep down in our God-given souls, we know that death shouldn’t be part of the plan. It’s not natural. We weren’t meant to die.
But instead of running to the One who can actually save us from death, we run to technology. We trust scientists who admit they don’t understand memory. We put faith in processes that might work… someday. We’re like the people in Isaiah 28:15 who boast, “We have made a covenant with death, with the realm of the dead we have made an agreement.” The ERV version puts it this way: “You have said, ‘We have made an agreement with death. We have a contract with death. So we will not be punished. Punishment will pass us without hurting us. We will hide behind our tricks and lies’.” Tricks and lies is right – but they are tricking and lying to themselves. Nobody has a winning bargain with death. The Message version makes it even more plain:
Now listen to God’s Message, you scoffers, you who rule this people in Jerusalem. You say, “We’ve taken out good life insurance. We’ve hedged all our bets, covered all our bases. No disaster can touch us. We’ve thought of everything. We’re advised by the experts. We’re set.”
Victory Over Death
The words are a boast, expressed somewhat enigmatically, that they have secured their own safety by some secret agreement. No agreement with death holds up except the one Christ made on the cross. When He cried out, “It is finished,” He wasn’t talking about preserving memories. He was talking about destroying death itself.
1 Corinthians 15:55 celebrates this victory: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” It sounds like Paul is actually mocking death because he knows it has no power over him because he had given his life to Christ.
What Science Can’t Offer
The sting of death is sin. Remove the sin, and death loses its terror. That’s what Christ offers — not a way around death, but a way through it. Not preservation in a computer or a deep-freeze, but resurrection in a glorified body. A perfect flesh-and-blood body. Isn’t that what all of this technology is really trying to achieve? Not the preservation of memories or thoughts… but the ability to have a perfect life with no sickness, no injuries, no deformities, no mental disease, absolute perfect health and perfect mind. Isn’t that the ultimate goal Science would like to offer us? What they don’t seem to understand is that we receive none of that on this side of eternity – but we receive all of it on the other side if we follow Christ.
Think about Stephen in Acts 7. As they stoned him, he didn’t cry out for someone to preserve his brain. He cried out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” He knew where he was going. Death wasn’t an ending but a beginning.
Digital Towers of Babel
Every dollar spent on brain preservation, every hour researching memory extraction, every hope placed in digital immortality — it’s all energy spent running away from the only One who actually conquered death. It’s building towers of Babel with computer code instead of bricks, trying to reach heaven on our own terms.
But Proverbs 14:12 warns us, “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” Digital preservation might APPEAR to be right. It might SEEM like wisdom. But it’s just another path that leads away from the true source of life.
The Real Choice
Jesus said in Matthew 16:25, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” The people freezing their brains are desperately trying to save their lives, their “true self” so it were. They’re grasping at every possible chance, no matter how slim, to hold onto their existence.
But Christ calls us to something completely different. Let go. Surrender. Trust Him with not just your memories but your entire being. Stop trying to cheat death and start preparing for what comes after… the real life.
Because here’s the truth these scientists aren’t going to tell you — even if their technology worked perfectly, even if you could live forever as a digital consciousness, you’d still have to face judgment someday. Hebrews 9:27 doesn’t say people are destined to die once unless they upload their brains. The appointment still stands.
The Promise That Matters
So while scientists debate percentages and possibilities, while they argue about which brain structures matter, while they dream about digital afterlives — we have something better. We have a Savior who already defeated death. Who rose from the grave not as a memory but as a living, breathing, glorified Lord. We have our afterlife, it has already been secured for us. Jesus made sure of that.
Your memories are precious. They make up the story of your life. But you are more than your memories. You are a soul created in God’s image, designed for eternity with Him. Don’t let the false promise of digital preservation distract you from the real promise of resurrection, of eternal life.
The choice is yours. You can spend your life and money trying to cheat death, hoping that maybe science will save you. Or you can accept the free gift of the One who already conquered death – and did so, so that you wouldn’t have to face eternal death. We are promised in Revelation 21:4 that God will “wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.”
No more death. Not because we outsmarted it with technology, but because Christ destroyed it with love. Choose life. Choose Christ. Choose the certainty of God’s promises over humanity’s desperate attempts to avoid the inevitable. Because when that final day comes — and it will — what matters isn’t whether your brain was preserved. What matters is whether your soul was saved.
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Darren Marlar is a licensed minister through the Universal Life Church: https://www.themonastery.org. Find his other podcast, Weird Darkness, in your favorite podcast app at https://weirddarkness.com/listen.
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