Mortality Week: Afterdeath

Welcome to Mortality Week! (not to be confused with my past theme of Morality Week) Everyday this week I'll be posting articles relating to what it means to be mortal. Mostly it means we're gonna die. Death is certain. The afterlife? Less so.

Grundy on the Christian Afterlife

I was a Christian for twenty years and I still don’t have a clear picture of heaven. The bible is somewhat contradictory and somewhat vague on the topic. The church has done it’s best to fill in the blanks, but “the” church is really just “a” church and every denomination is a bit different. If I had to cobble together a consensus, all I can say about heaven is that “it’s nice.”

A believer would probably say that it’s perfect, but my perfect might not be your perfect--but we are probably going by God’s perfect which likely isn’t either of ours perfect. Last time the Almighty made paradise it had an evil, talking snake in it, so I’m not making any assumptions.

Then we have the problem of eternity. I call it omni-bordeom, because you can, and will, have too much of a good thing. The are only two ways around this. One is a divine-lobotomy that takes away your ability to become bored, but once we get into God fundamentally changing who you are, can we say that it is really you that lives past this mortal coil. The other option is continuing the human tradition of shitty memories. I might live forever, but I’ll only remember the past fifty years or so. This undermines the idea of both eternity and perfection, but it’s better than getting sick of your favorite movie.

Grundy on the Muslim Afterlife

72 virgins, right? Better comedians than I have written every joke that can be written about the Muslim afterlife. Honestly, I have a feeling there is more to it than non-Muslims think. I’m not saying that it isn’t a stupid and misogynistic view of the hereafter, but it could very well be not stupid and misogynistic in quite the way I imagine. Until I’m more educated, no comment, but I’m pretty sure they suffer from the same downsides of eternal life.

Grundy on the Hindu Afterlife

Like Islam, my understanding of Hinduism is that of an American outsider. At first glance, I kinda wish it was true. The idea of Karma is the fairest motivator to be moral in all the religious traditions. Instead of our acts for the span of 0 to 100 years being the subject of judgment to determine our next infinity of years, we have a system of judging one life to determine the starting point of our next life. We trade the two extreme options of heaven and hell, to a sliding scale. If an afterlife exists, I’d like it to be this one...but I’m not holding my breath.

Via Flea Snobbery

Grundy on the Atheist Afterlife Death

When I tell people that I believe that nothing happens to us when we die, it is usually met with some variation of “that’s depressing.” (This is often coming from people who think everlasting punishment is an option.) Depressing or not, we have no reason to believe that we have a soul or spirit or anything more than what our living brain provides. Wishful thinking does not dictate reality. Even if you find some argument for God convincing, which you shouldn’t, that doesn’t mean an afterlife is a given. Just because something is eternal, doesn’t mean that we are. The only reason almost every religion connects an appealing afterlife with their God, is because we wouldn’t worship the God or obey the religious leaders otherwise.

Am I glad that there probably is no afterlife? Not particularly. I’d rather have reincarnation or some reunion with lost friends, but not at the expense of knowing that others could be unjustly suffering. Hell is universally unjust.

Hitler doesn’t deserve eternal torment. There, I said it. I’m not sure what he deserves. Maybe an ass full of red hot coals. Maybe a painful death and rebirth for every Jew who died in the Holocaust and every soldier who died in World War II. That would be an “eye for an eye” revenge that only a supernatural deity could exact. This would be overkill, pardon the pun, but it would still be infinitely more just and humane then eternal torture. I don’t think believers ever quite wrap their brains around “forever,” if they did I’d expect a lot more objections.

No afterlife is at once more depressing and more comforting than most religious alternatives, but not by design. Atheists hold certain beliefs because there is no evidence to believe otherwise. The afterlife will forever be beyond our knowledge. It is up to you to either believe your preference, or to go with the most educated guess.

Soul Abortion

Politics and religion, the two subjects that should not be discussed at the dinner table. Each have their share of hot button topics, none more so than those that overlap between the two. Today I’m talking about one such topic, the morning after pill.

You may wonder why I don’t cover the broader issue of abortion. It’s because I have no clear stance on the matter. I’m pro-choice for first trimester abortions and pro-life for third trimester abortions. Any demarcation as to when exactly my stance changes is largely arbitrary, so I vaguely point to the second trimester. My feeling is that there are valid, secular reasons not to abort an unwanted fetus, but only religious reasons to oppose aborting an unwanted embryo. Plan B provides the perfect example of religion fueled opposition and is the safest for me to discuss without hesitation.

Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs), such as Plan B, are intended to disrupt ovulation and/or fertilization. They are basically just a higher dose of standard birth control and likely don’t abort anything. Even so, the rivals of the pills claim that they could be an abortion, and any chance of this is a chance of killing another person.

When they say "person" or "baby" or "human-being," remember whatever terminology a theist uses for that thing in mamma's belly, they really mean a “soul.” In their eyes, a person begins at fertilization because a divine entity has delivered a soul to a collection of cells. I don’t buy the angelic stork hypothesis. It won’t be some immortal essence that brings conciousness to the unborn child. It will be it’s brain...and it doesn’t have one yet.

So if you are opposed to abortion and you are opposed to the morning after pill, I’m going to write off your opinions as magical thinking. If you are opposed to abortion and you support ECPs, then we can talk. My opinion remains flaky until the theoretical question of “would you have an abortion?” becomes practical...and seeing how I’m not a woman, I doubt it ever will.