Death and atheism

September 5, 2011 • 7:05 am

“I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”  —Woody Allen

Humans are, I think, the only animals that really comprehend their own mortality, and much of religion involves trying to show that we live on in some form after death.  We atheists don’t believe that, and the natural reaction would be to think that atheism, and its attendant notion that when we’re gone, we’re totally gone, entails an increased fear of mortality.  Curiously, though, an atheist friend recently told me that the rejection of gods had freed her from the fear of death.  One can, as the New Atheists have often emphasized, see our finitude as liberating: we have but one life, and we should enjoy it while we’re here rather than wasting our time supplicating nonexistent sky-gods for a nonexistent future.

On the other hand, atheism could make our mortality even more depressing, or, as it did to the existentialists, make life seem like some sort of absurd and meaningless charade. I think this is what Camus meant when he said “There is but one truly serious philosophical question, and that is suicide.”

On the third hand, atheism could free us from the fear—one that drives Catholicism, for instance—that we’re all bound to be tortured in some form after death.

I’m interested in readers’ opinions on this issue.  Does your atheism make you feel better or worse about your mortality, and why?


316 thoughts on “Death and atheism”

  1. Humans are, I think, the only animals that really comprehend their own mortality

    There are many elephants who think you are wrong.

    1. Perhaps, and there is evidence that chimpanzees know that something is “wrong” when a group member dies. But it’s not clear (and I guess could never be) whether they comprehend the finality of THEIR OWN mortality in the same way we do.

        1. Fear. They don’t have to consciously know what they’re afraid of to experience fear. And even if they are conscious on some level of what they are afraid of, it’s probably “that other animal that’s chasing me,” not death.

          If you were not implying that animals “run from danger” because they’re afraid of death, then I apologize for misinterpreting you.

        2. Natural selection dictates that the ones who put insufficient effort into fleeing from hazards don’t last very long.

        3. They don’t have the innate resource to deal with ironic scare-quotes and they instinctively flee. Only humans can face “danger”.

        4. I don’t have to think about death to run from danger. Have you never just not wanted to be beaten up?
          I’d probably try to avoid being hit by too many cars even were I immortal.

    2. As a child I lived across a farm, and I saw how the usually docile cows would do anything not to get into the truck bringing them to the slaughterhouse.

      1. There’s a world of difference between feeling fear and understanding that you are going to be gone.

        Overall, I think the real question about whether or not any other species understands death revolves largely on how well members of that species understand the concept of self.

      2. “Usually docile cows” don’t like being herded through any enclosure onto a ramp into a truck, even if it’s going to a heavenly new farm with lots of better food where they will live a longer life.

        1. Exactly. Too often we anthropomorphize the actions of animals. The best “fer instance” is people speaking sentences to their pets, who have no language facility. Try saying, “You want me to kill you!! Wanna be killed??!!” to some dog, jumping up and down in happy greeting. All indications are “Yes! Kill me!!”

  2. On the third hand, atheism could free us from the fear—one that drives Catholicism, for instance—that we’re all bound to be tortured in some form after death.

    We are all bound to be baptised as Mormons after our death.

  3. I’ve never been religious, but dying scares me anyway.

    I love life and don’t want to miss anything. If I could be around to see what happens in a thousand years, I would love to. At the very least I aim to leave interesting things behind so people might remember me for a while.

    1. Of course if you lived to be 1000 years old, you would need to work til you were 900 to put away enough money to enjoy the last 100 or so years.

      Another 850 years of turning up to work each day…i’ll pass on that.

      More seriously, my atheism enables me to not sweat the details too much. I love my life, but i know its a fluke of physics and chemistry and before too long there will be no evidence that i was ever even here.

      And i dont feel bad about that.

  4. My atheism makes me happy that I won’t have be near my evangelical relatives in heaven when I die, truly cheerless awful people. I figure I’m going to go where all the flowers, trees, and bunnies go when they die. Hopefully I won’t be too near the 20 pound groundhog that’s currently eating all of my tomatoes.
    I have health problems and while I’m sad about facing mortality, where I end up isn’t the focus, it’s just worrying about people I will leave behind.

    2. I think the hardest thing to think about when you are facing death is not being. I find it difficult to wrap my mind around that. And I hate not to know how things turn out. But it doesn’t upset me terribly…and I feel that I am pretty close to the end as I am 82 this year with the usual problems of old people. I enjoy the things I can still do and will be sorry to leave it all….but that’s life! I plan to enjoy it as long as I can. And when I can’t any longer I hope the end comes.

  5. I’m not sure if it was official catholic dogma, but a pretty conservative group I used to hang out with, had diluted the concept of hell to “eternal absence of god”, and shied away from mentions of torture or direct suffering.

    2. I’ve heard other people say the same thing, but I haven’t encountered it being promoted as an official religious stance either.

      1. Oh, it is. In fact, I would almost believe it’s the predominant view these days. Even William Lane Craig holds this view. See his debate with Ray Bradley on this very topic.

      2. I think that has always been the official doctrine of Jehowa’s Witnesses. Of course they are so fringe that they aren’t even considered Christians.

      3. I heard that from Jesus Christ himself. Sunday mornings on AM 640 Los Angeles. Even though I’m atheist, I find the show interesting at times.

      1. It is the definition of hell used by Ted Chiang in his short story “Hell Is the Absence of God”.

  6. Technically, atheists reject the notion of theistic deities. Probably most atheists you know also reject the idea of life after death, but it is not included in the definition.

    ===

    I have met an atheist who believed in reincarnation. This is probably not a rarity in locations with large numbers of Buddhists.

    There are the facts, and there are our emotional reactions to them. If someone wants to argue that oblivion after death is a glass half full, and another that it is a glass half empty; it makes no difference to me.

    But to argue that the glass must be full because it would scare us for it not to be full would be wrong, an argument from consequences.

    1. “If someone wants to argue that oblivion after death is a glass half full, and another that it is a glass half empty; it makes no difference to me.”

      I don’t think we should anticipate oblivion after death. Death can be naturalistically conceived as the radical refreshment of subjectivity, not its cessation, http://www.naturalism.org/death.htm

      1. “I don’t think we should anticipate oblivion after death. Death can be naturalistically conceived as the radical refreshment of subjectivity, not its cessation, http://www.naturalism.org/death.htm”

        The article at that link isn’t very persuasive to me, and neither is the insistence on not referring to “nothingness” after death.

        Yes, consciousness and it’s death are technically more complicated than we often make them out to be. That doesn’t change that it is almost certain (given what we know today) that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow and experience brain death, no being that could be reasonably called “me” will ever exist again.

        No being will ever again have my memories or my particular way of thinking. No being will be able to experience things in the same way that I do, or would have, if I hadn’t died. No being will be able to have quite the same relationships with other people as me.

        The possibility of some “me” experiencing another moment of being in love, or being moved by beauty or intrigued by an idea will be destroyed and no “me” will ever be able to spend another moment with my wife, or friends, or family.

        Death is very real, and it is very final. We can change how we label it or come up with cute “connections” between us and future generations but the above facts remain true, and the incalculable loss I feel when I ponder them doesn’t change in light of any intellectual gymnastics.

        I would rather own up to these realities and accept them as they are than attempt to confuse myself with convoluted logic in the hopes that I’ll forget how tragic it actually is.

        I don’t think we need to trick ourselves to prevent despair. The loss seems so great because what we have now is so precious. The joy of consciousness isn’t lessened because we will eventually lose it. We can still celebrate life while acknowledging death.

        I know that even after I die the world will go on and others will experience the wonder of life, and that does bring me happiness, but those people will not be connected to me in any meaningful way other than through the imprint my life has left on the world.

      2. I don’t find it problematic that we refer to what follows death as “a void”, “oblivion”, etc. This is the best our language can manage. It’s difficult to describe the experience of being dead because it’s not an experience, as Epicurus pointed out. But I think the commenters here understand that. It’s only our language that makes it seem, if you’re feeling uncharitable, that they’re not thinking clearly. To argue such seems to me to argue a straw man.

        As for the rest of the article, what would be the materialistic mechanism by which my consciousness would be “passed on to” or “continued in” some other collection of matter?

        1. Seems to me Epicurus made his point precisely to address the confusion of supposing that after death we confront blankness or nothingness, so I don’t think I’m arguing against a straw man. If I am, then so was Epicurus.

          Re continuation of consciousness, there is no mechanism. As I say in the article:

          “Instead of anticipating nothingness at death, I propose that we should anticipate the subjective sense of always having been present, experienced within a different context, the context provided by those subjectivities which exist or come into being.

          “In proposing this I don’t mean to suggest that there exist some supernatural, death-defying connections between consciousnesses which could somehow preserve elements of memory or personality. This is not at all what I have in mind, since material evidence suggests that everything a person consists of–a living body, awareness, personality, memories, preferences, expectations, etc.–is erased at death… So when I say that you should look forward, at death, to the “subjective sense of always having been present,” I am speaking rather loosely, for it is not you–not this set of personal characteristics–that will experience “being present.” Rather, it will be another set of characteristics (in fact, countless sets) with the capacity, perhaps, for completely different sorts of experience. But, despite these (perhaps radical) differences, it will share the qualitatively very same sense of always having been here, and, like you, will never experience its cessation.”

          1. But my point was that when we say, rather poetically (admittedly), that we “enter the void,” or “face oblivion,” we’re not claiming that we will actually experience oblivion. I think most folks (here, anyway) get that. It’s only the language that makes it look like something impossible is being asserted. I think it’s a straw man to argue against what is really just an artifact of language.

          2. I don’t think it’s an artifact of language that Epicurus, Paul Edwards and I (among others) have addressed, but a fearful expectation of “falling into an empty black abyss” as someone I quote in the article put it. But if no one here actually had that expectation, that’s fine.

    2. The glass is neither half full nor half empty. Since there is no evidence for life after death, the glass is just twice as big as it needs to be.

      2. Isn’t the glass actually of infinite size for believers? Extending what Douglas Adams wrote in HHGTTG about the population of the universe, doesn’t that mean that life doesn’t exist.

        “It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”

        So, we’re all already dead and also the products of a deranged imagination. Sure, works for me.

        1. Zero sum universe has pretty much the same result. The average of the total doesn’t leave much.

  7. I think that, by removing the afterlife from consideration, atheism encourages us face life for what it is: a gift of experience.

    The best way to come to terms with death is to come to terms with life . . . THIS life. Once you do, you’ll realize that dying is immeasurably better than never having lived at all.

    Experience is the purpose of life. Make it broad and deep. It is because experience is so precious that many of us find pleasure in charity and giving. It increases experience for all involved.

    The ineffable mystery of life is that you experience anything at all. Remember, you experienced NOTHING before life and you’ll experience nothing after life. Experience all you can, while you can.

    Life is a gift.

    1. “you experienced NOTHING before life and you’ll experience nothing after life.”

      Not that death is a plunge into nothingness or the end of experience, see my comment above to Reginald.

      1. I wrote with confidence that MOST atheists do not believe in the supernatural (God, spirit, miracles, angels, etc.).

        Conjecture about an afterlife or reincarnation is entirely without any basis in reason or evidence because such conjecture necessarily invokes the supernatural.

        The natural world is the only one there is. It’s scope includes the entire universe and everything in it. In the natural world, death means only rotting, stinking, decay. The brain is the first organ to ooze out and dribble into the soil. There is no evidence that death is anything but final.

  8. Assuming that no part of my ego survives my biological death leaves me unmoved. The assumption isn’t liberating (absurd notion), nor depressing, nor meaningful. It’s a bit arrogant to entertain the idea that a human death is of more consequence to the dying person–even though it could be of great consequence to the survivors–than that of any other living organism. I don’t see why the assumption needs to diminish the quality of our life, the alacrity of our pursuits, or the intensity of our passions.

    1. I find the idea of not risking an eternity of torture for failing to meet an arbitrary and exceedingly difficult set of rules to be liberating, but I never really believed in Hell in the first place.

  9. The thing the bothered me the most about the afterlife was that it never ended. Even if I was in heaven, the idea of going on existing forever always made me feel uncomfortable. Now I don’t have to deal with that.

      1. Or sex.

        But apparently there’s a lot of conservative Christians there.

        Wait, which place were we talking about again?

    2. Pfft, you must not be as full of yourself as I am. Of course it would be best for everyone if I were eternal.

  10. I guess anything is better than having to worry about eternal torture in a lake of fire. But not withstanding that, I certainly dont find the temporary nature of our existence to be comforting or liberating in any way. Life is a losing game. Thats pretty negative, I admit. But I dont see how I can call it any other way.

        1. See, that’s why I could not take god seriously. burning never seemed to me to be as bad as beinng *eternally cold.* One-size fits all punishment seems poorly thought out.

  11. I can’t say whether it makes me feel better or worse about death because I’ve never believed in life after death. And frankly I don’t put much value on how I feel about death now anyway, since I’ve never viscerally feared for my life, and no one I’m particularly close to has died (or been seriously injured).

    So instead I’ll just comfort Woody Allen with this lovely Wittgenstein quote from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:

    6.4311. Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

  12. Death doesn’t scare me – I will no longer be aware, so I won’t miss anything – but the process of aging and dying does, the loss of ability, the loss of independence and most especially the loss of cognitive functioning. I am old enough (60) to have already lost people who were close to me, and to me the worst thing about death is the death of others, no longer having people in my life who were members of my inner circle. It hurts that I can no longer talk with my Dad, it scares me that I may outlive my fiance and no longer cuddle with him on chilly nights…
    All that, of course, means we have to make the most of this life, make it all count for something – avoid petty fights, avoid grudges, never forget to show a loved one how very much you do love that person, enjoy everything while you can, celebrate birthdays with gusto, spend as much time as possible with friends and family, play with the dogs, garden, fight for the things that matter like the environment, health care for all, civil rights for all…

    1. Thank you Joyce that was inspirational. I feel less depressed and more hopeful already. Now in my sixties I feel less afraid of death than in my youth. Then if I contemplated death there was I feeling of the absolute nothingness which chilled me and gave rise to a feeling of intestinal nausea. Now I have the feeling that we are finite beings and have to accept that.

      I too worry about the oncoming physical and possible mental degeneration old age and do my best to slow down the ageing process.

      On death itself Einstein’s concept of the block universe, as he outlined its implication for human death in layman’s in his letter to Besso’s widow, now seems somewhat more consoling to me than when I first came across it over a decade ago.

      Here in Canada, Jack Layton the leader of the New Democratic Party and the official oppostion just died of cancer (he was a couple of years younger than me) and he left behind an inspirational letter;

      http://www.ndp.ca/letter-to-canadians-from-jack-layton

      which has moved millions of Canadians and shows how to have courage in the face of death. He said:

      “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

      Now I’m getting of the computer to go and talk to my wife, play with my dog and celebrate Labour Day.

  13. I don’t have a fear of death as pace Woody Allen I won’t be there when it actually happens. It’s the moments (or longer) leading up to it that worry me.

  14. For me stopping to believe was a freeing experience that indeed helped me organize my life and focus on it rather than worry about what would come later.
    After years of Catholic indoctrination I find practically impossible to escape the feeling that “something” is paying attention to my thoughts and actions. Or the hope that in some way my consciousness/existence will be recognized on a cosmic scale. I was able to transform it into the sense of unity – I am made of matter produced at bigbang and will dissipate into some radiation together with the rest of the world in the end. Since there is nothing that can or needs to be done to avert this (for me or anyone), it is less of a worry.
    The only scary parts are the possibility of a “bad death” and, as Hitchens says, knowing that “the party will go on, and it’s a great party, but you have to leave”. I believe that one day we will be able to create a self-sustaining thinking machine and it would be fun to interact with it or maybe become it in some hybrid form. But we were born too early and we must do the scut work for the future generations, like convincing the rest of the thinking apes that they are thinking apes indeed!

  15. I was raised with no concept of religion at home – it was a strange thing the neighbors did. So I’ve never connected mortality with religion in any fundamental way. I did later learn that religions had this whole afterlife thing going on, but like most concepts religious it’s never resonated for me.

    I don’t know when I came to understand mortality as something that applied to me personally. We did have pets the whole time I was growing up, and of course we lost some, and I got the “this is a part of life” explanation, but it wasn’t traumatic or surprising enough to stick in my head beyond that general sense. I made the usual bad decisions in my teens that would tend to suggest I didn’t believe it was a part of MY life.

    Funnily enough, my first cat DID go to live “on a farm” where she could run and play (she went to live with friends who had a bunch of space), so that explanation-as-euphemistic-dismissal of children’s fears was particularly confusing to me!

    I would not describe myself as having a fear of death, although I don’t “want” a bad death – I’d rather not suffer (who would?), and I’d rather not die in a gratuitously ridiculous way, to make things easier for my family. The experience of afterlife, in the only way I can comprehend deeply, is the experience of those in whose memories we live.

  16. I’ve always been an atheist, so I have nothing to compare it to. I’ve never feared death particularly, or been bothered by mortality.

  17. ” . . . one that drives Catholicism, for instance—that we’re all bound to be tortured in some form after death.”

    True enough, but from my own youthful experience equally true of flailing, ululating, howling, spittle-flinging Protestant fundamentalist tent revival evangelists.

    Am currently reading Susan Jacoby’s “Freethinkers,” which has some relevant reflections (T.H. Huxley, Ingersoll) on this blog topic.

  18. It’s not the dying part that scares me, by reason of I was non-existent for most of history already and it didn’t pain me a bit, it’s just the way in which the it might happen (pain, suffering) I could be aversive to. Also, I would prefer to live forever and absorpt all knowledge and future just for the sake of knowledge and a possibility to contribute positively.

    Hell, I’ll gladly die if it’s for a good cause and doesn’t require an absurd amount of suffering on my part (or in that case I still would, but rather enjoy my heroic moment less). That seems to me an affirmation of purpose in a cold, indifferent purposeless world far exceeding religious dogma.

    Absence of religion in my life, never had any contact with religion untill relatively late and it immediately repelled me instinctively only later to learn why intellectually, seems to have been a pretty positive influence out of which I feel free to give my own purpose and meaning to events that unfold. Bit Nietzschean if you like. Will to power, eternal recurrence of energy and matter, striving for the superman, etc. I’d be a staunch libertarian if I didn’t think the libertarian logic is utterly flawed and counter-productive to actualy liberty and human nature.

    Anyways, death is your friend; you got only one life, make it count and die for the cause of well-being of conscious creatures if you must!

  19. As a rationalist atheist, knowing that there is nothing after this life (no evidence to support such belief except for faith) give my life deep value and meaning. Since this is the one and only opportunity to be here, one has to go “all in” to be both happy and healthy.

    Religion provides its own darkness, so having faith doesn’t really make people feel better although it may provide an illusion that it does.

    If I counted on an eternal afterlife for my happiness, I’d have no reason to want to make the world a better place since this existence would be temporary and transient.

    Albert Brook’s film, Defending Your Life, is a great movie about getting past fears and defending your actions in the nether world. Although it is a comedy, I think being able to say you made the world a better place, regardless of how you use your skills and talents, and also got over your own psychological obstacles, then you’ve lead a life of some value.

    But what do I know? Very little actually.

  20. Unlike many other atheists, the idea of living forever does not bother me at all if it means there is no more pain or sorrow. The idea sounds ok to me but that doesn’t make it true. You can make up any bs story about the afterlife you like since none of us know anything about what really happens.

    It does not bother me that I did not exist before I was born and it does not bother me that I won’t exist after I die.

    I rather like the idea of simply losing consciousness, like going to sleep. I go to sleep every night and rather enjoy it. The older I get, the more I enjoy afternoon naps. Like the old joke “When I die, I just want to fall asleep like grandpa, not yelling and screaming like his passengers.”

  21. It’s hard to say, since as a Christian child I never really imagined that I would be going to hell. That was for others. In fact, I never thought much about my own death. I was still young.

    Now that I’m 30, I find the thought of mortality depressing, although mostly that’s due to the physical and mental decline that I expect to have to put up with for the last couple decades of my life, and not so much the death itself. That the decline has already begun is what depresses me most. I would rather maintain the health and vigor of youth, and die suddenly, than slowly waste away, even if it meant a much shorter life overall.

    I suppose those who were religious well into adulthood before losing faith could answer the question better…

    1. I agree with you; we’re on the same page.

      I was a christian as a child and atheist by about age 30. (see post #10)

  22. Death brings neither joy in seeing loved ones again or fear of eternal damnation. Death is like turning a light switch off; the energy that lights a bulb does not reach it; energy that gives me life and consciousness ends. I also am free to choose my own death if life becomes too painful or too unfulfilling. Wasting away is not the way of nature, old animals are killed by predators when they can no longer escape. Humans, especially with all the chemicals and technical stuff can prolong dying, not a condition I want to endure. When it is time to turn off the switch, I will know and I have the means to accomplish it.

  23. I’ve never believed in God, so I can’t contrast fear of dying as a theist and as an atheist.

    Dying young is horrible, because possibilities of projects, of work, of love, of sex are not lived out. My son died at age 15.

    However, as one gets older, one gets uglier, weaker, more stupid, out of it, unable to fit into social changes, dependent on endless visits to doctors and pharmacies, often a person whom others have to take care of. At age 65, death does not scare me.

  24. I’m not afraid of being dead. The process of actually dying I fear maybe a bit, depending on how it happens – in my sleep in fifty years hence is fine, in pain and horror in a car accident in a week or two is unpleasant.

  25. As a human, I have all the same apprehensions about how one’s death is actually achieved as anybody else.

    As an atheist, I don’t live in fear of post-mortem punishment (as I used to, many years ago).

    As an atheist, the one life I know I have isn’t being wasted in all manner of pointless and even harmful pursuits. I value my own life more because of my honesty regarding religious matters.

    As an atheist, I value others’ lives more, too. If anything good is going to happen in this world, we’ve got to make it happen. Some space ghost isn’t going to come along and fix everything because I mumbled a few magic words before bed last night.

    Hmm. Atheism FTW!

  26. Ditto many of the comments above, not worried about being dead and recycling the carbon I borrowed back into the world. I fear most some of the aways I could die; car wreck, heart attack, cancer, plane crash, angry mob of Christians…
    I also fear dying before my daughters stop really needing me. I fear what my girlfriend will do if I go before her.

  27. “We atheists don’t believe that”

    Be careful when you speak on behalf of atheists. Not all atheists are rational or non-religious or even pro-science. Remember: atheism is a lack of belief, nothing more. It doesn’t say what positive beliefs we hold.

    What you might mean are scientific naturalists.

    1. But even atheists believe in what they say is the fact that after death is nothing. That takes faith because nobody can talk to anybody who has been there.

      1. Just because there are two or more possible outcomes for a situation does not mean that all outcomes are equally likely. All available evidence indicates that it’s *far* more likely that there isn’t an afterlife than that there is.

      2. From Greydon Square:

        If the memories our lives, retained in the brain,
        And the brain dies – inside it nothing remains,
        Wouldn’t that mean you would have absolutely and positively,
        No recollection or account of previous things,
        When you die?

  28. The Christian notion of having to grovel and plead and forgo even the simplest pleasures in order to “earn” heaven and avoid hell to me is the most abhorrent aspect of the whole enterprise.

    Once you learn that there is no place of reward, nor punishment either, it’s incredibly liberating. One is free to live this existence within the context of whatever social/cultural norms you care to adhere to. (Note that doesn’t mean, contra the common theistic belief, that atheists merely reject god in order to “sin”. Of all the objections to atheism, that’s the worst.)

    No, there’s nothing that will survive me after death except my constituent atoms. I don’t like the prospect much, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I spend very little time worrying about it anymore. I used to when I was converting from a vague agnosticism to the “hard” atheism that’s my current path. But it’s just not productive to do so — how does worrying about something impact your ability to actually do something about it.

    I live in the middle of the bible belt — I drive on Billy Graham Highway at least once a week. And it constantly amazes me to see the attitudes of the vast majority of people towards those who simply don’t care about their after-death prospects. They’re either angry, or appalled. Mainly angry. How dare we not care about their imaginary threats?

    This is already overlong, but I’ll say one more thing — I have no desire to live a very very long time. My parents are both in their mid-80s, and it’s becoming quite painful to me to see their world shrink slowly day after day. I have no desire to merely survive without some sort of meaningful quality of life. If there’s anything to be done in the field of medicine, it’s ensuring that all of one’s years are productive, happy, and debilitation-free.

  29. I fear death mainly when I imagine it, and mainly for purely animalistic reasons: I mentally simulate various death-causing scenarios, and as a result I induce a fear response. But all of that’s relatively independent of the cognitive aspect, i.e. whether I believe in an afterlife or not.

    My atheism, I feel, does encourage me to enjoy life more and desire suicide less. The world is not some simplistic, closed, boring place governed by the unjust will of a small-minded creator, but rather a multifaceted and variegated world of discoverable beauty, and new, discoverable ways to interact with it. However, in the absence of studies that show atheists have any more wonder at the world than theists do, I’m not so inclined to read what I feel is due to my atheism into what may be due to personality.

    I do sometimes get a fright from science-mindedness. I’m an “analytic” philosopher so I’ve read lots of David Lewis’s work. In some lectures on quantum mechanics, he describes what we should expect if the many-worlds theory of Everett is true. He reasons:

    We should only expect to experience in the future what we are alive for. So right now we should not expect to live in a ‘die’ branch, if there is a ‘live’ branch. Our conscious experiences will continue in the ‘live’ branch but not in the ‘die’ branch. But, QM being what it is, there are always ‘live’ branches, even though often of small measure (say after 1,000 years or a train accident). So we should expect to live, roughly, forever, or at least billions of years. But we should also apportion our expectations, among these branches, to their relative likelihood. And it’s much more likely that after a billion years and all the train accidents and injuries that entails, I’ll have suffered an enormous amount, and be barely eking out an existence with all my bones broken, and my organs shot, and pain at every moment. But, no release: when the next horrible pain inducing moment comes, I should expect not to experience those branches (many) in which it kills me, but those (few) in which I unfortunately survive.

    Sorry, that was morbid. It bothers me, but not so much as it would if I had greater stock in many-worlds theories.

  30. I was very dyslexic as a child and always felt like I got everything wrong. When I learned about the afterlife options in Sunday school at about 6 years old, I figured that no matter what, I would get everything wrong and end up in an eternity of pain and suffering. That’s when I concluded that my Christian religious teachings were a bunch of crap and I became a born again atheist without even knowing what an atheist was. To me, “nothing” at the time of death trumped anything eternal. To experience nothing was to experience total peace. This was a liberating feeling that I kept to myself for many years and one that made me respect all life more and avoid but not fear death.

    As a retired adult, I am pleased to find that I am not alone in my beliefs or lack of with respect to god, a soul, afterlife and many of the other superstitious ideas that seem to be cherished by the majority of the worlds populations.

    Thanks to web sites like this, I feel like less of an outcast and enjoy sharing in ideas supported by evidence instead of wishful thinking.

  31. I fear only one thing – that the sky might fall on my head. (see Arrian’s Anabasis Book 1). But then I am a braggart! 😉

    1. But seriously, the process is what many fear, rather than the fact. The faithful ought to have no fears surely they will reap their rewards according to their words, thoughts & deeds. Right? Huh, I do not think so!
      What was it like before you were born? Exactly the same as after you die – it was nothingness, you were not, & you cease to be with your death. Then we are just fading memories which vanish like the snows of yesteryear.
      I am with Epicurus. Death is annihilation http://www.iep.utm.edu/epicur/#SH5g

        3. I read your article Tom, and I have to say I don’t see how it matters if others have a subjective experience of existence after my death.

          I do not exist any longer. That’s what matters. I’m glad that those others exist, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not experiencing that, which makes all the difference.

          1. Ok, so long as you agree that at death we shouldn’t anticipate the end of experience, something like oblivion, nothingness or falling into a black abyss. You, Nathan, won’t exist to experience anything, but experience continues in other contexts. Of course, if you weren’t anticipating the end of experience at death, then pointing this out doesn’t help you.

          3. Except that I do anticipate that the end of experience — MY experience, which is the only experience that matters in this context. I do not anticipate experiencing my lack of experience, because that is obviously lacking in sense of any sort.

            If experience continues in other contexts, great, but so what? I’m not there.

            If the earth blows up tomorrow, taking all life with it, and then a million years from now life develops on a distant planet in the Andromeda galaxy, what difference would that make to me? I am not a part of that experience. It’s fascinating to contemplate the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, but I’m still not a part of it.

            You seem to be treating experience as if it’s all one continuous thing. It’s not. Experiencing creatures, and therefore experience, are distinct units. Related, perhaps, as all life on earth is, but still distinct.

          4. “You seem to be treating experience as if it’s all one continuous thing.”

            Yes, this is one way to put it. That’s what the thought experiments are meant to bring out: that subjectively experience is never not present for itself even though objectively it’s discontinuous since it exists at different times and places.

    2. Aristophanes was (apocryphally) killed by a tortoise that fell out of the sky when an eagle dropped it. I’ve long thought that would be a good way to go.

  32. I say “a bit worse”; it would be fun to have some benevolent deity allowing us to live on and eventually learn the answers to some currently unsolved problems.

    Then again, it might suck if the Christian “burn in hell” deity really existed, so I suppose that it is a wash. 🙂

  33. If my recollection is correct W. Allen also said: ‘I want eternal life through not dying!’

    As a good catholic my father was obsessed with hell and dying throughout his long life. A few weeks before dying he became so ill that he became quite indifferent to religion matters and death itself.

    I had a very close encounter with death myself. I can assure your reader that it was the period of my life in which I feared death the less. Indeed not at all.

    So I suspect that the fear of death is for those who are not ill enough. I find it silly to fear something that will not be fearsome when it comes.

    1. You’re not quite right. The correct Woody Allen quote is: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment”.

      But the best death-related joke in the Woody Allen canon is the following dialogue (from “Play it again, Sam”):

      Allen: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?
      Woman: Yes, it is.
      Allen: What does it say to you?
      Woman: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless, bleak straitjacket in a black, absurd cosmos.
      Allen: What are you doing Saturday night?
      Woman: Committing suicide.
      Allen: What about Friday night?

  34. I believed in heaven and hell until my early 30s, hoping for the former, terrified of the latter and not entirely sure where I was headed, or if either was even real. But giving up heaven was one of the hardest aspects of my apostasy, and something I still struggle with. I am however certain of several things:

    1. If there is a hell, there can be no heaven for anyone capable of compassion

    2. Because no one has yet proved what happens after death, and likely no one ever will, thoughts of death and the afterlife are interesting distractions but not anything to live life by or spend too much time on

    3. Many features of the traditional concepts of heaven and hell can be duplicated on earth, and this is where our calling lies

  35. If there was life after death, it would make a difference as to whether it was subjectively* finite or infinite.

    If it’s finite and possibly the first of successive afterlives, then it makes me wonder if there would be any sense of continuity. An infinite afterlife would seem to imply such change and variegated experience that “original” me would be changed beyond recognition, infinitely many times. It would be a bit like reincarnation, with nominal continuity.
    If an afterlife represented some expansion of consciousness that mere mortals could not comprehend (rather than an endless harp-solo with the Grateful Undead on an overcrowded cloud) then I can’t see how it would be usefully linked by any religion to a test of the value of my mortal life.

    *Subjectively: added to counter infinite looping of a finite set of experiences

  36. I remember trying to imagine true “nothing” as a child (age maybe 5?). It wouldn’t be darkness, because there would be nothing to be dark. The best I could do was a kind of grey, like fog. But logically, there wouldn’t be sadness either, so it couldn’t be bad.

    Usually, I got to school before I got much further than that.

    1. I did the same thing but I would think of the time I was anaesthetized for an appendectomy. I spent a day just gone – no thoughts, no dreams, no sensations, nothing. I think death will be like that, where the me in me is simply absent.

      Even as a kid, I thought this wasn’t so bad. Not great, not something to look forward to, but if it was how the world worked then I was okay with that.

  37. Even back at a time when I was involved in religion (if I can remember back that far), I was unconvinced of the “life after death” part. And the idea of eternally worshipping God seemed as if it might be a bit boring. The theologians should consider dumping that harp muzak, and installing an Internet in heaven.

    Dumping religion did not give me any concerns over death. It just became a bit easier to accept what I had long suspected.

  38. [Curiously, though, an atheist friend recently told me that the rejection of gods had freed her from the fear of death.]

    That is exactly what happened with me years ago.
    Now I feel free to die, without fear.

    1. We ARE ALREADY, maybe not in HEAVEN, but in THE HEAVENS! If you don’t believe me, take a short trip to Mars and verify for yourself that EARTH is in the heavens.

  40. Atheism made me feel better about mortality. Made my wife feel worse about it. Go figure.

    Since a close friend of ours died suddenly last December, I’ve felt a lot less okay with it. Religious alternatives are still not particularly tempting, but I understand a lot more what my wife means when she says that oblivion is terrifying.

    I think some of one’s reaction is at least partially influenced by what you believed before. I was raised Mormon, so the afterlife scenario for me was just so absurd that it was a relief to not have to believe in it anymore.

    My wife, on the other hand. was raised in a fairly secular Jewish household, and spent quite a bit of time as a sort of feel-good vaguely pantheist before finally realizing that atheism was really the only plausible scenario (largely my doing, I’m afraid to say, and I’m not sure she’s ever forgiven me for it, hahahaha). So the metaphysical delusions she was discarding were a) pretty pleasant, and b) so unspecific that they couldn’t really be absurd, at least not in the same way that the specific doctrines of Mormonism can be.

    Dunno if that makes the difference or not, just an observation.

    1. “I understand a lot more what my wife means when she says that oblivion is terrifying.”

      I don’t think oblivion is in store for us (as generically conscious creatures) at death, but rather the continuation of consciousness in whatever forms the universe cooks it up, see my comments above to Tyro and others. What bothers me is having to give up all one’s hard won knowledge and trade it in for who knows what sort of necessarily ignorant subjectivity!

      1. I’m only half way through comments and I think you have whored your blog at least five times… I for one am not clicking on your link. As regards trading knowledge for ignorance – I think it is quite apparent to most of us that you have already done so.

        Please go away.

        1. Nick,

          I’m interested in the fact that some folks think of death as the onset of nothingness, which is what the linked article addresses. So I wasn’t being indiscriminate in linking to it, since in each case the person I was responding to mentioned oblivion or nothingness as following death. I was hoping to get some feedback and I certainly got yours, thanks!

  41. Worse. I became an atheist at 12yo and for the first two years I would panic every night at the idea of being nothing and no longer existing or thinking. It’s gotten better through the years, in that I’ve learned of ways to distract myself before I fall asleep so that I don’t think about it, but I can’t make it go away. The idea of not existing or thinking anymore is scarier than any notion of hell to me – even when I know that I haven’t existed or been able to think for every moment prior to my birth 25 years ago. I do think hell would be a better alternative to not existing, but I also know that this fear isn’t rational so I would never conform my beliefs to accommodate my fears.

    1. Also, THANK YOU for asking this question. I have never met another atheist who even vaguely understands why it might be scary. Of course I never came from a christian background, so my “YES I DON’T HAVE TO GO TO SCARY FIRE HELL” moment was never there as a comfort.

      1. My thoughts exactly. Hard to believe so many easily embrace the fate of nothingness. It terrifies me. I will be gone. It will happen. I really can’t imagine anything worse.

        1. “I really can’t imagine anything worse.”

          I’d like to posit that we cannot imagine our nonexistence at all. Also, there will be no you to experience “nothingness.” What’s to fear of something you will not experience? I’m asking seriously and do not mean to come across as discounting your experience.

        2. What exactly is so scary about nothingness? It doesn’t hurt, it isn’t boring, there is no hunger or fear, I really don’t understand why you’re afraid of it. You had 13.7 billion years of nothingness before your birth, was that a problem?

          1. No, that time before birth wasn’t a problem (although I wish I had been around). I had nothing. Having had something, existence in this case, I really don’t want to lose it. It’s the not experiencing that’s terrifying, annoying, frustrating, and rage inducing.

            The fact that none of those emotions will exist for me any longer is the point.

            I truly don’t understand why you’re not afraid of it.

            And I’m having difficulty coming up with a way to make you understand my perspective.

          2. If it helps Nathan, I get where you’re coming from.

            The fear of non-being is visceral. I think I’m a good way along the path to being free of it. But it isn’t nearly so easy to shake loose as easy references to Epicurus, Lucretius and Clemens make it seem.

            That said – I do accept, in principle, is the best shot we’ve got at overcoming the fear of death in a way that can stand up to scrutiny while also preserving our intellectual honesty.

          4. @Nathan DST

            Yep – I’m frantically typing this just before leaving the office, so I’m not proof-reading.

            Restating:

            That said – I do accept, in principle, that the advice of Lucretius is the best shot we’ve got at overcoming the fear of death.

            Well… Not entirely. False belief in an afterlife might actually be a good one. But that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. And it is a betrayal of intellectual honesty.

            Lucretius’ advice gives us a very good shot while also preserving our intellectual honesty. It also stands up to scrutiny.

            So I think it’s the way to go.

            It’s worked up to a certain point for me, anyway.

          5. I had to look Lucretius up, as I’m not familiar with him. Based on Wikipedia’s description, I don’t see how it would help, though I’m glad it’s helping you, however little. I see a cessation of existence as being a pretty bad thing. Sure, it’s intellectually honest. But it still doesn’t seem like it would help me overcome the fear of death.

            Just to be clear, I have no desire to live with a false belief in an afterlife. I prefer reality, whether I “suffer” in that knowledge or not.

          6. Oops.

            Sorry about the obscure name-drop.

            Bad of the speaking I be with sometimes of the ideas.

          7. (working around reply limits, gotta love it)

            Daniel, don’t apologize for dropping an obscure name. I didn’t really mind looking it up. Generally speaking, I enjoy learning new things, or of new things. Mentioning that I had to look him up wasn’t a “shame on you” thing, it was intended to highlight my ignorance so that if I said something that made no sense based on what you knew of Lucretius, you could call me on it and explain where I was wrong. I would have liked it if there had been something there to mitigate the fear (I count myself lucky that I’m able to avoid dwelling on it -mostly- and avoid anxiety attacks such as SaraX has).

          1. Silly question.

            The fear – for those of us that have it – is non-rational.

            We can’t explain it. It’s just there. It’s not the conclusion to an argument, it’s as part of who you are as your hands. Perhaps moreso.

          2. There are also good, rational reasons to be upset about one’s inevitable demise. I understand that you’re writing about a visceral, involuntary reaction to the idea of “not existing anymore.”

            I’m upset by the idea of my impending death because, here on the cusp of middle-age (early 30s), I’m really comprehending how short life is. Will I be able to accomplish everything I want to accomplish, experience everything I want to experience? No. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the field I love and in which I’ve invested my time and money, and earned my degrees, has no room for an anti-pomo type like myself who sees more objectivity than is popular. But I don’t have time to start over.

            Damn those shortening telomeres!

          3. Yes. I’m at the same stage of life, and I love my life (haven’t always -severe clinical depression, attempted suicide- but I do now). I know I won’t experience all that I wish to, and it sucks knowing that. I’d rather know than not know, so I can prioritize, but it still sucks that I won’t get to do all that I want.

        4. I’m with both of you on this one. Not existing is terrifying, and something I try not to think about. Sure, I didn’t exist before birth. So what? I exist now, and that’s the whole point. While I still want the option to die if I should ever find life to be unbearable, I still want immortality.

    2. Sara,

      “The idea of not existing or thinking anymore is scarier than any notion of hell to me.”

      I want to understand your point of view because I cannot relate at all. What is there to fear about not existing? There will be no you or me to feel fear or experience pain or even the slightest hint of discomfort. I’m not suggesting that you are wrong to be afraid – many (most?) people are instinctively afraid of death. I, like many others who’ve posted here, am afraid that the process of dying could be painful, but after that there will be no me to experience any sort of suffering. If it’s not pain you are afraid of, what are you afraid of when it comes to death? Not existing cannot, by it’s nature, be painful or entail suffering so I don’t understand what there is to fear. I would really like to understand.

      1. It’s not that I’m scared of not existing in the sense that “when I’m not around that will be so scary” because, as you mentioned, I won’t be around to know that.

        The fear is of the FACT that I will not exist, not what will happen at a time that I won’t exist. As others have pointed out, this isn’t completely rational because (like the Twain quote) I do not exist the majority of the time.

        Maybe this will help explain it: every night I lie down to go to sleep. I think about the day. The things that went well, the things that didn’t, things I want to learn from, etc etc. At some point, every night, I think “these thoughts… these ideas that I have for myself and to myself, they will just stop one day. I won’t be conscious of anything. I will not be.” It’s beyond whether my current life has meaning – I LOVE my life. But one day I will die. And the world will keep going. I won’t be able to reflect on how it is changing. I won’t know what turned out well, what didn’t, if I made an impact, if I didn’t. I won’t know anything, I won’t effect anything, I just won’t be. It’s not about pain or feeling good or bad or neutral, it’s just blank. Nothing. I don’t want to be nothing.

        And… I had a mini anxiety attack just writing that. I know that some people can just shrug and say “that won’t affect me at the point that it happens, and I can’t change it so whatever”. But I find it overwhelmingly terrifying.

        1. I think I see… I don’t get that feeling from considering my own demise, but thinking about the end of the planet, the erasure of the chain of living things affecting one another, so that life will be as if it never was, gives me the overwhelming horrors sometimes.

        2. SaraX:

          “Nothing. I don’t want to be nothing.”

          For some possible reassurance, see my replies in 6, 31 and elsewhere in this thread.

          best,

          Tom

          1. It fails as reassurance Tom, completely and utterly. It doesn’t matter in the least that others continue to have a subjective experiencing of existing, and always existing. How could it? They are not me, however I choose to define “me.”

          2. See my response to you @ 31 The reassurance I offer is for those who suppose experience ends at death, to be replaced by blackness, emptiness, etc.

  43. On a side note, I find the idea of my own eventual oblivion to be a little depressing, but I find the idea of the eventual oblivion of the universe to be horribly depressing. Proton decay in particular really bums me out.

    1. Like, totally agree.

      But personal experience of a few hundred years, and hope of scientific-cultural continuity of at least a few million, would be a lot better than some kind of division-by-zero nihilism…

  44. I have never been religious so I can’t say whether atheism has changed me.

    I will say that I don’t have any big fear of being dead. I think the act of dying could be painful (depending on what is killing me) and scary (since I enjoy life and expect I won’t want it to end). That said, once death comes there won’t be any wishing, any fear, any suffering, any me. It’s a strange thought but not a scary one and, in a way, not even a very unpleasant one. It’s what’s coming.

    I have occasionally wondered about Heaven or eternal life. I find the idea of a soul and what aspects of my personality might be in it to be delusional in the light of what we know of our brains and personality. But trying to push that aside, Heaven quickly sounds hellish. If it’s all luxury and contentment then there’s no challenge, striving or growth which would make me pop within a week. If there was growth, then it wouldn’t be a Heaven but just another world and then the eternity-clause would scare the crap out of me. What chance do I have to achieve successes when all the geniuses of history compete beside me? Challenges that may be interesting for a hundred, thousand or million years become mundane and torturous after a billion or trillion years. The prospect of there being no end to anything would be a torture. I can’t imagine facing that without going insane.

    Imagine the prospect of living so long that all possible word combinations have been said, all actions have been done, where you’ve watched random dust motes write the complete works of Shakespeare (and form the paper it was written on) and where you’ve had time to experience every possible permutation of thought and matter. And still there’s no end in sight. There will never be an end in sight.

    Now that is scary.

    1. Steve Zara had a wonderful piece about this, what eternity REALLY means. I can’t find it right now but when I do I’ll post, it puts spending eternity in heaven into great perspective.

      1. Got it.
        http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4293-where-does-evolution-leave-god/comments?page=8#comment_396912

        Comment 218 by Steve Zara

        I am impressed by your confidence about the future of the universe.

        But even so. Theism paints a far, far worse picture of reality.

        Life is brief. We don’t get to make our own meaning. It is imposed on us by a celestial judge. Life is one big test, every minute of it. Our every thought is under the microscope. And then we die. Let’s deal with heaven, as the other side of things is a bit nasty.

        We live for say, 80 years. 1000 years later we are in heaven, in some kind of drugged-up happy state worshipping god. 10,000 years later, the same. 1,000,000 years later the same. 100,000,000 years later, the same. Life has changed on Earth, and so have the continents. But in heaven, it’s just one happy drug party. 3 billion years in the future, the Milky Way collides with Andromeda. The heavens change, but not Heaven. 100 billion years, and most of the stars have gone out. Civilizations cluster around black holes to farm their energy. Heaven is still a permanent High. Trillions of Trillions of years, and perhaps the universe is more full of intelligent life than ever, as black holes provide vast energy. In Heaven we are still praising God, and he shows no sign of getting bored of it. 10^120 years, and the last black holes have evaporated. There is still potential for change, and so there might still be life, but with each thought lasting a billion years. God is getting a bit bored, so a promotes a couple of angels to become Seraphim. But on with the bliss and praising! Uncountable trillions of years, and a random fluctuation creates a point of inflation and a new big bang. But even this time is infinitely small compared with the endless bliss and praising the Lord that is our fate, our initial 80 years of life seeming of utter insignificance.

        If there has ever been an idea that renders life utterly meaningless it is theism.
        Monday, 14 September 2009 at 3:04 PM | #396912

        1. I entirely agree with Zara.

          I really started thinking about it after reading “From Eternity to Here” by Sean M Carroll (highly recommended). When he discussed Boltzman Brains (the spontaneous emergence of a disembodied brain through random interactions of particles), I wondered how horrible it would be to have to be alive and conscious trillions of years after all particles decayed into a thin soup of radiation with only these statistical fluctuations to look forward to.

          Then he discussed quantifying the total number of possible permutations of particles in the observable universe. While unimaginably large, it is still finite and given sufficient time, is bound to repeat. If it’s hellish to wait for a brain to spontaneously form, what about a planet, galaxy or universe? Yet, given time it will happen. The thought of sitting through that would be hell no matter how superficially pleasant heaven might be. Are any of our minds capable of going through that and still remaining sane?

          We’re told that there’s no meaning to our lives if we are just snuffed out but what meaning could there possibly be if life goes on forever and everything, literally everything, just repeats in endless succession?

  45. I have no problem at all with the idea of my own death. I won’t know that I’m dead. As Mark Twain observed, I’ll be as I was in the time of the dinosaurs or the Tudors, and I never noticed the slightest inconvenience then. There are a few more things I’d like to do yet before I check out. I guess if I knew I was going to die, like if I was falling from a tall building and had time to know it was all over, I’d feel a bit depressed for those few seconds. But the idea of being dead is emotionally neutral to me. In as sensitive a way as I can, I try to make my no-problem attitude towards my own death known to those I love, because I don’t want them worrying unduly about me after I’ve gone. I’m digressing. Back to the point. Atheism is an enormous comfort, I think, when contemplating one’s own death. The prospect of eternal consciousness is terrifying, more so as the serf of an eternally petulant tyrant. There is something peaceful and reflective about a life complete. It’s like learning history; it’s interesting but it can’t hurt you any more. I’ve no problem with my life being complete.

  46. “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” —Woody Allen

    Apparently Klingons see things a little differently:

    Riker: “Apparently he died in his sleep.”

    Worf: “What a horrible way to die!”

  47. I was raised in the sort of Christianity that took the Bible very seriously, and as a result my view of the ‘afterlife’ was pretty dreadful. Most of humanity, including most people I knew, looked destined to be tortured forever. Christianity is mostly very bad news.

    Realising that hell was just a cruel fantasy was an enormous relief.

    Does it bother me that I won’t be sitting in heaven praising Jesus forever? Nope. That aspect of the afterlife sounded extremely boring anyway. I find the opportunity to live one life well, here on Earth, satisfying enough.

  48. Now that I’m older (retired, kids left home and settled, joints ache occasionally) I’ve passed through the ‘Episode’ where I realise that I cannot improve my career prospects and my ‘drive’ will never be as strong again. I’ve realised that old age ‘prepares’ you for death by making everything less intense and meaningful.

    There’s a quite contentment and freedom in the realisation that ‘stuff’ isn’t that important any more. This blissful contentment would be seriously disrupted if I believed that there was some final judgement still to come.

  49. Being dead doesn’t bother me in the slightest, after all it’s my natural state, it’s being alive that’s odd. Let’s face it, if the universe were to end tomorrow, for the vast majority of the time it’s been in existence, I’ve been dead, that percentage isn’t going to change any. Being dead is just me reverting back to my normal state.

    That said, the actual dying part is the bit I’m not looking forward to. Like most people I don’t want there to be too much pain and suffering. That’s one reason I hate the religious types who tell me that I shouldn’t have any say over how and when I die. Should I be given the news that I have some terminal disease that cannot be cured, then I demand the right to say when I’m going. Just because someone else’s superstitions don’t allow them to pick and choose the time and method of their death is no reason for them to be given a say in my death.

    The original question is whether or not my atheism makes me feel better or worse about mortality. Religion never really took with me so I’m not sure I have anything realistic to compare it with. All I will say is that I look at religion (the Abrahamic ones anyway, I don’t know enough about any others and never come into contact with them) and what I see would scare the shit out of me if I believed. I reckon it must be a nightmare trying to follow these religions, forever worrying about, am I following the correct religion, am I doing it the correct way, have I picked the correct subset of this religion, is my god pleased with me, will my family/friends make it or will I be alone, etc. etc. etc.

    At least being an atheist takes all that worry away, when I die, that’s it, I’m dead.

  50. When considering questions involving atheism, philosopher A.C. Grayling describes a person asking for directions to a destination; the person asked replies, “Well, for one thing, I wouldn’t start from here.” By which I think he means that questions framed in relation to atheism aren’t a good starting point, atheism being a worldview defined by what you don’t believe, as opposed to what you believe. In my mind, your question becomes much more meaningful and constructive when you rephrase it: “What does (secular/naturalist) humanism have to say about mortality?” Such a question steers us clear from the existential, nihilist views to which you refer. Humanism, and not atheism, leads to the view that, as you say, “we have but one life, and we should enjoy it while we’re here.” I think atheism can only make you feel worse about your mortality; humanism on the other-hand gives true meaning (as opposed to “non-meaning”) to our lives, no matter how finite in length, and gives us the proper perspective with which to view our mortality.

    1. Humanism is your religion, then. And I mean that in a bad way.

      Actually, I don’t know what YOU mean by ‘humanism’, but as a biologist it sounds to me like any other form of chauvinism (racism, nationalism, sports fandom). I don’t have a problem with anthropocentrism (it’s the natural POV if you happen to belong to that species), but I draw the line somewhere near anthropo-boosterism. If we’re the only species in the universe with a written culture, it’s still the culture, not the species, that needs nurturing and protection.

  51. Camus believed that life was absurd & meaningless & he did ask if suicide was the rational & necessary response in a godless world, but his answer was more interesting ~ he concluded that escaping reality by embracing illusion, delusion, religion or death was not the way. Instead he believed we should live life with a passion. He is right.

    But, we have one up on Camus because we now understand that we are just another species of mammal ~ an ubersocial, reflective ape. Darwin has armed us with the intellectual tools to cut through the wishful thinking & examine the truth about what we are.

    I don’t know of any evidence for a forelife, an afterlife or for reincarnation; I conclude that I’m briefly on stage in the middle of act III as a minor spear carrier & then I’m gone ~ for eternity. I know with (almost absolute) certainty that one day our species & all other Earth life will be gone for good too. The fact that we are just scribbled margin notes in some vast book is a liberation ~ after all what alternative would be more satisfying or fitting ? One doesn’t have to think long about the concept of eternal life to realise that it is the definition of hell ~ and that’s true even if God doesn’t exist

    Fear of death is for children. Children think the world is there for them ~ to do their bidding. A thoughtful atheist who has had a dose of Darwin’s ‘universal acid’ (Dennett?) can really no longer live in fear. If you live in fear you are already dead.

    Follow the golden rule & enjoy the trip.

  52. I have never been religious (or spiritual), but I still fear death even when there is even a minimal chance that it will happen (airplane turbulence, severe illness). The idea that a lack of a belief in an afterlife leads to living more meaningfully in the current one is a platitude that I don’t find very helpful since (lacking free will) I do what I do, god or no god, afterlife or no afterlife.

  53. Frankly, I hope that there will be something done about this whole “inevitability of death” thing in the next century. I think that one of the worst things religion teaches is that the world is as it should be and trying to change it is worse than useless — that it’s bad.

    As an Aspie with limited social awareness, I made my peace with the idea that I will live to see my friends and family members die. I never quite understood the idea of grief — when a tragedy strucks, why making it even worse for myself by feeling bad? The loss will stay whether I will be devastated by it or not.

    Short version: my atheism gives me the resolution to live forever, or die trying.

  55. For decades, when I was basking under the delusion of having an eternal life (with the inconvenience of a brief interruption of having to move home to the other side), death never really occupied much of my thoughts. And neither did the first couple of years of my atheism, until that is I came across a very short sentence by Steven Pinker which went something like this (paraphrased):

    When the brain dies, the person goes out of existence.

    And its the “out of existence” bit that caused the damage. I had not comprehended the full implication of discovering the falsehood of religion, and therefore the falsehood of life after death as well. But it took one short sentence to bring to my attention the true horrific nature of human mortality:

    When you die, you go out of existence

    That notion has plagued my thoughts on a daily basis, and I can’t shake it off. I am inconsolable. And I honestly don’t think most people have given it deep enough thought to realise what that means, otherwise the would be (should be) just as horrified.

    And what makes this feeling so hard is the thought that the universe will continue to exist tor trillions of years to come, while your life and mine is just a blip in that scale.

    Sometimes I’m not sure whether its better to live in the comfort of religious delusion, or face the full and continuous impact of reality. Because the latter can be very disturbing and painful.

    1. But is it so bad to ‘go out of existence’? We were not in existence before conception, either, and to paraphrase Mark Twain it didn’t hurt us any. It will be the same after we die.

      At least we exist for a while, which is pretty amazing.

      1. You can find life amazing and still fear death. I don’t see why valuing one takes away from fear of the other.

      2. I feel there is nothing more horrific than the thought of “going out of existence”. And I find no comfort in knowing that I had not lived before. I exist, and I have the most powerful instinct to keep on existing (survival), to realise that my existence will terminate any day (accidents, illness, murder .. etc) is a very disturbing thought.

        1. I suppose the fear (or not) of nonexistence is an emotional thing that is not necessarily influenced much by reason.

          I think of death as being much like being put under general anesthetic — consciousness ceases. The transition is not so bad, and there’s no experience at all without consciousness.

          The experience leading up to an actual death might of course be full of pain and fear, but in that case the death itself would be a release from all that suffering.

      3. I seriously don’t get why that Mark Twain quote is seen by so many as the be all, end all answer. So what if I didn’t exist before conception and birth? I exist now.

        When I was a child, I knew nothing of the pleasures of sex. Should I not be devastated if someone told me I could never again, in any way, experience that pleasure again? After all, it would be just like it was when I was a child.

    2. I completely agree. I honestly think the reassurance of not having an afterlife is one that can only come from people who became an atheist after having been extremely religious. When you haven’t come from a strong religious background, the understanding that when you die that is IT is horrifying.

      1. When you put it that categorically, it can be refuted by one single example: I come from a secular background, have been aware of my strong atheism since before I reached puberty and am not horrified by the oblivion that death is. The knowledge that this life is the only one I’ll ever have gives meaning and poignancy to it. It gives me motivation to be more careful and responsible with the gift of existence that I have been given for this short while that is a human lifespan.

        Someone in this thread expressed as their opinion that if you are not devastated by the idea of inevitable endless non-existence then you haven’t really thought about it deeply enough. I’m sorry but it is not for you to dismiss other people’s emotional reactions and spiritual (using here a word that I actully loath…) journeys as lacking in depth if they happen to be different to yours. I am truly sorry that there are so many atheists for whom atheism seems to be a burden. I really had no idea, reading this thread has been a revelation. I cannot share you pain in this matter. I can only respect it. Please, show us similar respect and don’t suggest that not fearing death is akin to shallowness.

        We are here in an area so personal that it would be preposterous to suggest some reactions are right, others wrong. I’m guessing it is a matter of personality structure how one reacts to the lack of afterlife. It is a good thing though that the negative consequences (to some) of atheism are brought out in to the open. Perhaps for now there is some consolation in the fact that someone else feels the way you do.

        1. well said throughout. It is interesting that some here find non-existence a horror ~ that is an eye opener for me. This is one of the best threads I’ve read on WEIT.

        2. I felt comfortable being categorical in that statement because I don’t think you can, by definition, be a person who feels relieved by there being no afterlife if you have always been an atheist. Generally a feeling of relief only comes from having expected a different result.

          I didn’t say that to lack any fear in death you must have previously been religious. My point was that it’s harder (for me anyway), to connect with atheists who were previously religious on topics like death because our reference points are often very different.

    3. I thought about things that “I” did a decade ago and it occurred to me that I am not the same person that did those things. The person that was alive then is no longer alive, has ceased to exist, will never be seen again. The person that I am now will cease to exist as well. Like Theseus’s ship, we all change slowly but surely and over time the changes build so that we become a different person.

      It doesn’t bother me at all that the person I am today will surely go out of existence, just as it doesn’t bother me that the person “I” was when I was 3, 10, and 20 has gone out of existence. I’ve found many things to like about aging and I don’t see why others can’t do the same. It’s reality and I don’t see why it should be either disturbing or painful.

      Frankly, the more of reality you accept and the sooner you accept it, the less disillusionment and frustration you face. In the fight between you and the world, bet on the world.

  56. I’m a pretty standard atheist and don’t believe in any kind of afterlife. But one thing has always nagged me, like some annoying itch that refuses to be scratched: the utter improbability of THIS life, THIS me. When I contemplate the possible beings I could have been – and the associated suffering and general miserableness I could have experienced, not to mention unconsciousness or unawareness of actually being alive – I start to wonder if maybe we might be missing something. Maybe it’s the mathematician in me, but I can’t reconcile my good fortune in the vastness of improbability without some type of balancing mechanism – for example, an endless series of lives, of chances, of which this is only one. I know, I know, stupid. But it still nags at me.

  57. Although I was nominally religious as a child and teenager, I don’y recall any feeling one way or the other, when I realized that there was no afterlife. I think that I really never gave the Christian stories that I grew up with much credence — they were too cartoonish. In the present I don’t feel any disappointment in the lack of an afterlife.(It is difficult to conceive how a religious-style afterlife would play out, anyway — more cartoons.) I would, however, like to live a long life, say several hundred years at least, and continue to enjoy it.

  58. When I left the Catholic church in my early 20s, it was fairly shattering to realize that this life was all we had, and when you’re gone, you’re gone. That was nearly 30 years ago, though, and by now I find it a relief to be able to focus on this life without worrying about eternity. It also helped tremendously to realize that evolution has depended, as Carl Sagan said, on time and death. Death no longer seems like evidence of a fallen state, but as the price we pay for being here.

    Part of me will always want to know what happens next and how things turn out, and the thought of saying good-by to my family, especially my sons, is not pleasant, but on the whole, there is something restful about the idea of living my life as well as I can and then bidding it as graceful a farewell as I can and letting the coming generations have their moment in the sun.

  59. I think that my atheism makes me feel worse about my own mortality. While I do enjoy my independence and the intellectual freedom, I do not like the thought of dying for good. Of course, when I was religious I could pick and choose which ‘heaven’ was the real one so I didn’t have to believe in the Catholic God for instance.

    I’m an atheist because there isn’t enough evidence to believe otherwise in good faith. I couldn’t be a theist even if I tried to. It would be like denying fossils or something.

    Theism really is a joke. I decided to read an ‘academic’ book so I picked up William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith just to ‘read the other side’ and it said in the preface that even if all the arguments and evidence are against Christianity, we should still believe. If theism were true there would be better arguments to support it.

    But one thing I do miss is believing that there is something personal behind the beauty in nature and knowing that in the end, everything will work out and I will see my loved ones again.

  60. I am comforted by the belief that death will bring an end to awareness and being. I view it as a permanent deep sleep, a final reward of infinite rest, a liberation from the endless cycles of responsibility, want and need, struggle, striving, fatigue, and disappointment. At 52 years of age I’m already aware of the glossy and glamorous and enticing aspects of life losing their lustre. The broader perspective of additional decades of life brings a realization of the fleeting, temporary, contingent, arbitrary, and superficial aspects of most experiences or possessions one hungers for in youth.

    The idea of existing for eternity seems so preposterous when one actually envisions what it would be like in practice. An eternity of living seems like a horrifying kind of psychic torture. Regardless of the conditions, whether in a paradise of endless pleasure and gratification or as some kind of expanded consciousness in total peace and contentment, it seems that after some finite fractional sliver of infinite time, whether numbered in the millions or billions of years, one would eventually tire of being, one would perceive a repetitiveness and monotony, there would have to be a point of fatigue from endless reasoning and deciding and perceiving and knowing, and it seems perfectly natural to me that one would wish to cease to exist and cease to be aware. Even if there were a type of mind that could comfortably endure billions of years, such a mind would have to view the events and concerns of our lives, if it could have any knowledge of them at all, as a kind of thermal noise, like we would perceive the molecules of a gas, a frantic chaotic rapid accumulation of trivial interactions that may have some meaning in the aggregate, but whose individual participants are insignificant elements of a meaningless blur. It seems that our mode of consciousness and our type of intelligence is attuned to it’s proper scale in time and space, the lifetime of the human organism. In addition to the overwhelming evidence that our mental processes are the product of the operation of our brain, and that no part of them could exist outside the body, even the very concept of eternal life, endless consciousness, infinite awareness seems neither plausible nor comforting.

  61. Life is a joke. Life is only fun when you’re not thinking about it. When you are lost in a book, or when you’re amongst friends, or with a lover, or the lucky man walking across an ocean front, these are the things that make life bearable. For the rest of it, I could do without. I could do without the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. I can do without the cancer; or the knowledge that I am only a scan away from being a victim to it, from my ailing heart, the ultimate doom of this earth, and so forth. Life is only worth living when you’re not involved in the thought of the realities of this earth. If I die, let it be without much pain. Other than that, I look forward to it. (Focker out-)

  62. The thought of being dead doesn’t frighten me at all. However, dying as parting from loved ones is a sad thought. I certainly would prefer to die quick and without (too much) pain, but I would appreciate getting the necessary time to say goodbye and put some order in my affairs. My greatest fear about dying is being denied the right to choose for death – euthanasia or suicide – when confronted with the prospect of dehumanizing misery and dependency.

  63. My atheism has, indeed, freed me from having to waste my time worshipping “death” and begging to be included in the “Superfriend After-Life Club”.

    It has made me realize that wasting my time being high, working an extra job to afford crap I don’t really need, and fretting about toxic people only takes away from the only life I’m pretty sure I’ll ever get.

    What were those words of wisdom from “The Shawshank Redemption”?

    Get busy living, or get busy dying.

  64. Atheism helps so much. I had a Christian tell me the other day I should believe every word of the Bible, because she doesn’t want to take a chance on her own eternity and I should not either. Is that rational at all?! So silly. I really don’t want to die, but it’s the same right across the board – animals, plants, human animals – we all die. It’s just fact. Being an atheist gives me the opportunity to think about my life and about so many other things. I have Christian friends who have to work God into every single post on Facebook. That’s imprisonment. I can talk about whatever I want! It is freeing.

    1. Tell your Christian friend that you’ve decided she was partly right — but that you’re going to convert to Islam, as it is a newer religion and therefore the prophet Mohammed got the most-recent news from that particular god.

      Watch her eyes bug out in horror.

      Then you can explain why her particular version of Pascal’s wager is nonsense. It assumes that she has chosen the correct god — when there are thousands to choose from.

      1. I was going to suggest saying that you’ve converted simultaneously to Islam, Mormonism, and Judaism as well as Christianity, myself, then telling her that you’re just making sure that you’ve got all your bases covered.

  65. I am sure it is different for each person. For me, my atheism simply leaves me grasping for something nice to say at the passing of a loved one or a friends, a loved one’s friends. I am not one who can say “they are in a better place now.”

    For myself, the real fear of death existed when I did believe, and especially when I was young. Because death wasn’t the end was it. It was either an eternity of bliss (or at least not fiery eternal torture) or it was something like the lavish word paintings of hell cooked up by the priests of my youth.

    A by-product of my commitment to withhold belief until compelled by evidence has been that I am not concerned by what comes after my body shuts off. Nothingness doesn’t bother me. That isn’t to say there aren’t existential concerns: what will happen to the people I will eventually leave behind, will they remember me when I am gone? But I am not sure those kinds of fears and concerns are allayed even by belief.

    What I will say though that the trade-off, a focus on the only life we know we get, seems positively beneficial, fulfilling and and quite enough to be getting on with.

  66. My close friend, ex-lover, business partner, killed himself a year ago.

    Since, I think about mortality a lot of the time (but strictly speaking, have always done.)

    Years ago, I read somewhere that we are made of star stuff, as is the rest of the planet, and star stuff is what we are all destined to become. I found this idea immeasurably comforting when I was coming to terms with the end of consciousness.

  67. I’ve often said to my religious friends that, after death, I will be exactly the same as I was for all the eons before my birth. No-one seems to anguish over all the time lost waiting to be born.

  68. Apologies if I have said this before as I have posted it on quite a few forums (fora?), There is a passage in the Bible that emphasises that you should live your life to the full because you only get one life and when you are dead it is definitely over. Ecclesiastes Ch.9 Vs.4-10.

    A similar sentiment is expressed in the Pink Floyd song Time about a youth who bums around wasting his time until he realises that ten years have passed and he has done nothing.

    So my take is that you are very lucky to be alive so try to live life to the full. I don’t get sad that I only get one and it is finite, That is the way things are and you can’t change it.

  69. Better. The notion of eternal life cheapens this one. The main reason I would want to keep on living longer is because I want to know what’s going to happen in the future. I want to know what new innovations we’ll come up with, what new challenges we’ll face, and eventually, how and when will human existence come to an end (if it will??).

    But living eternally, while superficially sounding wonderful, I think would actually eventually be a torture. I don’t know if one could even determine the difference between heaven and hell in eternity. Any existence that lasts forever would be hell.

  70. I was always an atheist so I don’t know how I would feel as a theist. It reinforces not how I think of death but how I live my life. When I lost my father and it was very clear that the clock was ticking for all of us, I knew that if there were certain things I wanted to accomplish in my life, I better get cracking. And I did. I can’t imagine that thinking you would have an afterlife or a second chance would be anything but demotivating.

  71. “Does your atheism make you feel better or worse about your mortality, and why?”

    I would say both. Sometimes it inspires me to make the best of each day. Sometimes it makes me sad to think that I probably won’t see the 22nd Century. Either way, I’m much more scared of dying than being dead.

  72. In some ways it makes me feel better, and in some ways it makes me feel worse. On the one hand, I feel a real sense of urgency to live with a maximum amount of authenticity and awareness. It also makes me treat people better, because I know in the end there won’t be a god explaining all the weird shit we did to each other while we were on earth after the fact.

    On the other hand, there’s some anxiety attached to the shortness of life to me. Knowing that I only have this one life, I beat myself up a little bit wondering if I’m really doing my best or if I could do better. Also, making up your own value system and meaning can be challenging.

    In the end, it’s probably better to be honest with myself about all of this god business, even though being responsible for yourself can be a pain in the ass.

  73. Once I finally accepted that there was likely no God or afterlife I felt liberated (but only after several weeks of depression, I was raised a Catholic and I went down kicking and screaming). I always used to feel so much guilt if I “sinned” and always worried about whether or not I would get my ticket into heaven. Interestingly enough though, since I’ve become an atheist I consider myself a far more moral person. Understanding that this is our only shot at life has made me realize we need to do whatever we can to help other less fortunate regardless of their religion.

    As far as death is concerned. I wouldn’t say I fear it any more or less than I used too, but my outlook on death has certainly changed. While before I feared the prospect of hell, today I fear the prospect of no longer existing. I no longer want to die suddenly or in my sleep. The notion that I could go to sleep tonight and lose consciousness without warning terrifies me. As silly as it may seem I want to know when I am going to die so I can come to terms with it and prepare. I don’t want to die with so many things unachieved. I also want to take the time to say goodbye to those I love. Because this is beyond my control, my goal is to embrace this life and continue to love and cherish my friends and family every day.

  74. I take solace from words ascribed to Jack London (although sometimes credited to Ian Fleming!) :

    ‘I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
    I shall use my time.’

  75. I don’t seem to “fear” death, I just want to prolong life. I love life, and I especially love hopping in my PA12 and flying off to some destination in the Idaho wilderness.

    I want to do this forever, that would be “heaven” to me.

    But, being a conscious creature, and an old one, I know death will come, and way too soon.

    So my “morality” centers around this theme. I want to do everything possible to dissuade my fellow critters from imprisoning me in a cage for some act that “they” determine is against their “moral” code.

    In other words, the only “fear” I know is what my fellow beings might do to me to keep me from enjoying life.

  76. Atheism makes me savour the one life I have even though it’s difficult. Strangely it makes me more impatient With injustice and with wasting time trying to pretend that religion is in any way deserving of respect or accommodation

  77. Atheism makes me savour the one life I have even though it’s difficult. Strangely it makes me more impatient With injustice and with wasting time trying to pretend that religion is in any way deserving of respect or accommodation

  78. Hi;
    It doesn’t make me feel anything better or worse.I have understood since childhood that god and religion were a myth, not something to bellieve in. This has been reinforced by 83 yrs. of observation and study trying to understand what life and living are all about. If anything, there is a sense of freedom in having aquired some understanding, at least enough to be free of the confusion and psychological dicotomy of not knowing.
    Wilf

  79. I like to think of my life as a book and, hopefully, one that might make for a good read. (or, at least, joyously reflected upon prior to my demise)
    Good stories have a beginning and an ending – not necessarily a happy one, either.
    The idea of an infinite narrative, a story which never concludes is horrific. Certainly, a tale where the main character remained in a supernatural realm of eternal bliss, page after pager, would be a bore.
    Nope, this atheist is not especially eager to reach “The End” of my life story and, to be honest, there are those times when contemplating my own mortality is disturbing.
    I believe there are a few more interesting chapters remaining to be filled, so I’ll try to make ’em good ones.

  80. “Humans are, I think, the only animals that really comprehend their own mortality…”

    And when I was a kid, humans were said to be the only tool-using animal. Oops.

    In any case, atheism has removed any apprehension I may have had about death. Like Woody Allen, I’m not concerned about not being alive, only about the process of getting to that state. I, and everyone else, lose consciousness every night and no one’s concerned about that. Finally recognizing that death is just one of the ways to lose consciousness burnt out my last fantasies of life after death. It was difficult to maintain the belief in a state that clicks in only after you die, but not after you fall sleep.

  81. My atheism makes me feel worse about my mortality. I am new to atheism (5 years) and there are moments when I actually miss the belief that I can pray and that there is a god whom hears my prayers. Back then, I was comforted believing that I could “talk” to my Dad in heaven, who died in 1992. When he finally succumbed to cancer, I was consoled by the fact that he was in a better place with friends and family who loved him. Now, I think all too often of his body rotting in the earth. I am consumed with the randomness of life and the idea that we really do not have free will.

    My religious beliefs are gone and sometimes I miss them. But, just because they brought me comfort didn’t mean they were legitimate. I consider myself among the fortunate in that my mind was capable of opening up to new ideas. And for that I credit the DNA of my ancestors and the luck of the draw.

    I wouldn’t trade my newfound belief in science and reason (thank you Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Harris) for anything. Sheer luck led me to their books and forced me to abandon all my religious beliefs as I abandoned my belief in Santa Claus all those years ago.

    I feel liberated from the constraints of religious dogma. There is nothing but nothing when I die so I enjoy living everyday as if it is my last. Even though I am the only nonbeliever in my family (five siblings) and am sometimes excluded from family events due to my atheism, I am grateful everyday to be part of a community that prides itself on truth.

    But, I still miss the idea of god and heaven. It was so much easier to offer up all my suffering to god as a way of paving a road for me up to those pearly gates. Life is harder now since I can’t just pray away my problems.

    What’s interesting is that now I feel stupid just typing the preceding sentence. And, that’s a good thing.

  82. No, being an atheist makes me comfortable with my own mortality. I fully accept that when I die my physical existence ceases yet any sort of after life will consist of my actions – for good or worse & those memories maintained by people who knew me.

  83. Atheism released me completely from my fear of death, but a prolonged, expensive and boring “lead-in” to the actual moment is another matter entirely…

  85. I was born a Roman Catholic by default.

    Although I didn’t really believe in any of the things I heard in church during mass or in the catholic school that I attended, I always still assumed that there was this higher power and that I have to constantly try to make myself believe in it.

    Over the years, however, I simply just couldn’t genuinely get myself to believe it no matter how much I tried. It was only when I happen to pick up Prof. Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, that I realized that I am an Atheist.

    That “revelation” was pretty awesome at least for me personally. Realizing that I am one of the ones that is fortunate enough to have won the lottery of life and that I only have one shot at really understanding as best I can of how the universe works and how we all came to be makes life that much more valuable.

    To me, it makes my own inevitable death that much more trivial in comparison knowing that I did spend that one life I have really trying to find out as much as I can of how things really work.

    Religion and superstition are things that just get in the way of that.

  86. I haven’t had time to read all replies, and I have a feeling I’ll repeat a lot of what is said … but here goes:
    I’ve always been an atheist, have always known that there is nothing after this life. And that is all good.
    Sickness, pain, fear and suffering … not good.
    I held my atheist father’s hand when he died 13 years ago after a grueling, awful, fearridden year of illness. (I.HATE.CANCER. and what it does to strong, beautiful people). He was not afraid of dying. He was afraid of pain. And he experienced a lot of it before he died. 🙁
    I held my mother’s hand when she died almost three years ago. A few weeks before her death she said “I understand less and less of what all these religious people see in the idea of god.” She was an atheist too. I think the nothingness of death hit me hardest when she died. There was so much life in her … and then cancer took a good deal of it. And then she died. She was so, so, so gone when her heart stopped. There was nothing left of my beloved mother.
    Death is not bad. Illness is bad – and sorrow is hard.

  87. I think living too long might well be worse than dying. ‘Too long’ will vary for each of us, but for me, the idea of outliving my useful mind fills me with far more horror than the idea of no longer being alive.

    Belief in a god-given afterlife suggests that actual life is just a test. Bah. I’ve lost people I loved, but the idea that being dead somehow negates being alive, or is in fact *better* than being alive, is… just weird. My grandmother was a staunch and splendid person, and all that she did during her lifetime is just as real now as it was then, and there is no need to assume that her ‘eternal soul’ continues in order to validate her existence. I don’t believe any part of her still exists, but I think of her often and with love. That’ll do me.

  88. I agree with your friend. I am 84 years old and have had no fear of death for most of my life. I don’t know exactly when I was able to shake off the idea of God, gods or the devil but I know it was at least 70 years ago. I just ignored the idea then but serious study the rest of my life has convinced me I had been right all along. I still have a copy of an essay I wrote for myself using as the title the words of ML King; “Free at Last.” I still dig it out and read it occasionally.

  89. i can see that many people who were once religious and feared torture after death would feel relieved and liberated.

    but i’ve never had any of that. to me, ceasing to exist is the most terrifying thing i have to grapple with. i don’t see how anyone, having really understood this, cannot be equally terrified.

    ‘this is a special way of being afraid
    no trick dispels. religion used to try,
    that vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
    created to pretend we never die,
    and specious stuff that says no rational being
    can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
    that this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
    no touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
    nothing to love or link with,
    the anasthetic from which none come round.

    – philip larkin

    1. ” i don’t see how anyone, having really understood this, cannot be equally terrified.”

      I feel quite the opposite. I don’t see how anyone, having come to the understanding that nonexistence entails an absence of an ability to experience any sort of suffering – including fear – can be at all afraid of no longer suffering. I’m not suggesting that all of life is suffering, just that death entails no suffering at all (dying might entail suffering, but not death).

    2. Helen, quoting Philip Larkin:

      “this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
      no touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, nothing to love or link with,
      the anasthetic from which none come round.”

      IOW,the permanent cessation of experience; not likely – 6, 31 and elsewhere in this thread.

  90. Atheism has fullfilled my zest for life and gave me a reason to enjoy each day as if it was my last. Those who think about an afterlife or fear imaginary wrathful gods are just making themselves misearable.

  91. It’s interesting if you go to the funeral of a total screw up–someone whose life ended early because of drug abuse or violence they initiated–the preist will say something like, “even though they were troubled in this life, they are now with God”

    Justice in the afterlife flies out the window at that point.

    So as an atheist, it’s more appealing to thing we need to be responsible to ourselves and others in this life.

    As for fear of death, I will say to you what I said to the repelling instructor as I was frozen near the edge of my first rapell, “I’m not afraid if dying. I’m afraid of prolonged excruciating suffering in an end-of-life situation.”

  92. death still scares me, I’ll do my best to keep it at bay for as long as possible. Sure, I am free of the fear of perpetual torment (not to mention the fear that my dead family members i heaven can see me masturbate) but it’s still a bit creepy. Now, I do (try) to ascribe to the Mark Twain philosophy about not fearing death anymore than I feared the infinity of time when I wasn’t born, but some times, in the wee hours, all alone, it’s a bit spooky, but spooky along the same lines as trying to imagine the vast amount of space and the universe. But, yes, overall, death has far less power over me now than when I was religious, even if I was never that religious…I didn’t even know easter was a religious holiday until I took a philosophy class in college.

  93. Heaven has always appeared to me as a gift for those who perused life in a secure, religious environment. This by extension has divided humanity when we practice such religious text and beliefs. Had we be more concerned to make our current living situations on this planet a ‘heaven’, we wouldn’t romanticize death nearly as much as religion has done.

    Still, death is very final and I wish to avoid it as long as possible, it satisfies me enough that my memory can be preserved through others who knew me well until they die and then their memory is preserved. Circle of life, for a lack of better terms. As well, I can go through life trying the very best to serve my earth as a ‘heaven’ for others. Why should such a glorified world be limited to something no human life actually experiences, at least on this side of the universe? It’s cruel and selfish to think as such.

    And by ‘heaven’ I mean this peaceful, understanding environment. Maybe harmonious would have been a better word?

  95. I’ve been an atheist longer than I’ve contemplated my own mortality, so I couldn’t say “better” or “worse”.

    But I’m with Epicurus here (although I hadn’t realised that until I’d read de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy earlier this year): Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo. (And Tom Clark, there’s no need to link to that article again; I just don’t find it convincing.)

    But also Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

    What weighs on my mind are the things that will be left undone (that book by Coyne that I always meant to read!) and the loved ones left behind (should they miss me).

    /@

    1. Of course the article is intended to reinforce Epicurus’ insight. A common secular mistake regarding death ((which all those I responded to above seemed to make) is to project the subject that dies into a situation following death, a situation of no experiences, of oblivion, of the “dying of the light.” Epicurus “prefuted” Dylan Thomas, saying “When I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not,” but people need reminding of it. The thought experiments in the article, similar to what Derek Parfit uses in Reasons and Persons, bring out some possible implications, which you’re not alone in finding unconvincing. But at least there’s nothing supernatural involved.

      1. Well, that wasn’t the impression I got from the article, but perhaps I need to reread it when I’m less tired and have more time to reflect upon it. Normally I have a lot of time for your comments, Tom, and for naturalism.org, but you seem strangely over eager about this. (I’m not too surprised about nick bobick’s comment.)

        I think I get your point, that we don’t actually experience anything after death as we’re not in a situation that… well, we’re just not. But I agree with JS1685’s reply to you elsewhere, I think you’re arguing against an idiomatic straw man. At least, there is some ambiguity in ordinary language; and oblivion can mean extinction (we are not), not just a state of being unaware (we still are).

        But I really struggle with the leap from Epicurus’s non sum, non curo to “some kind of continuation of consciousness”. I’m not sure this isn’t supernatural… (but, as I said, maybe I need to reread the article).

        Nor do I think that Epicurus “prefuted” Thomas. The “dying of the light” is the journey not the destination, while we still are. And this is something to fight against, not because we fear death, but because we love life.

        /@

        1. “I think you’re arguing against an idiomatic straw man.”

          Don’t think so since I present many examples in the article of those who compare death to blackness, nothingness, etc., as does Paul Edwards in his paper that I mention. Agreed that there is idiomatic slack such that some of these expressions are really just about non-being, not nothingness, but I don’t think that explains the majority.

          As to being overeager, yes, I’ve become sensitized to noticing the nothingness mistake and trying to correct it, so Nick’s comment, although pretty harsh, is a useful reminder to practice restraint in the future.

          If you should re-read the article and find anything supernatural going on, please be in touch.

          2. Tom, I wonder if you could expand on your point a little, since this one of your articles I struggle to follow, although you points on nothingness are well taken.

            I’ve been pondering materialism and the afterlife (for a project) and generally I find no reason to believe in it for those of us who rely on evidence (all of us here, I think). But there seems to be a *logical* possibility of an afterlife, based on copied patterns of atoms, that provides for a continued ‘person’ after the original has died. What’s your criteria to define the *person*, as a materialist, contra the body? Or perhaps you identify the body with the person? How does that accommodate the changed material of the body throughout life?

            Thanks in advance.

          3. Hi Mark,

            Roughly, and as I describe in the article at http://www.naturalism.org/death.htm#transformation , I’d say a person persists as *that* person when they can be identified as being the same person psychologically and physically, a matter of degree of course. There may not be a clear point at which someone stops existing or instead gets transformed into someone else (TCmod vs TCrad). There’s of course debate about whether and how much physical characteristics (body, face, voice, carriage) count toward personal identity.

            Since a person is a stable psycho-physical pattern at a fairly high level, molecular identity isn’t critical, which is why we persist as the same person even as all our constituents get replaced and some modified drastically (e.g., our brain shrinks) as we age. So were you to be roughly reconstituted after death such that your personality, memories and basic bodily characteristics were replicated, that would be an “after life,” or more accurately, just more personal continuity taking up from your pre-death regular life. You wouldn’t notice the interregnum except as the fact of waking up in perhaps very different circumstances.

            Hope this helps!

          4. That’s great, thanks Tom.

            This is roughly the view of the person I’ve been most persuaded by. Given this, though, what are the ramifications of the replica problem? If we follow a descriptive view of identity (which I think is what you advocate in the article?) there is the possibility of recreating one person in two (or more) bodies after death. Both would claim to be the original person, and they would be, wouldn’t they? This seems wrong (!), but I think we would have to concede there is one person at that point in two bodies (but now splitting into two persons). But if the person committed a crime before death, both bodies could be charged for it?! It raises some interesting conundrums.

          5. “It raises some interesting conundrums.”

            To say the least. Have you read Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons? Identity puzzle cases proliferate there and I can’t recall his overall solution to them. I think he says the question of identity isn’t the most important thing, especially since in some cases it’s undecidable. What we most care about, perhaps, is having a continuer we can identify with, whether or not it really counts as me. That’s why “generic subjective continuity” might hold some attractions for those who fear extinction at death.

          6. Thanks again Tom. Parfitt’s on my reading list, but I’m aware of some of his thoughts on persons – as you say, he seems to think that personal identity isn’t the important thing. I’ve been working my way round to that way of thinking, but it’s hard to drop it!

  96. My “aha” moment came on a plane that had lost one engine over Lake Erie. We had heard a loud *bang* and then the lights flashed on and off, I guess the pilot was trying to restart the engine. Everyone was totally silent. Then they announced we were being diverted to Cleveland. We had 30 minutes of circular flying to our destination and I’m sure most of us had seen <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddpvP2UPHcY"Sioux City crash footage (@22:40)

    Next to me was a 12-year-old boy who was part of a hockey team on its way back from Toronto to Dallas. The team was spread around the plane, and I realized if we were going to crash he wouldn’t have anyone he knew with him. So I decided if I was only going to live 30 more minutes I would spend it keeping this boy from feeling afraid and lonely. I asked him questions about his team and his school and how freaky is it to play hockey in Texas… and the time went really fast for me, and I hope for him. He actually guessed the likely cause: geese, which I think was right.

    Anywho, the plane had a totally perfect landing in Cleveland, and airport I’d been to many times and always had turbulance on the landing. This time it was the smoothest landing ever. There were emergency vehicles lined up on both sides to greet us, but they weren’t needed. The passengers broke out in applause for the crew, or maybe just relief.

    There was no gate for us because all flights had been delayed for our sake. The people who had (I assumed) been praying all that time started to get cranky. Inside, the poor gate attendant had to put all 220+ of us on other flights and that was NOT a hub city. Plus, most of us were going to Texas and Dallas was having a bad thunderstorm and flights had been cancelled for that too. I went to the bathroom and wound up at the end of the line and saw these people really giving this woman crap. “I *have* to get to Denver by 5:00” blah blah blah. I wanted to slap them and say “You could be DEAD right now! What would happen in Denver THEN?”

    *sigh* Anywho, I look at my whole life as being those 30 minutes. How will I spend it? Sometimes I waste it but I don’t worry that I need to spend it getting into the good graces of a vain, self-centered, and incomprehensible magical being.

    In the end, we are with ourselves in our final moments and we have to face ourselves (not our “maker”) and ask “was it time well spent?”

    1. You’re “lucky”! That kind of experience definitely focused your mind on death, and you got to do it for 30 minutes! That’s heaven compared to my 10 minutes underwater after stomach cramp in public pool!

  97. Both. I’m SOO scared to die because it odds to think that you won’t be conscious anymore. But on the other hand, it makes us realize we should live the best life we can!

  98. When I was a child at a Roman Catholic school, the priests worked very hard at terrifying us with visions of hellfire and eternal torment.

    Several decades later, it’s the Christian vision of heaven that I find truly appalling. We are supposed to welcome the prospect of spending all eternity singing the praises of some celestial despot.

    No thanks. I sympathise with the words of Milton’s Satan, in Book I of Paradise Lost: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven”.

    Are there any fun things to do in heaven?, I ask my Christian friends. They believe in the place, so surely they should be able to tell me something about it.

    Recently I asked one of them if there is any beer in heaven. I like beer, and I have no intention of going somewhere where I can’t drink a decent pint. My friend looked at me as if I had just lost my mind.

    1. It’s a strange thing that Christians who regard the idea of heaven as being of utmost importance to giving meaning to our lives, have such vague ideas about what this heavenly existence will be like.

      Okay, so you die, you’re in heaven now. What’s the plan? What are you going to do now? Walk around? Go to a concert? Get a haircut? What’s the purpose of this life now?

  99. I’m one of those people who lost my fear of death with my religion. As a christian you are told that you will be reunited with loved ones fter death, but you know heaven is only one (and the least likely) of several afterlife optons.

    What if a loved one didn’t (or doesn’t) make it. How would I enjoy “paradise” without them? How are my dead loved ones expected to be enjoying it without the rest of us?

    As an atheist I don’t need to worry that god might be torturing my grandparents.

  100. Been raised in a progressive Catholic family (ineffable ground of all being & hell is being apart of God, etc.) I remember theological discussions with a brother when we were like 7 & 8 years old when we were expressing our doubts about the whole thing being a crock to each other. Went through the motions to keep parents happy, but that’s about it. I do not remember a time I actually “believed” any of the crazy stories and rationalizations, so am hard-pressed to say how becoming an atheist made me see death.

    On the other hand, it’s really easy to see how a better understanding of nature and reality (by about 15 or 16) made me feel about life – and how precious it is. A defining learning experience was watching my mother slowly and painfully die over the course of 5 years starting about then – from unknown multiple causes loosely attributed to lupus (for lack of any better diagnostic criteria at the time).

    She was pretty set in her understanding of an all-loving God and could not square what was happening to her with her conception. Her belief-caused cognitive dissonance tormented her to no end. She needed a *Reason* why bad stuff was happening, and was really grasping at straws (like it was making her family stronger or some crap like that). Finally some priest had a talking to her, and described some kind of conception of a God that did not have to have reasons, per se — and that if she was crying, God was crying right along with her. It helped her. She stopped trying to explain everything, and the mental anguish seemed to abate somewhat.

    My take-home lesson was what a crappy deal religion was, in such an important time. Fleeting moments wasted over nothing, instead of trying to eke out better, more meaningful moments out of the background of suffering. So if there’s one thing atheism has given me, it’s a sense of relief that if something similar happens to me, I won’t be burdening myself or others near me with such meaningless, meandering, easily-dismissed and shallow conceptions. Life is too short for such babble.

    How do you spell relief? A-T-H-E-I-S-M

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