death-afterlifeMost religions, as far as I know, describe what will happen to you after you die. However, if you are an atheist, you are on your own: you have no book, congregation or deity to tell you what will happen. Just science and rational thought.
How does this influence your feelings about death? Do you still fear death? Why, or why not?
Note: a similar question was closed; I hope this one is found more useful by the community.
Come on, people.
Death is the worst possible thing that can happen to a conscious being (unless you're a p-zombie). Plain and simple. If you saw a man lying on the track of a railroad, would it be better to leave him there or try to save him? How about a sick child who suffers from a fatal illness: is it better to cure him, or not cure him?
These are not trick questions.
Of course you won't be lauded as brilliant ethicists and thinkers for your answers to these (apparently, complicated???) ethical dilemmas. If you go around saying “What does three and three equal? Six!” you will not gain a reputation as a deep philosopher. Yet it's still the correct answer.
The strong undesirability of death forces people to rationalise either the illusory nature of death (that's what the religious do), or desirability of death (that's what deathist atheists do). Suppose everyone's life expectancy is 10,000 years, and someone comes along saying that “death is good, because blah blah blah, you shouldn't fear it.” Would everyone give up their relatively long lives and all the chances of exploring the Universe and accumulating knowldedge and whatever, and decide to die? No.
So, yes. I do fear death. There is still too much for me to learn. Actually, an infinity of new and interesting things to think about. One can never run out of them. For the first century, you can contemplate the number ONE. For the second century, the number TWO. The set of numbers is infinite, so there.
(Hat tip to Eliezer Yudkowsky, whose writing made me think about it, and whose very eloquent phrases I borrowed as a non-native speaker)
I would say that death for an atheist is a lot more scary than death for a theist.
Theists (generally) believe that death is the beginning of an eternity spent in bliss.
That’s not scary at all.
But as an atheist, death scares the living shit out of me. The idea of oblivion - my “self” ceasing to exist - is terrifying.
I like being alive, and I don’t want to stop.
I do not fear death at all, just the manner of my death. If given the choice I would like to live to see my grandchildren grow up (yet to be born, daughter is only 1), and die in my sleep. Once I am dead “I” am gone. Only my memory lives on and that will mean nothing to me after the fact.
It wasn’t until I rejected religion that I found peace with the concept of dieing. Now I have excepted my inevitable death. I also use it as a tool to keep things in perspective. Compared to your death everything loses its importance. So now instead of wasting energy on things that only seem important, I can concentrate on things that really matter to me. Things that are important enough to me to make me want to invest my life into them. Because it is the only life I have after all.
It reminds me of a star trek episode, (I know, so cliche) Picard was talking about dieing and he said something like this; Some think death is like a hunter that lurks waiting to rob you of what is yours, But I like to think of death as a friend who walks beside me, to remind me, I am only hear for a little while.
edit: I was looking for a quote that would explain what I have accepted about death. I don’t Think anyone wants to die, but I think how we face it is important. Here is the quote
USE IT. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death. without remorse, or sadness, or worrying. Focus your your attention on the fact that you don’t have time, and let your acts flow accordingly. Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will your acts have there rightful power. Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live the acts of a timid man. Is it so terrible to be a timid man? …No, It isn’t if your going to be immortal, but if you are going to die there is no time for timidity, simply because timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while your at a lull, but then the awesome mysterious world will open it’s mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realize that your sure ways were not so sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men.
I think that what Christopher Hitchens said to Jeremy Paxman in a recent BBC interview (Nov 29, 2010) very much represents my thoughts about death, and I feel that many will relate to that as well.
Jeremy Paxman: "Do you fear death?"
Christopher Hitchens: "No. I'm not afraid of being dead, that's to say there's nothing to be afraid of. I won't know I'm dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I'm alive in any way at all, well that'll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises. But I strongly take leave to doubt it.
"I mean, one can't live without fear, it's a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I'm afraid of a sordid death. I'm afraid that, that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect."
Jeremy Paxman: "That's a fear of dying..."
Christopher Hitchens: "Yes."
Jeremy Paxman: "It's not a fear of death though."
Christopher Hitchens: "Well of death, no. Of dying, yes. I feel a sense of waste about it because I'm not ready. I feel a sense of betrayal to my family and even to some of my friends who would miss me. Undone things, unattained objectives. But I hope I'd always have that, if I was 100 when I was checking out. But no, I think my main fear is of being incapacitated or imbecilic at the end. That of course, is not something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of."
I will offer another alternative. My personal solution to Schrodinger’s Cat.
The act of observing is what decides if the cat is alive or dead. But through what mechanic does that happen? The opposite view on this paradox is that both happen, the cat is alive in one and dead in the other, in alternate universes. But this still ignores what decided that me, as the observer, saw the cat as dead, rather than alive.
I believe it is both.
The act of my observation pipes my conscious mind down whatever path leads to my continued existence. As it does for you. Each in our own internally solipsistic universe, in a sea of alternate universes.
This, of course, is hard to provide evidence for. However, as a proper hypothesis, it does make predictions.
These facts apply to VERY few people in history. Perhaps 100-300 million people out of all the people that ever lived. (there have been roughly 100 billion humans, but this technically applies to all life, not just humans) At worst, I am very lucky.
So, perhaps it is too soon to say that Occam’s Razor says my Hypothesis is unneeded to explain the world around me.
If this is how the world works, then I do not need to fear death. Because I will not die.
I celebrate my friend’s lives when they die much more than before my apostasy. I also try to stay honest with people about how I feel about them and how much I care about them. I accept my own death as a given, and just hope I’ll live to see humaniform robots.
I’m not afraid of dying. Knowing that this is all we have, I try to make the most of my time here, treating people honestly and fairly. Where possible, I would choose pleasure over pain.
And when I do die, I will do so knowing that I lived a good life; in that regard, it won’t be all that different from a much-deserved sleep.
Dying’s the last thing I want to do.
As long as I enjoy my life I prefer not to die. And, of course, in life threatening situations I will likely show the fear emotion. But if you ask me “Does it bother you that you will die one day?”, I would say - “No, definitely not”
Nothing has changed much for me since I’ve become a strong atheist, but the following things have some importance:
If I may contribute to my own question, I would like to add something that I haven’t seen mentioned.
I fear death because of the physical pain that is sometimes associated with it, but chiefly because of the suffering that it will definitely entail for my loved ones. I am pretty sure that people who love me wouldn’t like to live in a world without me, and therefore I don’t want to “do this” (i.e. die) to them. In a sense, me dieing would mean screweing up their lives royally, and that is something that I’d rather avoid.
Having seen a lot of death I get a real appreciation for life. Especially when realises that there is nothing to come after it.
Take heart from Epicurus;
“Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?”
I certainly don’t want to die, but I’m not afraid of it; I’m only afraid of dying sooner than expected and leaving my wife in a bad position financially.
Even as a small child, I never really bought into the whole heaven/hell thing, although it wasn’t until I was a little older that I understood the finality of death. We get one turn on the merry-go-round, and that’s it.
My view is probably colored somewhat by the fact that my father died at age 43 (I was 11 at the time). A couple of uncles were dead by their early 50s. I’ve never had illusions of living three score and ten; hell, I’ll be lucky to make it to retirement age.
No, death doesn’t bother me. Alzheimer’s, on the other hand, scares the living hell out of me. I can deal with my body crapping out, but slowly losing my mind (and being aware of it, at least at the beginning) is something I don’t even want to come close to. I would rather have my heart explode.
I’ve been involved in a few accidents which could have been fatal (but I emerged without serious injury). The thing I noticed however, is that I remained quite calm about it. In those last few seconds when it looked like I was going to die, all I was thinking was, “Oh, this is how it ends…” No panic. No fear.
Now I’m 65 and sometimes when I am making plans for the distant future, the thought pops into my head: “Hang on a minute, you’ll probably be dead by that time.” It’s not resignation, it’s just facing facts - and fear doesn’t come into it.
I subscribe to the epicurean opinion on death. See the wikipedia article on Epicurus’ opinion on death .
Epicurus also believed (contra Aristotle) that death was not to be feared. When a man dies, he does not feel the pain of death because he no longer is and he therefore feels nothing. Therefore, as Epicurus famously said, “death is nothing to us.” When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the false belief that in death there is awareness.
and also
In this context Epicurus said: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not care) – which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire.
hope this helps. Kyle
I found out I am not suffering as much when others die because I accept death as the final stop. I am not sure if that is because I am an atheist or because I am not extremely attached to things I know to be temporary and lacking huge metaphysical significance. I am not entirely sure if that is a good thing, but it seems that I take death in stride much better than religious people I know. I saw people go, “God I hate you, I prayed so much and you let them die anyway…” and I could not believe my ears, I would think they would be rejoicing that their beloved is in heaven…
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