While my “kuya” and me were watching the movie “Armageddon” (you know the Bruce Willis flick.), he asked me, “What if an atheist faces this situation, will that make him a believer?”
That question has made me think and write this article. If an atheist faces a situation that may endanger his life, will he become a believer? Okay, let’s make the scenario more credible. Suppose that the atheist have a terminal illness like cancer, will such situations bring him back to God?
A study shows that beliefs are designed by the brain to protect the body from physical and mental harm. (See: Why Bad Beliefs Don’t Die by Gregory W, Lester – SKEPTICAL INQUIRY Nov/Dec 2000) Belief is designed to augment and enhance the danger-identification function of the senses. Belief detects danger and improves the survival as humans entered “unfamiliar territory.” They act as internal maps.
If this is right, it will make believing in times of death reasonable by biological standards. So it might not be a surprise if “any” atheists recant on their deathbed. But that makes belief only a “placebo medicine,” to elevate the feeling of lost and despair.
People are scared of death because they want to live more. The body reacts as if it wants to have what believers always hoped for, “an eternal life:” That’s why allot of religion have always been cashing in, telling adherents the means to escape the inescapable. Immortality is not really a promise, but a bribe.
It’s easy for a person to fall to such assurance; the brain is responsible for that. It is your brain that’s talking. We are talking here about death, the eradication of your existence. Unquestionably your body does not like that to happen. So here you are clinging to that very dear life of yours. Believing on anything that may prolong it, maybe even to live forever.
How will you face death if there is nothing more into it? Many believers wonder how an atheist faces death. It may be quite strange for a fact that an atheist is not afraid of it. An atheist friend of mine once said, if he dies, then thanks that he can now rest in peace. Resting in peace is a better end that to sing hallelujah for all eternity to a grumpy god in heaven.
For the atheistic Buddhist, life is just a wheel. Hmmmmmm…you are just re-live everything again. Well, how about if life is just a non-ending repetition of events, just like one episode on the Twilight Zone. It’s sometimes fun to assume the unknown.
The best way I prefer is to face it as a fact. Death is a part of life; everything that lives will eventually face it. Even atheists.
Photo from takomabibelot / CC BY 2.0
water cycle, earth revolution, metamorphosis, food chain, food web, history repeating itself,.evolution, atoms and particle swirling around life and death death and life,…thus leads me to the skepticism of the reincarnation,….i don't entirely believe in it actually, it only fascinates and so therefore i took the more liberty of approach in observing it and studying it in the world around…
i hope i will be a new baby in an another well off family after i die…(T_T)
if the body dies the mind dies too…..the mind does not leave the body and wanders around… or face judgment, they're stories of near death experience which is still debated.
I have no idea what is it like out there… on the other side…my mind wanders into this movie I saw a long time ago…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pHCtLzmras
when you learn to embraced death, you also learn to embrace life.
The way I see it, to escape death and the thought of dying, I always look at the Rotten.com website.
even in the face of death talking to someone like, I believe my creator, gives a relief. I experienced death in my life. This is just my own personal experience.
i'm not afraid to die… i'm afraid of pain
I am a combination of both. A deist and a Christian (cannot just turn my back with unbelief)for there is a nagging thought that if God so personally created everything from the tiniest moth to the vast mountains to the splendid stars and to the mystery of language how could you not possibly communicate with God in prayers. He created language anyway, to utter even in thoughts all my heart's heaviness in his listening ears is an unfathomable relief. George Washington is a Deist but explained that the providence of God is inscrutable.
excerpt from http://www.deism.com/washington.htm
-Like truly intelligent people in all times and places, Washington realized how very little we know about life and the workings of the universe. He wrote that the ways of Providence were "inscrutable."-
Pinoyathiest is making me think harder about things i dont want to think about.:-)
If an athiest, a buddhist and a christian were in a situation where they all would certainly die, who would handle the circumstances best? Let's use Barbera Jean's airplane situation as an example.
I'm sure the foremost thought on each persons mind is family. Aside from that (and in the mix of that), they are getting Kubler-Ross fast-tracked directly to the stage of "bargaining". With a wing broken off the plane, there may be some measure of 'denial'. Fear overwhelms any feelings of 'anger'. There is no time for 'depression' or 'acceptance', so again, we are pretty much stuck in the 'bargaining' stage of imminent death.
If you accept Kubler-Ross theory as most health care professionals do, it creates an interesting reality for people with different ideologies. If bargaining is a necessary part of the dying process, who are the athiests and buddhists bargaining with?
It likely comes down to "God, if you exist, please…", or "Creator, whoever you are, please…", but we will never really know.
@Twin-Skies
oh so there's a term for it! wow
thanks
@Sathepine
What your friends attempted is called Pascal's Wager.
To quote the wiki article on what the wager is about:
"Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose."
My favorite counter for the wager would have to be asking
"You tell me that believing in God is a safe bet, but which God? Yours? Allah? Buddha?"
I agree with this article. When you are helpless and desperate, your emotions want to cling to something for hope.
By the way, I really like this line: "Immortality is not really a promise, but a bribe."
Some of my friends used to tell me that if I don't believe in God I'd go to hell when I die. So they say that I should take the safe route and just believe. I asked them how I can possibly believe in something I don't believe in? Hypnosis, perhaps? It's not like belief is an activity that can be done given the right method. And I don't believe in hell, either. So I'm not really afraid to go there when I die. They just responded with "we respect your opinion" or something of that sort.
@twin skies
i know, my last post was a reply to the post of Barbara saying that there is no atheist in a crashing airplane….
i was just saying that her post was like that quote "no atheist…" which suggest that we lose or atheistic stand in face of death…
@lucius_ferrer
Countless soldiers who died serving their country beg to differ, lucius 🙂
http://www.ffrf.org/foxholes/
I am reminded of a quote from Edvard Munk:
"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."
I look at immortality as something that can be possible in death, depending on your understanding of the word.
For example, passing on a legacy to your descendants that can have a such a deep, meaningful impact in their lives that it's a legacy that they will eventually pass to their children, or their children's children.
While legacies such as those of hate and intolerance (racism, fundamentalism, etc.) are usually what the world sees, I'd prefer to think more of more uplifting legacies that have made us a a race a little more mature, such as Martin Luther King Jr's promotion of racial equality.
just like the "there is no atheist in a foxhole" thingy….
why? because god only causes planes filled with believers to crash?
there is no atheist in a crashing airplane! hehehe!believe me! nyahahaha!