Question about permanent death

[unfogged]

I talked once with an atheist who believed that there was some sort of ethereal cloud of abilities and that you drew your talents from that cloud and that the goal was to improve on them and when you die release them back into this nebulous cloud for the next person. It wasn't an afterlife in that your consciousness did not survive death but your talents and abilities did. It was a very strange conversation. Atheism may be a common result of skepticism but that's apparently not the only way to get there.