What happens to an atheist when he dies?
No one can answer that question with certainty, as any response requires the kind of faith emphatically rejected by Christopher Hitchens, who has died at the age of 62. However, we can and should reflect on how this extraordinary author, intellectual and provocateur faced death before he died.
Hitchens' thoughts about his own death, and death in general, deserve respect. His fierce atheism was determined to yank our thoughts away from any future place and time after we die, back to the world that is present to us in this very moment. Take, for example, this arresting passage written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali* from the book Hitchens edited called The Portable Atheist:
Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.
This emphasis on the present may feel incomplete to some. But concentrating on what we know -- our own experiences, senses and rational mind -- does not, in fact create a void; rather, it fills these precious moments that we have on earth with intensity, urgency and inherent meaning. An atheist perspective on the afterlife eliminates the option of patient endurance in hopes of rewards in the sweet by and by; rather, it insists that any hopes and desires must be realized in this life, or not at all.
Hitchens' approach to death also demonstrated the value he placed on rationality and the life of the mind. Christopher Hitchens represented the tradition of the public intellectual and his contributions that will endure are his writing, speaking and wit. He famously declared that if he were to have any sort of conversion experience in his final days that it wouldn't be him, but instead a "demented and drug ridden" version of himself.
It may be the atheist's fierce trust in the rational capabilities of the intellect that is least appreciated by religious people, most of whom recognize additional avenues of inspiration and knowledge. Yet, here too, Hitchens' consistency should be admired. Hitchens wanted his approach to death to flow out of the convictions he held in life. His approach to death was to insist that the fabric of his life was to be of one piece. The idea of a bedside conversion represented a renting and denial of the rest of his life. Instead, whether one agrees with him or not, he died with integrity.
Perhaps the most universally understandable approach to death represented by Hitchens was his love and appreciation for his children. According to his own writing in Hitch-22, if he was to live on in any way it would be through them:
To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.
This last line is humorous and poignant, viewing death as an obligation necessary to liberate one's children, and to make room for the next generation. To feel that his heart was "running around inside someone else's body," was probably the closest that Hitchens came to life after death.
A couple of years ago I visited my cousin Richard Rorty, another famously secular humanist philosopher who was dying from pancreatic cancer. Out of curiosity rather than evangelistic fervor, I asked my cousin if he was having any thoughts about God or religion now that he was so immediately confronted with his mortality. Less vehement in his atheism than Hitchens, Rorty gently rebuked me saying: "Paul, you can't be in love with something you aren't in love with."
I then asked him about philosophy, and what it had to say about death. As one of America's most influential, and controversial philosophers of the late 20th century, Rorty replied emphatically: "Philosophy has nothing to say about death. Only poetry. I wish I had memorized more poetry." And then he recited sad, beautiful and enduring poetry to his son Jay and me, as we listened and learned.
When an atheist dies it is wrong to wonder what is happening to them now that they are dead. Instead we might consider whether they lived well while alive. Had we been able to ask that one question to Christopher Hitchens as he died, it seems he would have answered that he had.
How will we answer that question at the hour of our own death?
*The post has been updated to make clear that it was Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote the passage quoted in The Portable Atheist.
Follow Paul Brandeis Raushenbush on Twitter: www.twitter.com/raushenbush
Christopher Hitchens Dies at 62 - TIME
Writer Christopher Hitchens Dies At 62 : NPR
Renowned Atheist Christopher Hitchens Dies at 62, Christian News
BBC News - Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 after suffering cancer
http://wsimpson.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/once-in-awhile-truth-prevails/
Do you also follow that tenet, Mr. Simpson?
From stardust to stardust: all life on earth, with no escape for the gods.
Yes, we CAN answer it with certainty. The problem is that the only answer that Hitchens and his henchmen accept with certainty is wrong. So the final clause of the first sentence is really irrelevant.
What I found most interesting about that line you quote, and other points in this article is the assumption that somehow we all experience different after-deaths. I am an atheist, and have been my whole life... and I greatly appreciate the quote here from the author's cousin "Paul, you can't be in love with something you aren't in love with." While I cannot remotely believe in heaven, I entirely reject the punitive notion of hell. That is clearly a human construct created to control people's behavior. But if there is an after-life then we will all share this experience, regardless of our devotion or lack-of therein.
This is what I think when someone I love or care about dies: Now they know. Whether Mother Theresa, Christopher Hitchens, my beloved Grandmother, or neighbor, they all will have the same experience --- and now they all know. Or not.
I cannot embrace the idea of a god who would passively observe suffering... any more than I can believe that a god would sort us out after death. But that's just me. But no living person knows with certainty what happens next.
Answer: The same thing that happens to religous belivers and religous nuts, you go into the ground, creamated, etc. and thats all she wrote, no heaven, hell, soul, angels, devils, spirits, ressurection, you will not see your auntie, brother, child, etc., you will not be awarded some number of virgins, you will not come back as someone else, you will not have consciousness in any way, you will be gone.
no matter how much you prayed, or how much money you gave the church, we all go to the same state of nothingness
the atheist knows this and saves a lot of money and time by not believing in superstitution.
You write some pretty heavy stuff! I suppose you know that there is no "state of nothingness". "Nothingness" can't exist philosophically other than as an abstract. What you have put forth can only be your opinion based on your observations and education, which too is another form of believing concepts someone has taught you or that you learned somewhere, of what happens or doesn't happen to an individual after death.
If you are correct in your analysis then you, better than anybody, knows of the futility of you having even written it. It's a lot more fun to live in a world of "what if" than in a world of "doesn't matter".
And, I suppose you know that quantum physics will tell you that we all exist in a non-existing world. That the reality of death is not a reality at all...but, rather an observation. Do you ever wonder what that all means anyway? Is "nothingness" the black hole for "everythingness".
man created your god to give hope and comfort
regardless of what the defination of nothing is
you totally cease to exist at death
you will not be transported to heaven or a netherworld
sorry preacher
If you are correct in your analysis then you, better than anybody, knows of the futility of you having even written it. It's a lot more fun to live in a world of "concrete logic and science" than in a world of "fairy tales and superstitions".
"Do you ever wonder what that all means anyway?"
No. Not really. Why should I ponder the unanswerable? I leave that to the other side.
Atheism is a limitation - an intellectual limitation, an emotional limitation, even a physical limitation. If you choose to work from the premise that the world of our senses is the only world there is, you will quickly find your way into a "spiritual corner," so to speak (and often without realizing it).
The problem with atheism is not that it's false - for it's 100% true for those who choose to look at the world from that perspective. However, all perspectives within the empirical world are inherently limited (because they issue from a body in space and time) and therefore cannot reveal the totality.
The more expansive approach ("spiritual growth") is therefore to seek to escape from the world of our senses, escape from biology, escape from the timeline - all in order to reach ever higher perspectives (of which there are an infinity, as far as I can tell). Unfortunately, atheism does not encourage such behavior, believing it's impossible or "crazy talk" or "non-scientific" or "childish." Those criticisms reveal the fundamental limitation of atheism, a limitation not to be taken lightly since it defines so-called "progress" and "social advancement," those aspects of civilization we often praise.
We live this life to learn how to escape from this life. Think about that. Courageous intelligence is the watchword here.
Mr. Dick Turpin
Why must one need to "escape the world of our senses, biology, and the timeline"? Why live in a collective delusion where sin can be erased in the drop of a hat to appease the weak-minded and desperate? Life can be tough. Believing in a perfect afterlife is a cop-out designed to keep people "soft" and "pliable".
Congratulations on needing an "out" and not having the courage to embrace our glorious reality with a sharpened thirst for genuine understanding.
Quedog
Because how in the world can we believe that someone who would opt for pre-emptive war is a Christian? There is nothing that would ever convince me that warmongers have one shred of religiousity... because they do not seek a higher vision for the world, and they use their power AND their "shared" religious views to cow others.
When I think about how absurd religion is, I don't think about my wonderful and devout mother-in-law, a life-long Catholic and fabulous human. I think about those who use religion AGAINST her, as leverage in an attempt to get her to stop asking questions about their own motives or to control what she thinks and does. The spectacle of someone using their self-proclaimed Christianity to justify ugly lies and deeds should be enough to make any co-Christian question them... but it does not.... it's somehow become a question of faith.
I would not object to organized religion in the least if they practiced what they preached and did not use their narrow view to bully every other world view. I wish they would all give it a rest and try atheism for a while. Who knows? Maybe we could acheive peace.
Right on the mark with that one!
He finally gets some peace, away from all the theists trying to save him.
To imply that atheists are "missing out" on some component of existence is absurd. As an atheist I feel just the opposite, devotion to false premises limits one's ability to understand and incorporate true empathy into life. Religions corrupt true spirituality by merging empathetic realization with dogma and fake history.
Religions do not have a monopoly on meaningful experience.
-Epicurus
“But there are very good reasons to think it’s not true. We know this from 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain, and faculties are lost. You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools.
What we’re being asked to consider [by religion] is that: You damage one part of the brain, and some part of the mind.. subjectivity.. is lost. You damage another and more is lost. And yet if you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain with all of our faculties intact, recognizing grandma and speaking English” – Sam Harris
The evidence is so strong that the mind is just an outcome of physical and chemical processes in the brain, and the evidence against that hypothesis so tenuous, that to deny it seems like wishful thinking to me.
It is 100% up to those who claim humans have a transcending soul it to provide some convincing reason, rather than saying things like “We can’t explain consciousness, that’s a fact”.
Either you have observable proof, or you have a baseless myth.
First, it’s an ignorant question phrased this way, because it assumes that it is something different when a Hindu, Buddhist, Deist, Agnostic, or anyone that does not believe as the author does.
We know with 100% certainty that when we die, our body stop functioning, and the flesh starts to decompose almost immediately.
Religious people believe the mind is separate from the brain, therefore, a human soul exist and will transcend the body at death.
It has been proven as fact that the brain can be altered by chemically, surgically, in accidents, or from strokes and aneurisms; Resulting is loss of memory, motor functions, being unable to recognize family members and friends, etc. Therefore when part of the brain dies, it has a huge and profound effect on the person/the mind.
Yet religious people believe that when the entire brain dies the mind/person lives on because the mind/soul transcends the brain. This is nothing more that wishful thinking based on the human fear of dying. Yes, it’s a lovely fairytale, but it’s based on myths and superstitions.
Either you have observable proof, or you have a baseless myth.
I’m a bit confused as to why you asked this question. Are you trying to make a point?
Those, who are granted the misfortune or fortune depending upon your views, of living their death awaiting its end experience the full range of emotions and thoughts. The expectation that an atheist would change his views prior to death would only solidfy a conclusion that those who believe in God do so only out of fear. And, that is the misunderstanding that so many atheists have about Christians. Very few Christians, I know, choose to believe out of a fear seeking a way out of the inevitable.
I am a Christian, and I am saddened by the loss of a good man and intellectual who was not a hypocrite.
Yes, very few Christians believe in their god only out of fear. Most do so out of a mixture of fear, wishful thinking, childhood indoctrination (conditioning), peer pressure, herd conformity. None believe under the conditions of intellectual honesty informed by reason and evidence.
Actually, I found just the opposite to be true, and many gladly admit it to me. 2nd opinion said it very well in his/her response to your post. Life after death, a transcendent soul, really is just wishful thinking, nothing more.
"Wishful thinking" is when you hope that you are correct that there is no transcendent soul. Until, you make that journey you have NO way other than what you think is correct to know that with certainty. And, such a certainty will present itself with the impossible task of letting me know "how" that worked out for you.
And, I'll bet you're a mediocre surfer too.