“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?
I know there will be an end and I’d rather live longer than 90 or 100 years, but to know that this end will be the right one is comforting. But for sure, I fear the death to be painful.
I don’t care much about my mortality, I guess due to the fact that I recognise life as “pointless” in the literal sense, not in the sense that it isn’t valuable, because it is – to the living (that’s us).
I’ve learned recently that a lot of Fundie types don’t believe they’ll spend eternity in Heaven- they say that Heaven is God’s waiting room, where all the good people who have died hang around until the Last Judgement, after which God will descend to create the New Earth, which will be just like this one, only better.
Ironically, it was reading C.S. Lewis’s “The Last Battle” which first woke me up to the fraudulent nature of the idea of Heaven.
I loved the Narnia boooks, and in that last one, the tension kept rising, things kept getting worse- “How will they ever get out of this?”- and in the end they didn’t.
Narnia was destroyed, but Aslan brought them into the New Narnia, bigger and better than ever- andf then of course you go further up into a Newer New Narnia, and then another etc.
I remember thinking at the time “What a crock- I want the Real Narnia back, not some ersatz copy.
Professor Kirke kept mumbling “it’s all in Plato”, but even then it seemed more like a soap commercial- “Now, bigger and Brighter than ever! With 32% more Fauns!!”
I was raised Catholic. I don’t know when I stopped believing in God. But not believing has been truly liberating. I don’t fear death — it’s as someone stated above, something “emotion-neutral.” But I don’t want to die — not for a while anyway. I love being alive, not just joy, but also the pain, which has been almost overwhelming at times — and still I am besotted with life. The ephemerality of life does pain me, however, because I can’t conceive of anything more wonderful than being alive.
Not sure when I transitioned from Catholic Altar Boy to atheist (I do know the transition – or at least my questioning – started when all of the sudden it became ok to eat meat on Friday), but I do know when I became comfortable with the idea of death as oblivion.
I had some minor surgery a number of years ago, with general anesthetic. Once knocked out, it seemed that I immediately woke up, but it was actually about 45 minutes later.
I quickly realized that rather than 45 minutes, it could have been 45 seconds, 45 hours, 45 years, or 45 millenia and I wouldn’t have known the difference.
That’s why they call it oblivion. You won’t know. And I’m cool with that.
I fear a sudden unexpected death. I want to accomplish a few things in life first, and I want a chance to say goodbye, and maybe write a little. My atheism doesn’t erase my fear but it does make me braver. Even the universe will die someday. I’m just like everyone and everything else.
In his paper, Challenges for Secularism, Philip Kitcher points out certain problems that might arise when one speculates about reunions with deceased loved ones after death. He talks about Charles Kingsley’s regrets that T.H. Huxley could not derive any consolation from the anticipation of meeting his dead son Noel in the afterlife.
“Moreover, any reunion would apparently confront two strangers with one another, a parent whose life had extended in different directions after Noel’s death and a child who would no longer occupy the emotional space vacated by his early death. Perhaps human understanding of the conditions of the reunion is defective, and the characterization just given is inadequate, but that is surely no help in providing consolation for the bereaved.”
Other problems could arise. Some years ago, my father and I attended the funeral of a lady whose husband had passed away only a few weeks earlier. She had been his second wife, his first wife having been dead for nearly 20 years. At the funeral, there was a speech in which a family friend noted that the recently deceased husband had gone ahead to make preparations for his wife in the afterlife. After the funeral was over, my father turned to me and said that he wondered what the first wife was doing while her newly arrived husband was preparing to receive his second wife.
Not to mention, if you join your deceased relatives, and they’re with *their* deceased relatives, and so on going backwards in time doesn’t that get a little complicated and crowded? It would be even worse than meeting all your third-cousins at your second cousin’s wedding.
I never really believed in an afterlife, so I can’t not remember a time where I wasn’t aware of my own mortality. So I’m not sure what atheism has to do with it, nor can I see how the religious beliefs actually help in any meaningful way at all.
Dying, for me, isn’t something I really want to do – it’s something I can accept in some fatalistic way, and until then just try to enjoy life for what it is. The bigger concern is dying prematurely, being snuffed out by accident or illness and will miss out on some of the possibilities that make life worth living. Being dead sounds the easy part, living with mortality of others is much tougher.
I have some fear of dying, but none of being dead. I am definitely going to miss being around, but since I won’t be around I’m going to have to do all of my regretting while I’m still here. Seriously though, I’m 56 years old and for 45 years, give or take, religion has seemed sillier every year.
My atheism does not make me feel better or worse about mortality. I have never been a theist and I cannot imagine really believing in an afterlife, so it’s hard to say whether I would be comforted by the belief.
For me, atheism definitely makes me feel better about dying.
When I was a catholic I was told God was watching me at all times and keeping note of everything so I could be judged after I died, and so I was constantly under pressure. It was pretty distressing. The fact that we were told everyone is a sinner and only Jesus is perfect didn’t exactly help. You had no way to know if you were up to the standard.
There are a million stories involving kids terrified of dying as sinners. My own mother told me once she was so afraid she went to the priest every time she hit her sister or threw a stone to a cow, because if she suddenly died as a sinner she would go to hell; she would go to the confessional booth three, four times a day. The priest sometimes would feel exasperated and tell her all her sins for the week were forgiven in advance and for god’s sake don’t come back here again in less than a week.
There was also anxiety involved, the same kind of anxiety you feel when you have a math test and you don’t know really if you’re going to do well. Except you get that anxiety for a couple of days before the test, not for your entire life.
The idea that I will eventually no longer exist is a huge relief. There will be no me to suffer fear, depression, insomnia, the common cold, the urge to urinate, embarrassment, loneliness, headaches, muscle aches, anxiety, uncomfortable thoughts, disease, or any other sort of emotional, physical, or psychological pain or distress. As a bonus, though I will no longer experience happiness or joy, I will not be aware that I won’t be experiencing pleasant feelings because there will be no me to regret the loss of happiness and joy. I will not experience a sense of loss or a feeling that I’m missing out on anything (you know, the stuff that all those living people will be doing) because I simply will not be. I won’t miss my life because there will be no me to miss it. It is truly liberating to know that my life will have a definite, final end. There will be no more me and I think that’s great!
Atheism forced me to confront my fear of death.
In so doing, I learned to manage it.
I now think I have a much, much better handle on death than I ever would have done if I had never let go of the idea of an afterlife.
Compared to how I think I’d feel about having a positive or even neutral afterlife (as most believers think they will get), my atheism leads me to feel worse about mortality. The concept of my experiences ending is a negative one for me to ponder, though of course once it happens I won’t be around to care. That said, I don’t find it especially depressing, nor am I concerned by the ultimate meaninglessness of everything, since it serves no purpose to worry over things I can’t change.
It wouldn’t change anything for me since I have never been a believer so I cannot state whether I’m missing something from a prior belief. I will just repeat what Michael Shermer keeps saying in his books and interviews in regards to life after death, “I’m for it.”
Takes years for me to remove fear of death instilled by mix of catholic and islam upbringing. Death in hell is the main theme given by both. There were times that fear of hell felt real.
I kind of understand if in the past – where life are generally short brutish and cruel – men are helped by these ideas, even if they’re totally wrong then as now. Nowadays, these threat of hell is total cruelty.
And now I believe that these cruel threats are of juvenile variety. The religions that espouse them are juvenile too. Not all religions are juvenile, even if they are still not right. Buddhism and Taoism come to mind.
In old age, juvenile ideas no longer interesting, and I find that the lure of heaven is as empty as threat of hell.
Implication of atheism, no gods, no heaven no hell, is not only factual, it is actually liberating as well. As is science in general. It is not only true, it also feels right ..
There’s not enough evidence to know what happens after we die, but the conjectures by other humans are certainly inaccurate and self-serving. As atheists we have the present, and that’s it. Buddhists as nontheists make a considerable effort trying to maximize their experience of the present, the now. Yeah Buddhists have their own issues with weird stuff, but it’s a start.
As empiricists we can only attempt to live fully in the only time frame we really know exists, the only thung we can experience is the present, and we can enjoy it’s infinitude.
Relax and enjoy.
If there is no heaven or hell, then religion has lost its last toe hold on people. Scaring people about storms and volcanoes are now explained by science. It doesn’t stop being scary, but at least we don’t cower from an imaginary god.
Priests I have confronted are so angry when they can’t scare me with how I will go to hell because i don’t believe in Jesus. They have nothing left but empty threats.
Whilst i don’t want to die just yet, I have prostate cancer which has hopefully been caught in time to cure it(?), I am fully resigned to being worm food when my body dies.
No-one can prove either way whether there is something else after death (hmm just like god) so I assume the worst and make the most of my time here, and try and leave this planet a bit better than I found it?
And if there is an after life? Well like Christopher Hitchens, I like surprises…
In 1992, whilst undergoing an angiogram, my heart stopped beating. Thanks to medical science and the skill and dedication of the theatre team + a defibrillator, sinus rhythm was restored after 1, or more, shocks.
The most beautiful sight that I have ever seen was the inverted and distorted view of the theatre sister’s face massaging anti-burn cream into my chest, as I regained consciousness. The cardiologist was watching and simply told said, ‘don’t worry Mr Walker, you’ve just had a bit of a faint’. I didn’t ask ‘a faint what’?
Although my little slice of death was temporary, the heart cannot self-correct and, without the de-fib, and the theatre staff, it was have become permanent.
Whilst I was hovering betwixt and between there was absolutely nothing there, which is a very liberating thought, at least when the penny dropped as to the significance of the experience.
I suppose had there been a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ I would have assumed that it might have been a bailiff with a torch.
One interesting observation that I was able to make is that whilst I was starting to come round I could hear the technicians calling out my BP and heart rate, which were very low (I later went on to work in cardiac rehab as a counsellor and fitness instructor). There wasn’t another sound in the theatre although there were by now double the number of staff present, and I can think of more pleasant ways to become the centre of attention!! :o)
Just out of curiosity, how do you know you were aware when you were dead? If there was nothing, as in, nothing substantial at all, than you couldn’t have been aware of it. If in fact you have no memory of anything of substance, i.e. an afterlife, it just means you were unaware, and anything could have been happening. I’m just curious as to why you think you were dead, there was nothing, and yet you were aware. I don’t think I’m following the logic of there being nothing and yet you were aware. If there was truly nothing, you would have no recollection and be unaware of even being ‘dead’ would you not?
My take was that Ian’s ‘awareness’ only returned with his consciousness. Without that, there was nothing.
I don’t think he said that he had been ‘dead’. The ‘slice of death’ was a metaphor for near-death nonexperience.
Ray & RJ: – just to fill in the gaps a bit. I was being talked throught the procedure by the Senior Registrar when I felt incredibly tired and basically lost consciousness when my heart started to fibrillate. The effect is the same as cardiac arrest – not a good sign.
It was my own Dr. who talked about my being dead simply because the heart cannot correct the rhythm. Defib arreats the heart and if you are really lucky the brain starts it again. This type of occurrence is fairly rare but well documented and I guess I was born lucky.
There’s a 40% chance that it won’t! Without the defib there’s a 100% chance that it won’t.
I only started to regain consciousness when oxygenated blood reached the brain. So I wasn’t ‘brain dead’, although there are some who might argue the point, just heading that way. There was no OOB or near death experience just a near death non-experience as Ray said.
It makes you realise just how wonderful this planet is!!
Quite a story! Thanks for sharing it.
When I was an agnostic theist my body was merely a worthless container holding an eternal soul within it, waiting to be judged by a perfect entity with infinitely high standards.
When I became an atheist not only did I stop thinking of my body as a worthless container but I realised I *am* my body. My body and the bodies of others became infinitely more valuable to me. Without an absolutely perfect entity making me feel infinitely inferior the deep feeling of failure and unworthiness I had left me, so I no longer needed the love of God to feel worthwhile.
I now know I am a remarkably improbable creature, with perfectly average shortcomings, and an overwhelming appreciation for life and the universe.
I gave up being loved by Mr Perfect so that I could become Mr Average, and it is amazing!
“Does your atheism make you feel better or worse about your mortality, and why?”
The only thing about one that seems relevant to the other is the “you are not immortal” part.
That part makes me feel about my mortality that it’s a thing. Without that part, there’d be no mortality to feel anything about.
I’m not a fan of mortality as such, but I know too much medicine, machine and D&D to think that any system which does THINGS can be immune to doing them wrong once in a while, especially under external influence.
Definitely makes me feel better. I know that when I die, I will just be turned-off like a light bulb, I will not know I’m dead, I will not suffer, I will just no longer ‘be’. That’s nothing to be afraid of.
I am however afraid of the process of dying, especially a long, drawn-out, painful disease.
The Christian idea of an eternal afterlife would scare the living daylights out of me.
In its most favourable form, it would still mean living forever after in the company of the megalomaniacal mass-murderer who presumedly once committed genocide on the total world population. As an eternal way of life! Never ending! No prospect of it ever changing! Crazily enough, there’s no future in it, to my mind it does’t make life worth living.
I made a video explaining my journey from agnostic theism to atheism. Ironically, it was the Quran that helped to lead me there
Does your atheism make you feel better or worse about your mortality, and why?
Better because I see it as a natural event. It is weird because it will only happen once, but it as natural as being hungry, sick or sad.
We don’t talk about it much, or perhaps think about it much, but after dealing with mortality without the panacea of life after death–a very large dragon to eat, indeed–is the existential crisis that comes next. This has been the most difficult for me: the pressure to have an excellent life on the first go, since there are no second acts.
A gift for you from the wilderness…
Satan has deceived the whole world Rev 12:9 until a woman delivers the true word John 1:1, Rev 12:5, Rev 12:13 from the wilderness Rev 12:6 at the heel of time Gen 3:15. God our Father will not put any child of his into a hell fire no matter what their sins. It never entered the heart or mind of God to ever do such a thing Jer 7:31, Jer 19:5. I invite you to check out the bruising of Satan at http://minigoodtale.wordpress.com
That is no gift. That is a retelling of fictions that have no basis in reality. Do you hand sew your clothes? Ride a horse instead of driving a car? People typically embrace the improvements in knowledge that make their lives better. We know now how the brain works, how memory works, and the people who wrote those bible quotations and pronouncements knew nothing, absolutely zero about how the brain works, how memory works.
Who you are, what makes you unique, is not found in the cursory examination of your innards, your body parts, skeleton, organs. Yet who you are is a physical phenomenon: your memory. Your memory is as physical as the calcium ions that make it function. When you die, those calcium ions don’t flee, don’t transfer to another world. And the “ancients” who wrote the bible quotations had as much knowledge of memory as they did of Antarctica. Thus, everything they wrote about “Afterlife” is 100% certainly wrong. No wiggle room: 100% wrong.
People who accept flying in airplanes, who accept that bicycles travel upright (called “Devil Carts” in 19th century Islamic regions) who use cloth made on mechanical looms, seem to have no problem accepting new information regarding “macro” physical phenomena, yet steadfastly refuse to accept discoveries written up in tens of thousands (TENS of THOUSANDS) of scientific papers about brain function and memory. And those papers all indirectly point to materialism in life, and no eternity, no life after death.
Cowardice is the only reason for the failure to accept that there is no life after death.
Can you write a coherent paragraph yourself or do you just quote the Bible out of context as if that will mean something to people who understand it to be the work of human beings, some of whom were deceitful and some may have been psychotic?
Posts like that are why atheists point and laugh at Christians.
A gift to you from rationality…
“My thesis will be that events we commonly call miracles are not supernatural, but are part of a spectrum of more-or-less improbable events.” – Chapter 6, The Blind Watchmaker
Did you feel that my quotation had nothing to do with your view of the world? Did you think the quotation pointless? That’s how non-believers feel about Biblical quotations. However important you feel your quotations to be, we just don’t value them. You may find this difficult to believe, but it is true.
And, by the way, ‘The Blind Watchmaker’ is not a non-believer’s holy book or scripture.
My realization that there is no afterlife, no life after death, reasonably proceeds to the fact that there is no supernatural place, being, gods or god, and no need for the structures of religion.
So my atheism is a consequence of understanding that there is no life after death, rather than typical person’s first establishing that there is no god, then worrying about “life after death” as a ‘feature’ of atheism.
Unfortunately for the world, religions tend to use “wisdom” (e.g. ‘look before you leap’, ‘slow and steady wins the race’) to gain accreditation for possessing “knowledge”. There may be wisdom in homilies and fables, but no knowledge.
Accumulated scientific knowledge that memory, brain processes, physical structure and operation of the brain means that all phenomena within ourselves (“Me”) is explainable in real material terms, one hundred percent. No metaphysics whatsoever. In ancient times, before microscopes, scientific knowledge, the human “self” seemed as supernatural as lightning, storms, floating clouds, rainfall, and other phenomena that are currently, unopposedly, explained by science. In the ancient world, the natural and supernatural held equal sway. In today’s world, 98% of what happens is held to be material and physical in popular opinion, but religion holds out against the last 2% by dint of ignorance (in my opinion). Widespread ignorance of the physicality of the human brain allows the persistence of folktales of afterlife, heaven, and other imagined places or beings that do not, really…..exist.
Having been an “in-room” witness to my father dying, my sister dying, my cousin dying, where each proceeded from the state of living to the non-living, I can attest to the wrenching, anguished feeling I endured, and what others do feel. It did not make me long for some consolation (i.e. life for them somewhere, so I could reunite). Witnessing death, knowing that it awaits me, simply makes me appreciate the bounty I enjoy in continuing to live until I am no longer alive.
I was just contemplating my end the other day. I got less than stellar results of a routine medical test.
I found a couple of things (on the inside of my head):
1. I do not fear death. I almost embrace it as the natural end to my life. I think I will welcome it as the final opportunity to relax. (Or, to quote the late, great Warren Zevon: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”)
2. I would prefer to postpone it as long as I practically can (an practicality includes quality of life and prosepcts for quality of life).
3. I am a proponent of legalizing assisted suicide.
4. I will request cremation: No sense wasting perfectly good land on the dead, when it will surely be needed by the living.
5. The reasons I want to postpone death as long as practical are legion. Wine, food, sex, my family, sunsets, stars, the moon, the sun, flowers, beasts, landscapes, music, reading, making music, art, experiencing other people and places, I have more languages to learn!, etc., etc. I.e: No faith or gods needed, thank you very much!
I find it interesting that so many people here can discuss the lives and deaths of humans, without considering why. I haven’t seen one comment asking why are we the only ones who can know of our mortality. Coincidence? Not a chance (pardon the pun). The likelihood of us evolving to be able to understand mortality is basically, if not completely, impossible. Yet you all are ‘satisfied’ with just dying and what you think is nothing afterwards. You don’t think that you could be wrong. I’m impressed, because that takes a lot of faith, considering there is no way to talk to somebody who has been there.
Hard to know where to begin with the ridiculous assumptions made here.
“The likelihood of us evolving to be able to understand mortality is basically, if not completely, impossible.” Because?
“I haven’t seen one comment asking why are we the only ones who can know of our mortality. ” Did you read the very first comment? I guess that any blog readers from other species are welcome to chip in. “I’m impressed, because that takes a lot of faith, considering there is no way to talk to somebody who has been there.” Where is “there”? Why does it take more faith to believe in something undefined, something whose nature is not agreed upon between different religions or their adherants, than in simple end of life?
First question, because chance and disorder can’t improve themselves to that great a degree. Humans are the only supposed example, and nowhere else has that ever happened. Pretty good reason to doubt that it ever could.
Where is there? Dead. Not living anymore. I think it takes more faith because human beings do show a propensity towards thinking about God, death, meaning of life, etc… Many people commenting have claimed that they originally thought something different than what they do now. Why do so many people start out thinking that there is something else? If so many people do think that there is something else, maybe they have a point? Maybe the people who can’t handle the fact that there might be a God who created the Universe and them try to ignore it and become atheists?
” chance and disorder can’t improve themselves to that great a degree” doesn’t really make much sense unless one interprets you completely misunderstanding how the evolutionary selection process works. People have a propensity to do and believe in all sorts of irrational things, but science provides a corrective mechanism for many people over time to work around that. People once thought that spirits and gods controlled every part of their natural lives; now we have better explanations. Why should we believe one particular antique society’s supernatural beliefs about supreme beings who are fanatically bloodthirsty and also obsessed with the clothing and dietary habits of humans?
And the first comment is about elephants thinking about their mortality…
RJ, not to be too snarky here; but your assertions look like this to me (and I suspect the other commenters that you include in your sweeping generalizations):
Kissing Hank’s Ass
All the data indicate: When we die, that’s it.
I challenge you to read Dr. Sacks’ latest book The Mind’s Eye and then defend the idea that our consciousness is separate (somehow) from our brain.
This is your basic assertion: That dualism is true and there’s this soul-thing that survives the death of the brain. There isn’t a shred of evidence for this assertion and it drips with wishful thinking.
[You look at consciousness and declare it can’t have arisen through evolution by natural selection. You propose a mechanism in its place for which we have no evidence. We have massive evidence for EBNS and we have a wide variety of naturally occurring brians to study. We don;t understand exactly how we gained our level of consciouness; but we’re getting there. Declaring “God did it” gets us nowhere.]
The following paragraphs present a tiny sprinkling of the problems/questions that arise with the assertion of dualism as the explanation for human consciousness (a listing only):
What happens to the second “soul” in a chimera? Where does the second “soul” of a pair of identical twins come from? How could this non-detectable non-acting soul-thing cause or receive the electrical and chemical changes in the brain that have been conclusively shown to be responsible for our sensations and actions? How could it move the body if it has no detectable actions?
Haploid cells in an artificial environment are alive; but the can’t develop (normally) into adult humans. Do they have half a “soul”? Is a “soul” a full set of 23 pairs of human chromosomes, in a live cell undergoing mitosis? If so, then every one of your body cells has its own “soul.” If not, how does one call a fertilized ovum a being with a “soul?”
It is now clear that we are capable (or very shortly will be capable) of cloning a human from a somatic cell. Would the resulting person not have a “soul,” since it didn’t result from the union of an egg and sperm? If it does have a “soul,” “from where” did it “come” and when? And if so, how does one deny each and every somatic cells its own “soul?”
As various neurological disorders proceed, a person loses different senses and mental abilities. In the extreme, you end up with cases like the sad case of Terry Schaivo, whose brain had shrunk dramatically since her brain injury and who showed no cognition whatever. When does this “soul” leave the body?
If the “soul” doesn’t correspond to consciousness, what could it possible signify? As consciousness dissolves with age or disease, when is the “soul” gone? If it is supposed to persist until life ceases, then by what criteria do we deny souls to chimpanzees, gorillas, or even dogs and cats?
The only truly remarkable thing about humans is our consciousness. All mental states can be observed using brain scans and are remarkably consistent for “normal” persons. It can also be clearly seen how brain injuries change both the brain activity and the bodily function. We can see how brain function changes as children grow and mature. These make it quite clear that our consciousness, personality, thoughts, and memories are functions of nervous tissue in the brain.
What role is left for the soul-thing? Did Neanderthal people have “souls?” Did Homo erectus? Did the Australopithecines?
My question is this. If not for a soul/spirit/separate consciousness, why are humans only living things that can determine morals, and contemplate our own existence. You and many others say that the ‘data’ backs you up, but I have not seen anything except for the book which you mentioned, which will take some time to read, seeing as how school is in session.
The problem I have with most of your arguments/questions about a soul stem from the fact that you are treating a soul as something that can be explained and understood from science. I disagree. We cannot see/observe our consciousness or a soul, so the ‘evidence’ of which you speak, IMHO, is not worthwhile.
My point about a soul being possible is that the reasons, evidence, and proof that are cited as for why people think about existence, why we are obsessed with what comes after death, etc… I believe that it is because we were designed to be that way, and that there is no actual scientific proof that we can observe, and that we can’t answer all of the questions that arise from those beliefs.
It’s been fairly well publicised that some other species appear to show behaviours which might be called ‘moral’.
Frans De Waal argues that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes. See his ‘Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved’.
Now you may argue that his work is not proven, but it does appear that there is reason to question your assertion that humans are the only living things that can determine morals. How do you know your assertion is true?
Well, I would certainly think it is more true than the fact that “some other species appear to show behaviours which might be called ‘moral’.” You use so many uncertainties and maybes that it there is nothing to make me doubt that only humans can actually be moral. And since the primary observations show that animals operate on instinct, and we can’t actually communicate with them, how can we begin to say that the ‘exceptions’ that might be morality are in fact exceptions? They could just be due to an instinct that we don’t fully understand.
My ‘uncertainties and maybes’ were a matter of politeness in debate. You have offered no evidence of your assertion that only humans can be moral, yet there is growing evidence to the contrary – a literature search on scientific papers would confirm this.
But you are not going to pay attention to evidence that contradicts your strongly held views, are you?
I am merely trying to prove that the ‘evidence’ you feel that there is so much of is merely assumptions and culturally accepted standards. There is not really any proof, for either view, mine of yours, because of the nature of the argument. The lack of ability of observation makes what we are arguing about not scientific in nature, so therefore the ‘proof’ you say there is cannot actually prove anything. I am sorry if I came across as actually forcing my points on you or not accepting anything of your arguments. I find it difficult, at best, to accept yours and many of your fellow commenters’ arguments because you put so much stake in these ‘proofs’ that you have and you don’t even realize that it can’t be called science.
Perhaps human morality is due to an instinct that we don’t fully understand…
/@
Do you have any good reasons to believe that humans are the only animals who can determine their morals?
I can see two problems. The biggest is that we can’t communicate with animals so behaviour which indicates morality in other animals is dismissed. Can you use a strictly observational means of determining when an individual or species (including humans) have morals?
The second is related to this. Once you get rid of the double standard, you should start to see all sorts of variety in human behaviour. To what extent can we really “determine” our morals? When I contemplate killing my wife over which tv show to watch, I am revolted. I can’t do it. I am not free to make that choice. Yet there are humans who either lack this inhibition or even feel compelled to act violently. How free is their choice?
I’m not saying this to diminish humans. Rather, since we don’t have any good direct evidence for a soul, no known or imagined mechanism for it to interact with our bodies, and no known or imagined mechanism for its creation and existence, we must have some very strong indirect evidence. If “moral choice” is all you’re offering, then you better make damn sure that there aren’t other, better explanations. Frankly I don’t think you’ve even shown that there’s a phenomenon to explain!
Why is a soul not something that can be explained and understood by science? If my soul exists and can interact, in some way, with my physical body, why isn’t it amenable to scientific inquiry?
/@
So you’re saying because you have lack of evidence for one view, the other view is correct? I would not argue it that way. I would say that because there is no evidence for either of the views we need to find a new way to look at the problem.
So if Santa Claus’ magical gift-dispensing abilities can’t be explained by science then we need a new way to look at the problem?
Actually, the likelihood of us evolving to be able to contemplate our own mortality seems very probable, if looked at as a side effect of other traits. We’re a species able to consider the future, and how actions in the present can affect our future, thus we can think of a time when we might be dead. We are a social species, having evolved to be able to think of others as being like ourselves in certain important ways, the better to understand and predict what others will do, and how it could impact us, or our families. Given that, it would be unlikely for us to see others die, and not wonder if it could happen to us. It’s not a stretch then to start contemplating what it means to us if we die.
That so many would think there’s an afterlife, is also not surprising. For one thing, imagining non-existence is very difficult, maybe even impossible for us to do (I seem to remember a study that examined our ability to imagine non-existence, but can’t remember when or where I saw the article). Further, there are those like myself, who fear the end of our existence — death. It would be comforting to believe that there’s an afterlife, and it’s not too hard to think that someone made up a story to tell themselves so they could stop being afraid. And then spread that story to others, who accepted it and modified it. Think of children who first face death, and begin to grasp what it means for themselves and others. Tears, and fear, seem to be common reactions. The adults then try to comfort the child. What’s a good way to comfort that child? Tell him or her that death is not really the end, that there’s something that comes after.
One more thing: the fact that we can’t communicate with those who have died is a reason to think there might be nothing to communicate with. In other words, it’s evidence against an afterlife. And many, probably most, of us do admit to the possibility we could be wrong — we just don’t see it as very likely.
I disagree with your last paragraph, at least the first part. It’s not evidence, its an assumption. And we all know what to assume means. Evidence as defined by webster:an outward sign, something that furnishes proof. There is no sign or proof about not communicating with the dead.
For your second paragraph, I am more looking for someone, such as yourself, if your last statement is to be believed, who can understand that just because you might think an afterlife is a story, you don’t actually have evidence to prove that, so it just might as well be true.
In the whole of human existence there has never been a single verifiable episode of anyone ‘returning from beyond the veil’. So the default position is that there isn’t anything to return from.
The rest is just semantics, and a meaningless discussion
There is no default position. A default position, according to webster, is “a selection made usually automatically or without active consideration due to lack of a viable alternative.” There is an alternative because we have no evidence or observations about after death. If we don’t know anything, we can’t make an assumption about a default position or say there is ‘obviously’ nothing to return from. The whole point of death is that life ends. So we shouldn’t make statements that ascertain about things that we can’t actually know. Believe? Yes, we can each believe something about what happens after death. But we cannot know 100% about it, especially with science.
Yes, there is a default position: The null hypothesis. If you assert that there is an after-life, where’s the evidence? (Hint: NDEs don’t qualify. Nor do mediums or other charlatans.) Absent that, the null hypothesis (that there is no after-life) is very likely true.
/@
Which one is the null hypothesis? It depends on how you ask the question, which means that the null hypothesis could be either view. So the fact that there is no evidence for either means that either view could be the null hypothesis which means that either view could be the default position. If you assert there is no afterlife, where’s your evidence? The default position/null hypothesis would be there is an afterlife. Which proves my point in that we can’t argue these arguments based on science. We have to find a different way to view these problems.
Special pleading, RJ. There’s absolutely no support for the hypothesis that there’s some sort of extra-body consciousness called a “soul” that continues to exist after all life signs have ceased and therefore no reason to suspect that such a thing actually exists any more than there’s any reason to suspect that there’s an invisible, intangible dragon that lives in my garage, humans are the product of intelligent design, or, Rick Perry jokes aside, that the Republican party is made up of shapeshifting alien lizards from another dimension.
If you want something to be considered, you need to show some actual evidence for it. Simply saying that you can’t disprove a claim isn’t proof of that claim.
Thats my point. There is no actual evidence for either argument. Thats my entire point. We can’t argue some of these things as scientific facts/theories/laws, what have you. They have no proof or evidence, both sides are based on beliefs, and the ‘proof’ is just assumptions. That is my point.
@ RJ @ 2:36 pm
No, I’m making no assertion about the afterlife; only you are. Therefore, “no afterlife” is the null hypothesis. I’m not making a claim; ergo there’s no onus for me to provide evidence.
I only conclude, in the continued absence of evidence for an afterlife, that it’s existence is extremely unlikely.
Show me evidence, and I’ll re-evaluate that conclusion.
/@
You’re making an assertion about what happens after death, same as me. I say there is something, you say there is nothing. Neither of us have evidence. My belief is that there is something. Your belief is that there is nothing. Neither of us have evidence to back our views up, so we can only believe, assert, assume, whatever you want to call it. We’re doing the same thing, just on opposite sides. As of right now, I’m not even arguing about our views, I just desperately hope you understand what it is I’m saying.
You can’t take one one side of an argument and than say that on my side I’m asserting something yet you’re just looking at lack of evidence. If we are both arguing/discussing something with no evidence either way, that means we are both arguing in the same manner. Does that make sense?
No, I’m not.
What you’re saying makes sense (that is, I can parse it), but it’s an epistemic nonsense.
I do not, ab initio, believe, assert, or assume that there is no afterlife. Have I ever said, “There is no afterlife”?
I only conclude that it is extremely unlikely, but possibly more unlikely than there being a pack of velociraptors behind me right now.
Uh. Clever girl…
So you’re saying concluding is different than asserting? And by different I mean in this particular context? I had thought by concluding you were indeed saying you were saying there is no afterlife. If you’re not, then I’m actually quite happy with this discussion, because you have been significantly nicer than most lol. Since I don’t have the time nor inclination to continue this discussion much longer, unless there is something else you wish to ask/discuss, I bid you a good day/night.
I headed to work after typing that, and was thinking about it on the way, and yes, I may have been too strong in calling it evidence. What we do know is that know one can demonstrate that they’ve ever communicated with someone who’s dead. Therefore, we have no reason to believe there is an afterlife.
As for what you said about my second paragraph, if you think that I meant that “it just might as well be true” that there’s an afterlife, simply because I cannot absolutely prove it’s just a story, you’re very mistaken. I was describing how that story could have (and in some cases probably did) started, and been perpetuated. I was also explaining partly why I don’t find it surprising that people believe in an afterlife, as a way of pointing out why we’re obsessed with what, if anything, comes after death. We’re obsessed (humanity in general, that is) because we don’t want to stop existing. No design is necessary for that desire, unless you count a survival instinct.
There are multiple reasons, from science, to believe that our death is the end. The first, that no one has communicated with the dead, I’ve mentioned already. Beyond that is everything we know about the brain. Damage a part of the brain, and you can alter a person’s personality, wipe out memory, skills, and cognitive ability. Stick an electrode in the brain at the right spot, and you can alter behavior. Take the right drug that has chemicals which bypass the blood-brain barrier and latch onto certain receptors in the brain, and extremely strange things can happen to personality and perception. Neuroscientists are beginning to understand the mechanisms behind much of this, and everything they’ve found is completely materialistic.
From all this evidence, we can posit a theory that all of our experience in life is bound up in the brain. Note, I’m using “theory” in the scientific sense, as if discussing the theory of gravity, not in the vernacular sense. And that theory predicts that when the brain stops working, we stop existing as persons. There has been nothing to contradict this, so at this point, it is completely unreasonable to believe otherwise.
You’ve mentioned elsewhere on this thread the soul, and said that you don’t think there’s any way for science to study it or verify it’s existence. That’s ridiculous. If the soul exists, it would have some mechanism of interacting with our very material brain. Evidence of that interaction would exist. Such evidence has never been found. If such evidence is ever found it would be reasonable to believe that there’s a soul, and perhaps even an afterlife. If a medium can ever verify and demonstrate the ability to communicate with the dead, that would also work. But until that day, we are left with non-existence when we die.
Here are two recent posts surveying New Atheist stances on suffering, loss, grief and consolation whether at all our project should involve a religion-like solace instead of a radical acceptance of the ‘blind pitiless indifference’ that underlies the Universe.
1. http://nirmukta.net/Thread-A-case-study-in-the-Problem-of-Evil?pid=5469#pid5469
2. (An addendum to the above)
http://nirmukta.net/Thread-A-case-study-in-the-Problem-of-Evil?pid=5482#pid5482
RJ, your questions posed by your “Why..” entry are mere language constructs and not reality-based. I second the judgment of “ridiculous” given by MikeW. Your ability to construct ‘pseudo reason’ and ‘pseuo hypotheses’ is not worthy of pursuing simply because these hypothecations are not based within the realistic world. In a similar vein, I can ask, “If I can lift an object above my head that weighs more than I weigh, why can’t I simply grab myself with my arms, and levitate myself??” Or, “Where would I be, if I am located North of the North Pole?” Your flag of “Why” is to purposely pursue obfuscation, because the body of the question has its unstated, ignored contradiction built within it. I’ve seen it all over the internet.
Sorry you think that. It is not the case, and I have had many delightful discussions with people who are not as closed minded as you.
Sounds like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Was it Richard Feynman that said, be open-minded, but don’t let your brain fall out? From many of your posts it seems that you assume that if you can type a sentence, then the content must be meaningful.
” Life is its own validation and reward and ultimate meaning to which neither God nor the future state can further validates.’ Inquiring Lynn
Why the existentialish angst – stupidity- wwhen our own purposes and love and this one life sufice. Divine purpose and love and the future state mean nothng!
Albert Ellis would state not to whine like spoil brats!
Read his ” The Myth of Self-Esteem” and Robert Price’s ” The Reason-Driven Life,” for that more abundant life that ever dead Galilean quack never could deliver!
RJ, talk about circular discussions. You mention Websters definition of a default position as: “a selection made usually automatically or without active consideration due to lack of a viable alternative.”
What ‘viable alternative’? Please define your alternative, together with your supporting evidence as to why your alternative is viable. Or, are you just playing semantics.
Never fully believed but I did contemplate the christian’s supposed life after death myth as a child and always found it upsetting and rather spooky. Since settling on the reality of no gods, I have absolutely no fear of my inevitable dead non existence. The bonus is that there will be no christians.
I’m not sure if this is just my nature or if my feelings are a result of my atheism but I think I probably ponder my legacy more than most people.
My father-in-law is in his 70’s and he’s had some medical issues lately and invariably my thoughts go to those issues when we’re visiting.
My daughter works in a nursing home and I’m always thinking that these are people who were once my age with lives and people that depended on them and now they’re forgotten in this nursing home and nobody seems to care, much less depend on them. What happened to their stuff and their houses and their passions? Those thoughts just strike me as sad.
Unequivocally less afraid of death. Raised as a fundamentalist, I feared death because if you didn’t get life right, you were going to Hell forever. Sure, there was the hope of life eternal, on the other hand, and often that felt good, but on balance I think the fear and uncertainty was a constant shadow over life. Once it started to really soak into me that that story was wrong, it was as if a great weight was lifted. No part of life is bigger than life after all. The consequences of one’s mistakes could only be so large, and no larger, never infinite. While I am not in a hurry to be dead, being dead itself is no longer a fear. I’ve been dead before, after all, from the Big Bang until just a few decades ago. It wasn’t so bad.
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. jawara88