Only partially in jest, I tell people that I want the following inscription on my tombstone:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am now embarking on the greatest experiment of my highly individual career. Unfortunately, I will not be in a position to report back with the results”.
I then intend for the choice of parting music as the curtain hides my coffin, to be Friggin’ in the Riggin’ by the Sex Pistols.
Needless to say, my mourners will be left under no illusion whatsoever, of my total and utter contempt, scorn and derision for superficial convention and failure of rigour.
I am probably more concerned about how I die (pain and suffering?) rather than the fact of my death itself.
To reiterate a point made by Mark Twain, I was dead for 13.7 billion years before I was born, and it left absolutely no impression at all.
And if it turns out that there is some sort of afterlife, then I have faith that it won’t involve eternal torture at the hands of a sadistic, unforgiving God (or gods).
So death will leave no impression at all, or it will be interesting.
If I do face eternal damnation after working in healthcare and saving lives for a living, then God is sadistic and unreasonable . . . and if God is unreasonable, then all of the religious belief in the world doesn’t make a difference, which means that worrying about the afterlife doesn’t accomplish anything anyway.
So I may as well be the best human being I can be, and have faith that there is nothing to be concerned about after my death.
As a closing thought, if God does exist . . . I can’t imagine that God is a lawyer who looks for broken rules just to punish for the sake of punishment.
what should matter about life and death is that you should at least be free to live your life and die when you see fit, not die because other people said you should.
I read a Warhammer novel once, and there was that one moment between a firing squad and an atheist who wouldn’t submit to their god emperor. The moment could be summarized as this:
That’s a compelling argument you have there, atheist. Now face the wall.
That would’ve been just fiction if people in real life didn’t actually follow that kind of sentiment. But sadly, some people in certain parts of the world do, deciding to end you just because you don’t believe that there is something after the “end”
I like Ron Reagan’s atheist commercial where, at the end, he signs off by saying: “This is Ron Reagan, atheist…not afraid of burning in Hell!” (He’s from the Freedom From Religion Foundation - FFRF). I know it’s not a song. I just like his last line from the commercial. My choice of closing song at my funeral would be old blue eyes, Frank Sinatra’s I Did It My Way!
I am an atheist but feel that death is not what we think it is . IF there be a consciousness/ soul/ being, that is us on another plane, could not death in this dimension not be total death?? I am 73 and see death as a natural part of life nothing to be feared. the idea of transitioning like a grub into a butterfly does appeal to the ego.
The only thing that bothers me about death is that it seems to be a final and abrupt stoppage of the continuance of a person’s life. When you think about all that a person knew, experienced and shared with others in life, all that they accomplished, it’s hard for us to wrap our heads around the terminality about it. We seem to be the only species on the planet that has elevated ourselves above the rest of the animal kingdom in that we insist that we are so important that there MUST be more. So the creative imaginations of primitive, superstitious people invented all kinds of concepts to allay our fears of death to ease our facing that eventuality. The question then is, does a soul exist. If so, what’s it made of? Does it contain conscious awareness and memory? Where does it go after physical death and most important of all, can we prove these things? Until we can, it still remains speculation. Like you, I wish I knew the answer to all that.
I have come not just to think not, but to hope not. I’m not interested in SSDD (Same Shit, Different Dimension). And there’s every reason to think that some “other plane” would be just as indifferent to our thriving and happiness as this one.
Information is stored physically. What makes you “you” is stored physically in your body. When you die and your body stops maintaining itself, it will be broken down and scattered into the world. So even if you have a soul, it isn’t what makes you you. Information can not be destroyed; what makes you you, will always exist. The change is that this information will no longer be largely localized in your body, and it will become more and more difficult for people to recover some/any of this information.
right! if a soul even exists, what would be its purpose?
More importantly, if there is such an entity carrying a person’s essential information, how does it store the information, and how does it interact with the cells and the nervous system of the body? If it can interact with other persons (as some would claim), it will necessarily be possible to measure this. But no such interactions have ever been shown or measured in a controlled setup, which makes a good case for being skeptical about the whole soul concept.
An after life makes as much sense to me as a ‘before life’, or essentially my presence within the cosmos before I was born, or perhaps even before my parents were born.
But I think the beauty is within what I have now, believing I have no afterlife makes me keenly aware of how precious life is and how short my time alive is.
So I ensure I maximise the time I have with my children and doing things that make myself and those around me happy.
