(April 22, 2015 at 6:49 pm)noctalla Wrote: Recently, I encountered a Christian who asked me what atheists believe happens after death. I suspect the question was posed partly out of genuine curiosity, but with an underlying assumption that, whatever atheists believe, Christians believe in a more desireable outcome. When answering, I started off by saying that it depends on the atheist, in an attempt to convey the fact that there is a great plurality of beliefs among atheists. Then I went on to say that I personally think an individual (at least as far as their conciousness and experience is concerned) ceases to exist after death. Then they asked me, with what appeared to be a mixture of incomprehension, condescention and pity (lol), if I was scared of the thought of not existing. I wasn't really sure how to answer this part. Despite the many less than desireable aspects of existing, I am overall quite satisfied with the experience and am in no hurry to hasten my inevitable death. In fact, I would fight tooth and nail to stay alive, if I had to. But, while dying scares me a quite a bit, I'm not really scared of not existing, because there is literally nothing to be scared of (though I admit I am somewhat unsettled by the thought). At this point I thought I'd turn the question around on the Christian. I assumed (correctly as it turns out) that they believed they would look forward to everlasting life after they died. So I asked them if they were scared of everlasting life. They weren't. I think they assumed I was making a joke, because their reaction suggested that it had never even occured to them that existence without end could possibly be anything other than a good thing. I think this attitude betrays a total incomprehension of the implications of eternity. The thought of existence without end scares me much more than not existing. And the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that my views on what happens after we die are far more desireable than what Christians believe. I could expound further, but I've gone on long enough and I'd like to hear if anyone else has considered the matter.
I've personally never been more afraid in my life than I have been at the thought of eternity and eternal life. It started at about 9 when I was a christian and I asked people would I not get bored spending that much time in heaven, take the 75 years or so I spend on earth, multiply that by a million, multiply that by a billion billion then multiply that by a trillion trillion trillion and it still won't even be a fraction of the amount of time in heaven so boredom would probably turn into insanity and I'd just be left as a stagnant drooling wreck forever on a cloud. It didn't really matter if there was no heaven just the thought of anything forever scared me.
This thought would actually make me physically shake with fear at night, it only stopped when I started puberty and sex distracted me. Now I just calm myself by thinking that when it comes to time and eternity the human brain doesn't really comprehend it and maybe eternity doesn't exist. And the human brain is only evolved to be bored because of evolution and that's the way it's formed to cope with life on earth.
Are you ready for the fire? We are firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat. It tells us that we’re ready, we’re at home, we’re where we’re supposed to be. Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flame. We control them. We move the flames where we want to. And then we extinguish them.
Impersonation is treason.
