On another post, a Christian asked me, what happens when we die? Rather than answer him in the comments, I thought I would answer his question here.
The power of religion rests in the hope they give people concerning life after death. Remove this from religion and churches would be shuttered overnight. Hope, along with fear, is the glue that holds most religions together. What would religion be without the fear of hell and the hope of heaven?
The problem though is that there is no proof that there is a heaven or a hell. All we have to go on is the various religious texts that clerics use to “prove” there is a hell and a heaven.
No one has ever gone to heaven and come back to tell us about it. The same goes for hell. All we have to go on are what ancient texts say about heaven and hell. Thus, it requires FAITH to believe there is a heaven and a hell.
The same goes for any life at all after death, whether it be reincarnation or Christian resurrection. There is no proof that there is ANY life after death. Again, a belief in life after death requires FAITH.
As a skeptic *, faith has very little place in my worldview. I judge matters according to what I can know. What does reason tell me about life after death? What do my my observations tell me about life after death? What do my experiences, anecdotal they may be, tell me about life after death?
Simple….when we die we are dead. That’s it. End of story. When my heart stops pumping and my lungs stop breathing I am dead. Everyone of us will come to this end. No one escapes death.
I know of no one who has come back from the dead. I know of no one who is not right where they were planted or sprinkled after they died. As with God, there is no evidence of a hell, heaven, or life after death. Since there is no evidence, I must conclude these things do not exist.
Now, this does not mean I don’t wish it could be different. Heaven, eternal life, a pain-free body…..that appeals to me. But then, so does having magical Harry Potter powers. Both are fantasies that have NO foundation in reality.
Some day, sooner rather than later, I am going to die. It is unlikely that I will be alive 20 years from now. I hope I am, but my body and its slow, gradual decline tells me that death is lurking in the shadows and some day will come and claim me. Believe me, I want to live. I have no death wish like many Christians do. Take me Jesus, I am ready to go, many a Christian says. Not me. I have no desire to leave on the next boat or any other boat. I hope that slow-black train that’s a-comin’ gets derailed in Texas. I want to live as long as I can. I want to be married for 50 years and see my grandkids get married and bless me with great grandchildren.
You see, we as skeptics value life because this is all we have. We know (because that is what the evidence tells us) there is no hell, heaven, or life after death. This is it and because this is it we want to ring as much as we can out of life. We are not content to off-load life to a mythical afterlife. Every days matters because every day lived is one less day we have to live.
I have lived about 19,843 days, 467,592 hours. What is most important to me is how I spend the days I have. Have I lived life to its fullest? Have I made a difference? Am I a better person today than I was yesterday?
This is enough for me. A well-live life…what more can anyone ask for?
Sadly, the Christian views life as something to be endured so that they might get an after-life payoff. I know this description sounds crude, but it is the essence of the Christian belief concerning life after death. Endure! Suffer! Be Patient! As the Christian song says, Some day it will be worth it all. Some day you will cross the finish line and receive the prize that awaits you, the Apostle Paul says.
Now, I fault no Christian for believing in hell, heaven, and the afterlife. The Christian Bible certainly says these things are real. The Christian Bible certainly says who will be going to hell and who will be going to heaven. However, as a skeptic, I see no evidence that these beliefs are true. I do not have the requisite faith necessary to suspend reason on these matters. (and faith requires the suspension of reason) I am unwilling to waste my life in the pursuit of that which, best I can tell, does not exist.
I hope this adequately answers the Christian commenters question.
* my use of the word skeptic. I use the word to represent atheists, agnostics, and humanists in general.
Sigh. Yeah. So much wasted time, bro. I think about the old, classic Hymn of old, “wasted years, wasted years, oh how foolish”.
But, not like our Christian frIends do anymore
“Sadly, the Christian views life as something to be endured so that they might get an after-life payoff.”
Well said, and too true.
A couple of relevant, and extremely well done and well thought out videos on death from the perspective of an ex religious:
Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNVg8V4EQU&feature=player_embedded
Part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBEE8Yfr3AM&feature=relmfu
Watched these yesterday, very insightful.
My skin is too tender to argue about what is or is not. Suffice it to say I believe what I believe and honor other’s beliefs as being correct for them. What do I believe? I am a Quantum Activist.
My husband, who was seventh generation Asatru (The Viking Way), just passed away from cancer. As his death day oozed closer we would joke about him haunting me. In fact we thought of asking the Ghost Hunters if I could borrow some of their equipment to get proof. Grieving and becoming homeless has put a stop to that plan. If I ever do get scientific proof he is hanging out in the ether I will be posting about it everywhere!
I believe going forward everyone needs to honor each other. What is done to one is done to all – Nature is very clear about that lesson. Also, I thank you Bruce for your courage to speak your mind, even if your ideas are not popular with a certain crowd. With respect to you being an Atheist and not believing, may I please think good thoughts and send them your way? On a Quantum level, they can’t hurt. On a specific level, I don’t put any twist on them – just good energy for those days when everything is off.
I have many friends who have all sorts of metaphysical beliefs. I have no problem with their beliefs at all. Even with the Christian, I am quite agnostic about their beliefs as long as they don’t try to evangelize or turn the U.S. into a theocratic state.
Most people find that religion gives them purpose, meaning, and value. I have no desire to rob anyone of that which gets them through the night. My main beef is with American/Western Evangelicalism. I suspect my views about religion would be different if I had not been a part of Evangelicalism for so long. I see this with a lot of people who comment here.
One of my favorite PC games from the 90′s was Lost Vikings. If you lost a round in the game the screen went to a funeral pyre on a Viking ship.
I died many a Viking death in the Lost Vikings game.
I didn’t read it all, sorry, but I had to stop when I read, “No one has gone to hell or heaven and back”, and I most certainly disagree. There are thirteen million adult near death experiences in the US. These experiences come from a wide variety of people – not just nutjob religious people – be it atheist, agnostic, even Satanists and of course Christians. Most of these people are perfectly normal, healthy-minded human beings. I’d research this matter a bit more. And, albeit, some (though a far less percentage) of people who do die and come back to life experience nothing. Now, what these people experience may or may not be the distinctive heaven and hell Christians boast about. But there is much more documented (and believe it or not – scientific!) evidence that there is an afterlife than just what some people have in their imagination that there isn’t, or what people would like to believe. Read the book Life After Life by Raymond Moody (don’t worry, it’s not a Christian book). It accurately and scientifically documents these findings on near-death experiences from an unbiased point of view.
Anecdotal stories are not proof.
I will readily admit people have near-death experiences. Note the term NEAR death. No one has ever had an AFTER death experience. Science continues to work on the reason for near death experiences. Rather than “proving” there is an after life, it seems the evidence is leading to these experiences being a function of the brain.
If heaven and the after life is so concrete why all the varied near death stories? It seems if the people where all seeing the same thing that their stories would match. Kinda like the Bible, I guess….Conflicting reports.
Granted, some of the experiences can not be explained. However, the unexplained does not equal something being supernatural. All it means is that it is unexplained.
Let’s not forget that Moody went through a near death experience himself. Would we expect him to write a book that discredits what he experienced? We would not expect a born-again Christian to write a book discrediting the born again experience.
Near death experiences, like the born-again experience are subjective events that can not be proved. Either a person believes they happen or they believe they don’t. I believe they don’t.
That said, I have no problem with people who think these kind of things are important. Again, if it helps them get through the night then who am I to piss all over their doorstep.
Has anyone ever looked into how much near death experiences vary by culture?
I read a really fascinating article about it a long time ago. I couldn’t find that article again, but this blog post has many of the same points (e.g. that Christians “see” the Christian version of the afterlife, Muslims the Islamic version, etc): http://genealogyreligion.net/near-death-experiences-portal-to-another-realm
You’ll notice they are always correctly called “near-death” experiences because they describe someone almost dying and then coming back. When your heart stops you don’t die. Your brain can function to some level for some time after the stopping of circulation. And, if circulation is re-started, the brain can re-start again surprisingly long after the circulation has originally stopped.
To my knowledge, there are no cases of someone actually dying and then coming back to life to report on what they experienced. By this I mean in the sense that Christianity claims Jesus died: clinically dead (not mistakenly in a coma or something) for 3 days and then back alive again.
If people can’t find the answer to this while we are yet alive, I sure don’t see how they will figure it out after they are dead.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.”
On The Shortness of Life
Seneca