Atheists: Finding Comfort in Loss

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Oh, there definitely is an afterlife, just not in the metaphysical sense that most belief systems (such as religions) like to teach.

Our bodies decompose and the matter in them is used up by other living things, to give birth to yet another living things. Most of our genes are passed on through generations. We leave a trace, it might be small, it might be big, it might not matter. A memory of us is left behind to live on in the minds of those who can still remember us.

Our actions have consequences. Each and every one of them, whether we believe in this fashion or that or choose not to believe. Each one of us is enmeshed in this web of the world and the web of life.

"Do I need comfort in the face of the knowledge that I will die?" might as well be phrased as "Do I need comfort in the face of everything that happens in this world of which I'm not aware of?" No-one can perceive every consequence of their actions. The future is undeterminable. Why worry about every single thing we cannot perceive? Life is good and good things come to an end. The end is only a new beginning. I don't have to have a new life. Why should there be? After all we cannot be everywhere all the time either.

We all have this moment. It's all we have. It is enough. It is good.

 

I don't really understand what is so difficult to imagine about death just ending things. From your perspective, everything just ceases to be. No more thought, no more sense, nothing. I don't know if you've ever been unconcious, but I imagine it would be similar to that. There is nothing when you're unconcious. You just blank out and then resume again, without having any sense of what may have happened in between or how long you were away. The time you were unconcious is just a hole in your memory. And in the case of death, that hole has become infinitely big.

 

I think Chicken has a point. We are discussing an infinitely big "hole" in consciousness and saying it's easy to imagine. Think about it for a moment though. Can you really imagine what that would be like? You can only imagine it as an extention (to infinity) of limited unconsciouness, but the whole point of unconsciousness is that it's limited. We perceive the hole from the outside, so to speak, as a gap between two runs of consciousness. Specifically, we look back at unconsciousness from afterwards and define it in those terms. Remove the afterwards and you no longer have any point of reference for defining this void. I think that's precisely the reason the void can be terrifying: we know there is nothing, and by definition that means wehave no way of perceiving or imagining what it feels like, because there is nothing to feel at that point.

 

In my experience, the ability to rationalize something doesn't lessen the blow. Put another way, convincing myself that my Grandmother went to a better place doesn't in any way lessen the real human toll of her loss.

 

Very well put Drew... Atheist and Agnostics are no different than religous believers. We all have feelings. For me, i just know deep down that my memories of them will continue living on with me. That's their "afterlife", the memories.

 

My grandmother (Christian) died recently, and my mum (devout Christian) attempted to gently rope me into Christianity by using the meet-again argument.

I grew up with Christian teachings and so the idea of Heaven and Hell is integrated, but I don't really believe in an afterlife. I'm willing to entertain the possibility it exists, though, so perhaps I'm more agnostic after all.

The way I see it, it doesn't matter if there's a Heaven where I will meet her again or not, and my faith definitely doesn't have to do with it. What happens after death? I don't know, and I don't see how anyone can possibly know. Thus, nothing about this unknown will influence me to religious behaviour. Like others have said, her memories live with me, and that's enough.

(Drew summed up the basic feeling perfectly so I won't say it again)

Incidentally, converting for this reason seems quite selfish to me: ideally you should follow a religion if you believe in it, not because you'll get something out of it.

As for my own death, again, religion doesn't factor into it. How do I know heaven exists? Suppose it doesn't? Sure, I can choose to believe in its existence, but that doesn't make it real.

I feel, and this is getting very off topic, that it's hard to study History - especially Western history - and still be devoutly religious.

 

I guess I see what you mean. The point you make is that you have trouble imagining oblivion (correct me if I'm wrong here). But to me that is not what death is. Death is an end. You cease to exist. There is nothing to imagine after that, because there is nothing. No thought, no sense, because you have ceased to be.

I suppose that it's true that I have difficulty imagining what that is like, but at the same time, it is completely pointless to imagine what it would be like, because you will not be able to experience it anyway. Nor will anyone. Death is not a state of being. It is the end of all states of being.

Or at least that is my perspective on things. I can imagine - to a point - that this would seem somewhat scary to some people, as many people seem to want to cling to a believe that when they or someone close to them dies, they will somehow persist after they've died. Whether this be going to heaven or living on through the memories of others. I don't see how this can make death easier to deal with, though. Drew put it to words quite well:

 

Silvery: Atheism is not a belief, goddangit. It never has been! Bald isn't a hair color either!

Now, is there a life after death? I don't know, and all agnostic atheists say nobody knows, because otherwise there would be proof or you're right back into superstition. And all the other kind of atheists are nutcases.

Anyway, to the topic at hand. I personally don't think (and don't you *dare* throw the word "believe" in there) there is life after death.

I also don't grieve over death. What's there to grieve over other than not seeing that person ever again and it's influence on others (either of the superstitious kind or the kind that cannot imagine life without the person in question; the latter I feel genuinely sorry for)?

I'm also not even remotely afraid of my own death. My life has never really been an amusement park of fun and pleasure, and after my death there will only be everlasting oblivion free of pain, regret, doubt, fear and thought. Heck, it sounds appealing to be frank - but there's probably no coming back and I'll end up there one day anyway, so I'm in no hurry.

If there's no sentience after death, the loved ones won't be suffering and neither will you once you die. There's nothing to fear except not existing - and I doubt that very few sane people think it will influence the world in a significant way. Except for you, but you won't be there to witness it anyway.

The only thing I fear about death is the superstitious noticing I don't really care. They think it's very offensive to their god/families/honor/whatever.

 

That's not far from the point Chicken and I were making, but with an additional link: we cannot imagine because it's completely different from anything we can experience, and it's scary precisely because it's impossible to imagine, because it's not a state, because it's the end of everything, including any state of being or any perception of a state of being. I think it's a natural human reaction to be afraid of the unknow, especially an unknown that is impossible to escape and that you perceive as being the end of everything. And the death of people around you, especially those you love or are close to, is a constant reminder that, at the end of the day, nothing you do matters because you will end up as nothingness.

Now, the trick is to know this and still believe that what you do with your life is worthwhile anyway. Because, at the end of the day, it is worthwhile, regardless of what happens at the end.

 

Taza, You BELIEVE that there is no God. I'm not saying that it's a religious belief, I'm just saying that it's a belief in general

 

Silvery so one of your beliefs is that there are no invisible pink space elephants on the dark side of the moon?

A lack of belief is not a belief.

 

I believe you totally

 

Now that is interesting thing to consider - I always assumed most people (including myself) feared experiencing death - not the state of death. As my tagline states, I don't think there's anything particularly scary about death itself - which may not be true about the act of dying. Dying in certain ways must be absolutely terrifying, and regardless of the circumstances, I doubt it is a pleasant experience.

But do most people actually fear an end to their existance, and that's what makes death scary to them? It would seem like if you are religious, you wouldn't fear death, because you believe in an afterlife, so maybe religious people are less fearful of being dead - although that wouldn't help them regarding the actual dying part.

I'm not sure what I think about it. I don't actively contemplate my own death, mainly because it's something I don't anticipate having to experience for many, many years to come. At the very least, I'd still like to think that I have more years ahead of me, than I have behind me.

 

Wrong, bad and stupid!

I think there is no god - I have absolutely no reason to believe in a god. I cannot prove there is no god, but to posit something that ridiculously far-fetched is a reason to laugh at you and possibly be scared because you're bloody delusional.

A lack of belief is not a belief in itself.

 

I agree with this. Another error people often make with how strong agnostics and atheists think, is because they cannot prove that god does or does not exist, then the assumption of 1) "God exists" and 2) "God does not exist" must be considered to be equally likely. That really rubs atheists the wrong way, because it's patently false. I cannot prove that pink unicorns do not exist. That does not mean I must view the existance or non-existance of pink unicorns to be equally likely.

 

That said, God is far more likely to exist than pink unicorns. The concept of "God" is a vague one, leaving lots of room to interpret, meaning that less conditions need to be met in order to prove God's existence. Pink unicorns, on the other hand, are quite specific.

To change examples a bit, I have no more reason to believe that Sasquatch exists than I have to believe that God exists, true, but Sasquatch is a lot easier to disprove than God. The lack of evidence of Sasquatch, a being that auspiciously roams the land on this plain of existence (not to mention the scads of known fraudulent "evidence") is quite a lot more damning than is the lack of evidence of a non-specific entity of a non-specific nature who need not have a corporeal form. In other words, while I may have no more reason to believe in God than I have to believe in Sasquatch, I still have more reasons to disbelieve in Sasquatch than I do to disbelieve in God.

 

Depends on what god you are talking about, the only god that fits in your explanation is the mysterious non-involved prime mover. Any deity described by a religion is reduced to the same level as sasquatch and pink unicorns.

 

That is an opinion, not fact.

Your argument about having more reasons to disbelieve in Sasquatch than God are based on one premise -- you assume it is possible for life to exist in a non-corporal form and without an organic (carbon) base. This premise is rather far fetched in the light of all we know about life. In essence, based on our knowledge of biology there are more reasons to disbelieve God, than ... say ... pink unicorns -- pink unicorns at least follow the basic principles of life, whereas your depiction of God does not.

 

In fact, given how large the universe is, I'm sure someone could calculate the probabilities that pink unicorns evolved on at least one of those worlds. You might even say its statistically likely given how unbelievably vast the universe is and how long its existed.

 

I would counter your argument by pointing out that there is no way whatsoever to check to see if a non-specific "God" of unspecified nature or purpose exists. On the other hand, if Pink Unicorns exist on the planet earth (I'm assuming that we're talking about earthbound Pink Unicorns), it is a reasonable assumption that we would have seen one. Unless you're talking about aquatic, Antarctic, or Rainforest bound Pink unicorns....

Pink unicorns are specific. "God" isn't. "God" might be incorporeal -- or not. "God" might be an Alien -- or not. "God" might be my next door neighbor -- or not. "God" might be an eternal miasma that crashed into a computer, merged with its programming, and now speaks binary -- or not.

Unicorns, by contrast, are a very specific and concrete concept. We know where they are supposed to live, what they're supposed to eat, and what they would look like.

The common Atheistic argument is that, since I have no reason to believe "X" and there is no evidence supporting or detracting from "X", "X" isn't true. A more correct argument would be to say that if I have no reason to believe "X" and there is no evidence supporting or detracting from "X", than I'm wasting my ****ing time thinking about "X"...let alone arguing about it.

The likelihood of a non-specific God with no limitations for what such a "God" can or cannot do, be, or look like is unquantifiable. The likelihood of a Terran Pink Unicorn is somewhat more quantifiable.