Life After Death

(xkcd)

PZ Myers on life after death:

When we die, there is no paradise, no hell, not even a grim gray afterlife of darkness and regret…we are just gone. Everyone who has ever lived has or will simply end, and become nonexistent.

Well, not entirely, as I'm sure Myers would agree. Some of us live on, biologically, in our children. And all of us live on in the memories of our friends and relatives and in the effect we had on the world, and everyone else in it, for good or ill (and we all have both kinds of effects, to some extent).

But here is his reply to the inevitable question from believers:

One answer is that a lie is not reassuring at all — telling me that I'll get to go to heaven when I die is about as believable as telling me that I'll be rewarded with beer volcanoes and strippers for my irreverence. I'd rather be honest and aware then deluded and oblivious.

Another answer is that we are alive right now — I simply do not worry about what will happen after I'm dead. Life is for the living of it, it's wasteful to spend it fretting over what you'll do when it's gone. One reasonable response to mortality is to enjoy life now.

We do have hope for the future, too. Think for a moment about your community a century from now. Does it make you feel good to think that there will still be people living there then? That they will be talking about things that you find interesting, that they will be doing activities you also enjoy? Do you hope that life will be better for them? Even though we will be gone, we can still aspire to perpetuate our culture, and find satisfaction while we are alive in advancing that cause.

The hardest explanation for theists to grasp, though, is the understanding that none of us have ever had this unlikely clot of vapor called a soul. If the soul is an imaginary fantasy, then Mozart's music, Michaelangelo's sculptures, Picasso's paintings, the Wright brothers' plane, every work of art and technology produced by people whose names have been lost to us, every child, every dream, has been created by us, mere mortal flesh unled by a magic puppeteer in the sky, unaided by angels or spirits. I find that wonderful.

That's similar to my own short post two days ago, isn't it?

Were you sad to discover that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny don't really exist? Perhaps. But would you rather still believe in them, just for comfort's sake? Or do you think that adults should face the world as it really is, taking comfort from the truth instead of from pleasant lies?

And regarding the comic, yes, I've signed up to be an organ donor. More than that, I donate blood every two months. So far, I've donated more than 17 gallons. It feels good to know that I've helped people live longer or have better lives now, and I don't need any supernatural threats or rewards to make me do the right thing.