Tudor-Cosmin Ciocan

Comatose patients may have irrevocably lost all brain function. This condition has been distinguished from other comatose states by the term brain death. Its assessment has been known as the determination of death by neurologic criteria. The clinical diagnosis of brain death implies that the person has died. When the clinical criteria of brain death are met, it allows organ donation or withdrawal of futile support. Without being unnecessarily hostile to the press, one can argue that the representation of comatose states in the media is concerning. Families confronted with this often unexpected loss of life understand this strictly defined neurological condi¬tion well. Unfortunately, the legal cases are surrounded by misinformation and reluctance to understand the implications of these comatose states. Nevertheless, many legal cases are settled in court without much attention. Exposure to the media may solicit physician opinions, and these cases may easily become a spectacle. Bioethical issues do surface under these circumstances.

This paper is trying to put together two different researches, from theology and from genetics, about a general and undetermined topic, death. It is undetermined because no one can say something demonstrable and unequivocal about it, since no person alive can cross over the edge of life and come back from the domain of death with information about it. But we can discuss nevertheless things that are obvious and possible to be reasonably inferred about death even by livings. In this regard Theology will provide the mainline of what is to be known as death for religion in general, while Genetics will try to come with its research to sustain or contradict the general premise: death is not an ontological behavior of living matter, but an imposed attribute after the sin occurred into the world.

Conversion is a word with a variety of meanings. It also has various significations, from the exchange between different currencies, to job conversion or the change of career path, to the change from one religion, political belief, viewpoint, etc., to another – all these types of conversion have mutual methods and shared purposes. They are all requiring malleability, the capacity of exchanging old things for the new ones, openness to different, the will to adopt something new or at least different, and the legerity of giving up on the old things. All these requirements are always easier said than done, and therefore conversion is not for all types of characters and personalities, some being more stable and fundamental, thus resistant to renewal. There is no religion, on the one hand, that does not promote conversion and thus use proselytism to do it. On the other hand, same religions that believe conversion is an act of God, a sign that everyone should embrace and leave whatever religious belief they might have previously, consider it as a ‘sin’, an act that should be forbidden, the conversion/leaving for other, diverse religion. How is it regarded by religions and scientific thought and at what point it became obsolete?