For the last few days, I have more than once contemplated the Atheistic view of life, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but when the lights go out, and your brain dies from lack of oxygenated blood,... that's it,...the end?? No more superman4691???

I've been trying to comprehend what that would be like, and all I could come up with is it would be similar to falling into a deep sleep and waking up 7 or 8 hours later, and during those 8 hours of sleep you didnt dream, toss or turn. You just woke up with no recollection of the past several hours.
However, in the Atheist's view of death, once you die, you just never wake up, no dreaming, no nightmares,.... nothing. You cease to be.

If this is Atheism, I would be hard pressed to subscribe to such a view.

Hmm, this should be a hot topic on the board ;)

I don't know, but I hope that's not the way it is. Things certainly aren't as simple as what we see from our limited perspective. Pond water simply doesn't explain us IMHO.

If once you are dead you cease to be, that's a lot more comforting than dying and finding out you worshipped a very capricious and vague god the "wrong" way and now have to suffer for all eternity.... or be forced to worship them for all eternity

Gods and afterlife make no sense to me.

The way I think of it is that death will be like before I was born. I had no sense of myself before I was born and I'll have no sense of myself when I'm dead.

lights out...simple

I like this idea the best and it is actually more comforting. Better than having a God waiting to judge me for loads of tiny things even though I tried to live a good life so even in death I can never measure up. No thanks.

Fellow atheists out there can correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think being an atheist necessarily means you do not believe in some kind of afterlife.

An atheist is someone lacking a belief in a god or gods.

Now, atheists generally believe this but I don't why it means you can't believe in some kind of afterlife. Maybe you are reincarnated. Maybe your "energy" or mind continues in some kind of form. Maybe there's some other dimension you go to. Who knows. Its not something we can really know. None of these things necessarily means some sky-daddy like Elohoim, Jesus, Allah, Zeus or some plethora of Roman or Hindu gods.

Its difficult for you to believe that you might not exist after you die because you've been conditioned, probably for your whole life that there is "a heaven" where you go when you die. Its what your mind has been formed to believe.

Correct, there's no one-to-one correlation here: there are atheists who believe in an afterlife, and there are theists who believe death is the end.

OP is here expressing difficulty with the concept of no life after death, not with atheism.

I agree.

Habit 2: "Begin with the end in mind: your own annihilation".

What is it like to be a stone? What is it like to be a raindrop? The short answer is that there is nothing that it is like to be one of those things.
what is it like to be dead? The question is as meaningless as asking what it is like to be a stone. there is nothing that it is like to be a dead body.

Then your consciousness, personality, soul, or whatever ceases to be. That was my question in my OP.
However your examples miss the mark, because a stone, or raindrop never had a conscience to begin with.

Billions of years went by before you were born and had consciousness, then that would be for less than 110 years at most.

Now you assume you will live forever because you can not accept that when you are dead you are dead?

If you are contemplating life after death, why do you restrict it to humans?

Ever wonder what the dinosaur philosophers thought about eternal life?

Why on earth would you postulate a ghawd who would grant eternal life to humans? How does that make any sense? What universe what want to be full of us?

You are going to die...this will be the end. Live your life now and quit thinking of what it might be like in tomorrowland. Peter Pan ain't real. You will not be with tinkerbell or a flying boat or Capt. Hook.

Get this tattoed on your arm: "I am going to be dead some day...I am alive now...quit wasting time" Then go and start doing whatever the *uck you have always wanted to do. Quit reading this ....go do it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2015 02:26AM by upsidedown.

You have two different ideas going on here. No life after death is not always connected to what atheists believe. And just because someone believes in a deity doesn't necessarily mean they believe in an afterlife.

Atheism just means you have no belief in a god or gods.

You said: "If this is Atheism, I would be hard pressed to subscribe to such a view."

I don't believe in a god; I don't believe in an afterlife. It's not something I "subscribed" to. It's a logical conclusion from all the real evidence I can see. It's not what I was expecting to find, given my upbringing, but it is likely the way it really is, if I am honest with myself.

Not one single soul knows what happens to us once we depart this life. There's not one shred of evidence to back up what is being touted as fact here. Your "truth" without compassion is simply cruelty.

I'd hope to be remembered for a while, but I'm not sure that I'd mind either way afterward. If my consciousness ceases to exist, the particles that made up "me" still exist. They'll never be destroyed. Maybe I'd be cremated and the ashes blown into the wind to go become soil and trees and other things, or maybe I'd just be buried like anyone else. I don't know what will happen to my feelings and thoughts later, but I don't mind not knowing. Even if there's nothing after, the thought gives me more motivation to enjoy the time I do have.

Oddly enough, it's not my spirit/soul/mind that I worry about. I just mostly hope that my body would be treated with respect.

What were you before you were born? Nothing, and back you'll go to that state.

I think you understand atheism, you just don't like it and would prefer to be told fairy stories instead to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. That's how all religions work, I highly recommend watching "The Invention of Lying" to see how it works.

Every TV show and movie that is about life after death, or the dead coming back to life, always ends badly. It starts out innocently enough, with one of the living wanting to say goodbye to a deceased loved one, but then the zombie apocalypse starts and life as we know it ends.

Either everybody stops existing or everyone is immortal, including murderers, rapists, people who cut into queues and bankers. I take comfort in the belief that the dead stay dead.

Because if you did, then you must realize that there is no "veil of forgetfulness." You can't remember anything before this life because you didn't exist.

Atheism takes away the belief in a mystical "soul" that survives death and leaves you with the prospect that after death is going to be very much like before life –– nothingness.

It makes sense if you stop compartmentalizing your powers of consciousness from the processes of your physical brain. When the processes of your brain stop and the organic machinery of your cells begins to be scattered by decay, the organization of molecules that is you, that was you, passes away to form other molecular bonds with other systems. You, the stream of conscious awareness that was just one function of many of that organic brain, doesn't exist anymore.

You will be dead. You will not survive your own death. Contemplating what nothingness feels like is like programming Windows to log what happens as I smash my computer to bits with a hammer and then print a report for me after the hardware is shattered into tiny pieces.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2015 04:50AM by Cold-Dodger.

I personally think that it is ok to decide whatever you want about an afterlife....

If I want to think that my brother's spirit is hanging around and talking to him brings me comfort.... I'm OK with that. (I believe that as long as I remember him, he still "exists")

I couldn't find a good link.. But I've heard a quote that basically says we are made of star stuff ... And after we die, we are still star stuff that goes on to make other things... (I don't know if the quote is from Sagan or from someone quoting him). I think this is a more powerful thought than the one I was taught as part of my childhoid religion.

As another poster said... There is no way to know for sure.....

So to me that means... I can believe whatever brings me the most comfort.... Even if no one else believes the same thing.....

I am atheist now but prefer to think (because it's what I WANT to think) that I (my consciousness, not just my matter) will continue on in some form after this life. I just don't think there's a god up there scheming and judging us all about it.

Belief in a god is separate from your belief in afterlife.

I like to think of my consciousness as being a specific type of energy, something that can neither be created nor destroyed, but that can only transfer from one form to another. In other words, reincarnation. I have absolutely no proof, but I just feel better thinking that it is so.

I don't see myself ever being able to accept my own annihilation, even though if it is true, I won't care at all afterwards. Still, that thought invokes such feelings of loneliness and hopelessness (for ME), that it pains me to entertain it. Whenever I do entertain such thoughts, I have to almost immediately just quit thinking about death at all.

Whereas if I think about being reincarnated, whether in this realm or another, my mind enjoys the exercise of what it might be as there are just so many possibilities.

that's right...
Now this fact scares you go back to the comforting arm of jesus or buddha....

Subscribe to it or not, it is either true or not. Avoiding the truth because you do not like it isn't healthy. Avoiding atheism because you do not like the results is silly.

It's not death that bothers me. It's the worry that if the church I true my husband is still sealed to his crazy ex-wife since all that polygamy stuff still exists in heaven :)

There's no way I'm sharing a mansion or even a shed with her so I'm going to leave that party now thanks very much and have quiet, peaceful, very hot eternity since the country I live in now is way too cold :)

Unless of course Russell Crowe joins the church...then I might recant :)

Every living thing is created from energy. And that energy will always exist in some form.

It's so interesting to contemplate what happens after we die!

I've finally come to the conclusion that no one really knows -- how can we?

After mentally letting go of TSCC's teachings about God/preexistence/exaltation, it's a relief to feel like I can live for this life and enjoy every bit of it, instead of focusing on what I need to do to get to extra special Mormon heaven and what will happen there for eternity. That was always a stressful concept, planning for eternity.

Now, instead of living with a goal of being exalted for the eternities, I'm trying to live to really enjoy this life and help others do the same.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2015 08:53AM by Jael.

Actually, imagining what this is like is rather easy.

Just call back to your memory the first 13 billion or so years of the universe.

See? That's what death will be like. We will miss our future about as much as we currently miss our past. We didn't exist then, and we won't exist after we die.

...is the skeptical equivalent of "you go too far west and you fall off the edge of the (flat) earth."

That is it.