I’m just curious about how you feel about the issue of death. Are there any retirees on this site and how do you feel about the idea of there being nothing beyond this life. And even if you’re not retired, how do you, as an atheist, view the non-existence of an afterlife. I personally feel that atheists have a tougher time with this than believers do with their non-existent “heaven.” Any opinions or thoughts on this?
Not in my experience. I am a long time retiree and a lifetime atheist.
I have dealt with death of others and a couple of very near misses of my own. I accept that when the meatsack ceases to function everything else ceases to function .
My constituent atoms will, in all probability be recycled but the essential “me” will not (and that’s a good thing according to a couple of ex wives).
We have “end of life” planning including ending ones own existence in medically proven cases of terminal illness in my State. And a good thing too…..
So no I have no problem with the termination of my conscious mind, it is inevitable.
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Like @Old_man_shouts_at_cl, I’m also a lifelong atheist and a retiree. I have no fear of death. I do, however, have some fear of some of its causes. And I too have come close a couple of times.
At this moment, the difficulties with which I contend do not outweigh the pleasure I experience being alive.
That being said, it may not stay that way. Who knows, eh? I’m good with the notion of self-termination if the scales tip the other way. After all, my body seems to be the only thing that successfully kicks my ass. 
The notion of afterlife is just nonsensical to me.
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I am of retirement age (I turn 69 in March) but have not yet retired. But working or not, I know that I don’t have a lot of runway left ahead of me.
It doesn’t bother me at all. There’s no “tough time” being had. I have actually found my mortality to be a comfort. I have said it before I think in this space that we are story tellers, and stories need ends as well as beginnings and middles. No matter how great a movie is, you don’t want it to last 12 hours, much less an eternity. When it’s time for me to pee and go to bed, I don’t bemoan that the day is over. It’s the same with end of life.
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I almost welcome death. Things take on a repeat after long enough; one sees the same reactions, the very same brands of stupidity, the same happenings. One wearies of it and welcomes the release from the monotony.
Most people, in my experience, begin dying long before their physical bodies expire. Little by little they are eaten up by trivialities, by nothing, and the fire slowly expires as a result. When their death does finally happen there’s really not much left to die; this, I believe, is the actual reason funerals are so sad.
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Questions like “What will it feel like to be dead?” have IMHO the same answer as "What did it feel like before you were conceived? In other words, I view afterlife to not exist in the same way as “pre-life” before I was conceived or born, or whenever my central nervous system started having a functioning consciousness.
I disagree with some of the posts in this thread.
We all (in a manner of speaking) survive our deaths . . . although not in a way that appeals to theists.
Our deeds and works influence and/or change the world around us. As an example, I was a paramedic and I’m currently a nurse . . . and I believe that the people whose lives I’ve saved will continue to change and influence the world after I die.
My writings (such as they are) will also survive my death.
So, my point about the afterlife is that a part of us still exists after we die when we consider the consequences of our existence.
If we live life in a positive way (in however we define “positive”) and leave the world a better place than when we found it, then we are still influencing human existence long after we’re dead.
To me, these ideas seem much more spiritual than spending an endless eternity satisfying the fragile ego of an infinitely powerful and all-knowing God.
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It’s not an issue, since it’s an inevitability.
I don’t have views about non-existent things, I spend as much time pondering it as I do mermaids and unicorns.
I am dubious, but I don’t particularly care, I came to terms with my mortality when my grandfather died, I was 12. At 60 people are dying right and left, sorry for those they leave behind, but glad it’s not yet me or mine about sums it up. No point worrying about something that is a nailed on certainty.
The dying part will hopefully be relatively quick and not too painful, the dead part won’t affect me. I was dead for billions of years, it left no impression at all.
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I’m another old retired atheist. I wondered where we all went…now I have an idea…
Death was not something I ever felt weighing on me in my younger day. Quite the opposite in that some of the stupid shit I did might lead the sane ones to conclude I had a death wish growing up.
Death of others affected me much more than the thought of my own death.
At 68 the fear of aging past the point I can physically and mentally take care of myself is much greater than the fear of dying.
My 95 years old mother passed away a couple of years ago. She had taken a fall, which is the gateway to the end for a lot of seniors, which first landed her in assisted living, then a Medicaid bed and finally hospice. In the four years she hung on the American Elder Care Industrial Complex was able to systematically bleed her completely dry. She was unaware of any of this…well, most things, actually. Dementia is a cruel bitch.
I joke with my daughter that if she ever notices me tripping off into the enchanted forest she needs to get me a wing suit…
So yeah, entering that system is genuinely terrifying. Death is actually preferable.
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Even if, for the sake of argument, it can be established that atheists have a tougher time with mortality on average, all it would reflect is that it is more work / effort / thought to confront the fact of your own mortality rather than avoid it. Even if it’s “tougher” it’s still the only way forward; you have to deal in reality, not pretend that it doesn’t exist.
I’d also argue that a lot, if not all, of any one person’s angst about their mortality has more to do with the residual influence of their past contact with religion and cultural referents of religion than it does with unbelief. It just reflects that we are habituated to comforting lies.
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Can I get an Amen, brother…
Attitudes on death are widely influenced by cultural and societal influences. Same with suicide…Bushido and kamikazes come to mind.
In my experience, atheism has removed a good bit of that societal influence. Death happens. Everything living will die. When a critical system fails, you die.
I think the desire to play the non-secular Get Out of Jail Free card contributes to much of the anxiety around death.
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It’s interesting you should say that as Mark Twain was asked by a reporter if he was afraid of death. He said “no…I’ve been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born.”
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I agree, and I’ll add that the Get Out of Jail Free card can be much worse than causing anxiety.
I have had an elderly patient in her late 70s who refused pain medication because “God wants this of me, and if I take pain medicine I’m going against His will.”
She believed that suffering is sent by God to test our faith or something, so she refused medicines and/or help . . . which means that there are times and occasions when this Get Out of Jail Free card can actually hasten someone’s death.
There is a phenomena in the nursing world where dying people get it in their heads that God wants them to suffer as a part of His plan, and they refuse certain medications because it gets them on God’s good side. I have even seen parents do this to their sick children because it’s God’s will.
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I agree with much that’s been written so far in this thread.
While I’m not afraid of the notion of non-existence I’m somewhat worried by the pain, suffering and loss of dignity that might precede it. As an atheist I tend to see events as functions of statistics and not as some divine plan or happening according to some greater purpose.
In that respect I believe that the human race has been remarkably lucky - so far. Here I’m not focusing on humanity as anything of great significance but as a brief blip in the blind workings of a totally indifferent universe. So when I say that we’ve been remarkably lucky I’m referring to our luck in evolving on a planet that has enjoyed extremely favourable conditions for a very long time indeed.
A quiet part of the galaxy, where the distribution of elements favoured the formation of a relatively stable Sun, an incredibly favourable outcome of the demolition derby which formed the planets, a very fortuitous arrangement of those planets and a possibly unique set of happenstances that lead to us being joined by our Moon, at least five major mass extinctions and many minor ones leading to a set of interglacial conditions that pushed some primates to adapt in new and interesting ways and more recently, our lucky avoidance of nuclear self destruction in 1962, 1983 and a couple of other times.
Will our incredible run of good luck eventually run out? Probably. Possibly. Who knows?
But to pick up Kevin’s point, even if I die tomorrow, there is something that gives me a great deal of satisfaction and peace of mind. Something we have left behind. Or, as of now, five things. Pioneers 1 and 2, Voyager 1 and 2 and the New Horizons probe.
Even if we fuck it all up these emissaries are never coming back. They are our final and v-e-r-y long lasting bottles cast into the great cosmic ocean. Long after the Sun has vapourised the Earth and shrunk to a white dwarf, they will still be going. If it takes 200 million years for the Milky Way galaxy to complete one rotation then these five will see hundreds or possibly thousands of such turnings.
They are (currently) the only things that humans will ever make that will exist for aeons.
In the context of my own death and the eventual death of the human race, contemplating our cosmic legacy fills me with awe and wonder.
Thank you,
Walter.
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To be honest, I don’t recall that I have ever had a tough time dealing with death. Whether it be my own, or the death of somebody I know. And that was before and AFTER I made my escape from my religious indoctrination. Personally, I have had countless close brushes with Mr. Reaper during my life. Honestly never expected to make it past 25. And after every such encounter with The Grim One, I would typically get up, dust myself off (If I wasn’t being carried away to the hospital on a stretcher), laugh, and make some sort of statement such as, “Ha! You missed again, asshole!” In my mind, if I had been killed, then, “Oh, well. None of this is my problem anymore.” Matter of fact, I actually had more “concerns” about death BEFORE I was ever an atheist, compared to when I finally broke away from religion. My ONLY concern nowadays is wanting to make sure my Wife and grandson will be okay if something happens to me. As far as what might or might not happen to me after I die, well, I simply look at it as another “adventure”. If there is actually something there after I pass, then, “COOL! This should be interesting.” Otherwise, I believe it will be just like before I was ever born. How afraid or anxious or concerned were YOU before you were ever born?
Interestingly enough, I have known many friends/co-workers over the years who had close calls at one time or another. Some were highly religious, others were either “neutral” or totally non-religious. A few of them were even trained in much the same way as I was. And I have seen many of them totally break down and be psychologically ruined because they, “almost got killed,” during and accident or some other incident. For whatever reason(s), that close encounter with death shook them up so badly that they were unable to cope with it. I truly never understood that. I could never relate to that in any way, shape, or form. As such, it has always been difficult for me to have any empathy with any person who got rattled like that. I have simply never been able to put myself into that mindset. I don’t know, maybe I was just programmed differently than most…. (shoulder shrug).
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If you come from fundamentalism the attempt was certainly made to program you to fear death (to produce demand for the product, namely, salvation). But that doesn’t mean it “took”.
I knew a lot of people before and after I left the faith for whom the “you are a lowly, guilty, wicked little worm” programming took in a big way, and then there are people like me that it just sort of bounced off of. Why? I don’t pretend to fully know. Quirks of personality, of attachment patterns to parents and how they might have inadvertently inoculated me against the negative messages, the evolution of my social life and connections outside or even within the church, what sorts of things I tended to pay attention to, all combined to subvert the church’s desire to tell me I am nothing without Jesus, and even then, only something because he’s just being nice enough to give me something I don’t deserve.
I’m sure it works that way with the fear of death and any number of other things.
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I prefer that there is “nothing” after death.
Actually, there is, and it’s much better than any idea of heaven or afterlife.
What is after “death” that has concrete evidence perhaps?
- For one, my corpse gets to feed some bugs and plants and promote new life for our planet.
- Two, I can finally truly not care what happens to everyone and anyone, including “myself” since I’m too dead to do it.
- Three, we have no choice but to die in the end.
That’s not a bad thing, it just is. Everything has to end so something else can live. Can you imagine spending an eternity of something? Would you still even be “you”? Don’t you think that’s the same thing as death?
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Bingo. As a human I am not evolved to function well in eternity, and probably not at all. Be careful what you ask for.
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I like to think of it as the “big sleep.” The craziest thing about death is that the brain, which is responsible for all conscious awareness and memory, also dies and as such, you won’t even remember that you were born into this world in the first place, let alone remember anyone or anything you ever knew in life! That’s the kicker of the whole thing. It almost begs the question of what was it all for. But then, you were free to give your own meaning to your life. It’s crazy, but that’s just the way it is.
That’s the crux of the matter.
It wounds our ego that we’re not the star of the show or that it’s not ordered around us, is not personal and directed – not even by a malevolent force we could abreact to. We are just totally ephemeral. But once you get used to that and fully accept it, it’s very liberating. As you near the end it’s easier to let go and it’s peaceful (to me anyway) that my story has an end. All good stories need to end. We are not suited to never-ending stories. We may think we are, but that gets into “be careful what you ask for” territory.
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