In [the] determination to prolong life at any cost, [physicians] have forgotten that dying is part of the process of living. These people's bodies are telling them there is no purpose going on, and yet [physicians] make them go on.

Those operating in a Christian belief system may be attracted to the conclusion that death is the total and irreversible loss of the capacity to participate in God's creative and redemptive purposes for human life. For it is reasonable for Christians to believe that it is precisely this capacity which endows human life with its special significance. More specifically, it is the capacity to shape an eternal destiny by means of decision-making not soul-making, not mere organic functioning. Indeed it is reasonable to suppose that human organic life has no value in its own right but receives its significance from the fact that it can make possible and sustain personal consciousness, and thereby make possible the capacity to participate in God's creative and redemptive purposes. However, when the human biological organism can no longer fulfill that function, its significance has been lost.

When an individual becomes permanently unconscious, the person has passed out of existence, even if the biological life continues. There cannot be a person where there is neither the capacity for having mental states nor even the potential for that capacity (as with infants). For persons are beings who have the capacity (potentially or actually) to think, will, affirm moral and spiritual ideals, love and hate, desire, hope, plan, and so forth. Where no such capacities exist at al due to permanent loss of consciousness, there [is] no longer an individual who commands the special respect due to a person, because no longer [is there] a person.