Philosophy Now Forum

David Rönnegard asks how a committed atheist confronted with death might find consolation.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/At ... _A_Foxhole

Philosophy Now wrote:David Rönnegard asks how a committed atheist confronted with death might find consolation.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/At ... _A_Foxhole

"I am a secularly-minded philosopher. Faith is not a virtue I hold. In particular, I disbelieve claims to knowledge about God’s existence or will. As an atheist and a Humanist, my approach to life has been grounded on rational thought and empirical evidence. I consider death to be the end of our conscious existence, and that any meaning that life may have resides with man.

Public reflecting on life is often done in fear of, but seldom in the face of, death. I am in the privileged but unenviable position of doing the latter. I have just been told, at the age of 37, that I have stage four lung cancer. Atheism and news of one’s impending death would appear to be a particularly unfortunate combination. From where does a faithless philosopher obtain consolation? What provides meaning for a life lived, and acceptance of a fate anticipated?"

The author's answer:
"What gives rise to enduring sentiments may well vary among us, but my new shortsighted spectacles suggest to me that they will spring from events that have touched the lives of others. When such sentiments are shared they live on in those who stay behind. And so the Humanist quest for immortality is not corporeal. Rather, it takes many forms that touch lives, such as the friendships we maintain, the children we give birth to, the enterprises we start, and the books we write; in essence, the footprints we leave behind."

But, why does the Humanist even have a "quest for immortality"? (Jacques Maritain argued that many militant atheists display a "metaphysical anxiety". Is the author's admitted quest for immortality a tacit admission of his metaphysical anxiety?) Doesn't his atheism rule out, in principle, such a quest because it is a quest for an impossibility?

I liked this article very much. Here's hoping for the author's wellness, hopefully physically but also a continued strength emotionally.

I was raised catholic/christian and never really understood the atheist's point of view until I came to philosophy now. I must say that it is a damn sight more ethical than what the christian faith led me to believe. I was told horror stories about hedonism and hell, which frankly, upon reflection, scared the B'jesus out of me. Seriously, there was an underlying horror in me that came from the absurdity of being taught to 'love thy neighbor' but also fear 'evil' and that 'everyone who isn't Christian is evil'.

I could never wrap my head around that idea and still be without anxiety. Something to this day I feel is cause for the mental unhealthiness of the christian population. Simply put, you can't be sane and still think 2+2=5. And that is precisely what faith asks you to believe.

Faith professes that truth telling is good and righteous and then turns around and asks you to believe the absurd when it would serve them better to tell the truth about faith and admit there is no way of knowing but that faith helps them gain strength to live...not better than another, mind you...just they need some kind of security blanket, if you will.

That being said (rather poorly...lol) I have to confess I had major anxiety before philosophy now and conversations with atheists on this site. And I notice that my sister still has the same anxiety that I used to...but perhaps (hopefully) a little less because of me and my being influenced by PN.

I never felt that atheists were 'evil' like I was taught. Rather I was born with the thought that considering someone was evil...was, in fact 'evil'. lol Well maybe not 'evil' (I don't really think anyone is 'evil') just maybe mentally unhealthy. Hence my emotional dilemma growing up. ( I even had an aunt who when sending her child to public school had to pray over him before he went and then to pray the 'evil' spirits out of him when he came home....that's got to be some scary ass shit for a child who is taught his teachers are akin to the devil! And yes....my cousin grew up to be mentally disturbed...his was not a happy life)

My whole point is, there is a kindness in the philosopher atheists I have met on this forum....in that they seem to tell the truth and that truth is usually they they don't know. Nothing wrong with that...and if christian were truthful they would have to admit the same.

I don't worry too much about death now. None of us know when it is going to happen. And even when I do think about the oddness of ceasing to exist, I ponder about why I am not afraid of going to sleep...because apart from the occasional dream....for all intent purposes I don't exist.

tbieter wrote:

Philosophy Now wrote:David Rönnegard asks how a committed atheist confronted with death might find consolation.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/105/At ... _A_Foxhole

"I am a secularly-minded philosopher. Faith is not a virtue I hold. In particular, I disbelieve claims to knowledge about God’s existence or will. As an atheist and a Humanist, my approach to life has been grounded on rational thought and empirical evidence. I consider death to be the end of our conscious existence, and that any meaning that life may have resides with man.

Public reflecting on life is often done in fear of, but seldom in the face of, death. I am in the privileged but unenviable position of doing the latter. I have just been told, at the age of 37, that I have stage four lung cancer. Atheism and news of one’s impending death would appear to be a particularly unfortunate combination. From where does a faithless philosopher obtain consolation? What provides meaning for a life lived, and acceptance of a fate anticipated?"

The author's answer:
"What gives rise to enduring sentiments may well vary among us, but my new shortsighted spectacles suggest to me that they will spring from events that have touched the lives of others. When such sentiments are shared they live on in those who stay behind. And so the Humanist quest for immortality is not corporeal. Rather, it takes many forms that touch lives, such as the friendships we maintain, the children we give birth to, the enterprises we start, and the books we write; in essence, the footprints we leave behind."

But, why does the Humanist even have a "quest for immortality"? (Jacques Maritain argued that many militant atheists display a "metaphysical anxiety". Is the author's admitted quest for immortality a tacit admission of his metaphysical anxiety?) Doesn't his atheism rule out, in principle, such a quest because it is a quest for an impossibility?

I'm still surprised to encounter an atheist who is in quest of immortality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

tbieter wrote: I'm still surprised to encounter an atheist who is in quest of immortality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

Why are you surprised? Aren't you curious to know what the future might hold?

tbieter wrote:I'm still surprised to encounter an atheist who is in quest of immortality.

I recently presented at an event in London. The theme was death. Most people were fairly sanguine, but even atheists have no great wish for oblivion; the truth is we simply do not know what happens at death. Reality is a very strange thing. The only thing we know for certain is that there is experience: of what and why is a mystery. There are three basic options: perhaps our experience is fundamentally different to the stuff that makes the universe; in which case there are (at least) two components to reality: the stuff that experiences are of, and the stuff that does the experiencing, matter and mind for short. If that is the case, then there exists something which has some of the qualities of soul or spirit, and for all its association with body, isn't necessarily bound by it.
Another alternative is that consciousness is a product of particular arrangements of matter, a bit like light is a product of light bulbs. The question then is: is consciousness the light or the bulb? If it's the light, then even when the bulb goes out, and we die, the light continues to mingle with the universe; a bit like the stars we can see that must have blown up ages ago.
Then again, consciousness and matter might be the same stuff. Who knows? (n.b. Anyone who says they do is a nutter.)

artisticsolution wrote:

tbieter wrote: I'm still surprised to encounter an atheist who is in quest of immortality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

Why are you surprised? Aren't you curious to know what the future might hold?

Because the author states: "I consider death to be the end of our conscious existence, and that any meaning that life may have resides with man." But, he also is "in quest of immortality." I find these beliefs to be incompatable.

tbieter wrote:

artisticsolution wrote:

tbieter wrote: I'm still surprised to encounter an atheist who is in quest of immortality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality

Why are you surprised? Aren't you curious to know what the future might hold?

Because the author states: "I consider death to be the end of our conscious existence, and that any meaning that life may have resides with man." But, he also is "in quest of immortality." I find these beliefs to be incompatable.

I don't see the problem. All he's saying is that right here in the present we are all going to die. That is a statement of fact. Then he says that he is in "quest of immortality". Which to me means he is hopeful for the future...perhaps science will find a cure for death or something.

I think you are mixing up 'life after death' with immortality. In life after death you must first die, there is no immortality there, only the hope of a hereafter. With 'immortality' there is the hope that one may never die.

I use both science and philosophy to reference the continuous existence of self : before I was born it was necessary for the elements which I am made of to exist. In order for those elements to exist it was necessary for stars to exist. In order for those stars to exist it was necessary for the Universe to exist. So my very existence can be directly traced back to the very beginning if there was such a thing. And if there was not then it can be traced back even further. And this process also carries on after death. Because after I die the elements that I am made of will still exist since my body shall retain mass as Einsteins equation states that energy equals mass. And so I do not see death as just the end of consciousness but as a transference of energy too. Consciousness and non consciousness are but different points up on the same spectrum as opposed to polar opposites unconnected to each other. And so when death does come I will not fear it in the slightest. I will not be able to experience it anyway

uwot wrote:... the truth is we simply do not know what happens at death. Reality is a very strange thing. The only thing we know for certain is that there is experience: of what and why is a mystery.

I will have to disagree on that. As individuals facing our own death, we will be inevitably denied the empirical knowledge of it, but there's nothing impeding us from knowing what happens when other people like us die. We see that their bodies decay and that they cease to produce any effect on the world, as their actions and thoughts disappear. That is also a valid experience, which informs our knowledge of our own fate when we're gone. Not really that mysterious.

Conde Lucanor wrote:I will have to disagree on that. As individuals facing our own death, we will be inevitably denied the empirical knowledge of it, but there's nothing impeding us from knowing what happens when other people like us die. We see that their bodies decay and that they cease to produce any effect on the world, as their actions and thoughts disappear. That is also a valid experience, which informs our knowledge of our own fate when we're gone. Not really that mysterious.

Well, if you consider Gilbert Rhyl's Ghost in the Machine, it is absolutely true that we only have experience of other people's 'machine'. Each of us though has experience of our own 'ghost', which as Descartes pointed out, is the only thing we can be certain exists. As I said above, there are three basic options for what this thing is: as Descartes and more recently David Chalmers have claimed, it may be a different substance to matter. In which case, despite its obvious association with human brains, it isn't dependent on them. Secondly, and more plausibly I think, it is a product, or emergent property of the material world, for want of a better analogy, a bit like light is a product of a light bulb. In that case, it may be that consciousness is more like the light that the bulb, and if the bulb blows, they won't know on Alpha Centauri for another 4 years, because the light itself never goes out. Thirdly, consciousness is the universe, either in an idealist or pantheist way, in which case all bets are off. I suspect you are right, Conde, but I am not so confident as you.

Consciousness is dependent upon the brain since when brain death occurs then it no longer exists. The reason why it is regarded as mysterious
is because it does not come under the standard definition of what is meant by physical. Namely something that has dimension or property and interacts with other phenomena according to the laws of physics. But it could be argued that the problem here is not that consciousness is not physical but that the definition of physical is too rigid and that what is really mysterious about it is not it as such as it can be explained by the
firing of neurons but why or how human beings have the ability in the first place specifically in relation to abstract thought but all phenomena
have logical explanations for them regardless of whether they are understood or not. So although it is mysterious that in and of it self does not
make it anything else other than physical and absolutely so too. As no phenomena is anything but that and only that regardless of anything else

uwot wrote:Well, if you consider Gilbert Rhyl's Ghost in the Machine, it is absolutely true that we only have experience of other people's 'machine'. Each of us though has experience of our own 'ghost', which as Descartes pointed out, is the only thing we can be certain exists.

Well, of course, that's solipsism. And that's also, of course, dualism (ghost and machine, soul and body, etc.). Both concepts contradict each other, since true solipsism will argue that we cannot know about the existence of the machine (the body), not ours, nor anyone else's. So consciousness will be conscious of itself, nothing more. A real solipsist, a pure radical one, will actually be an advocate of monistic idealism, holding that only the mind exists. No objective, independent reality, just the pure subjectivity of the mind. A dualist, on the other hand, will argue that we cannot doubt the existence of the body, besides the mind. So you have to pick one, either solipsism or dualism, but you cannot have both. If you choose solipsism, then there's nothing else to assert, not even the claim that the mind is different to matter, because matter does not exist. Only your mind, remember? If you choose dualism, then you will assert the existence of the body, yours and others. And if you can posit a relationship between your mind and body, you certainly will be able to infer a similar relationship between someone else's 'machine' and his/her mind.

uwot wrote:As I said above, there are three basic options for what this thing is: as Descartes and more recently David Chalmers have claimed, it may be a different substance to matter. In which case, despite its obvious association with human brains, it isn't dependent on them. Secondly, and more plausibly I think, it is a product, or emergent property of the material world, for want of a better analogy, a bit like light is a product of a light bulb. In that case, it may be that consciousness is more like the light that the bulb,

Let's say you are the bulb that has never lost the ability to produce light. You're connected to a wire which is itself attached to an on/off switch device. You see there are many other bulbs like you, connected the same way to their own on/off switches. Then you see that every time someone triggers the switch button, that light goes off. You can infer the relationship between the light and all the physical devices and reach the obvious conclusion about what will happen to your light (and the bulb itself) when someone pulls the switch. The same with death.

Conde Lucanor wrote:Let's say you are the bulb that has never lost the ability to produce light. You're connected to a wire which is itself attached to an on/off switch device. You see there are many other bulbs like you, connected the same way to their own on/off switches. Then you see that every time someone triggers the switch button, that light goes off. You can infer the relationship between the light and all the physical devices and reach the obvious conclusion about what will happen to your light (and the bulb itself) when someone pulls the switch. The same with death.

In which case, I would be a light bulb behaviourist. The point I am making is that we don't know what consciousness is. We do know that there are no examples of any consciousness that is not generated by a living brain, but then it is only by observing the physical behaviour of other beings that we infer something similar to the experience we have of our own consciousness.
On the other hand, we can measure the fields generated by living brains at a distance, using various scanning techniques, such as PET and MRI. In the terms of the analogy, we don't know whether consciousness is the electrons being forced through a tungsten filament, or the light thereby generated. Our own experience of consciousness, mine at least, is not of billions of disjointed physical events, but a (sometimes) coherent whole; more like the emergent light, then the jostling electrons. It is fanciful, I know, but the former is entirely consistent with the current understanding of physics; in which case, no laws are being broken by supposing that just as stars are visible to us that are long since dead, the field generated by our brain continues long after we die.

Philosophy Now wrote:David Rönnegard asks how a committed atheist confronted with death might find consolation.

I guess it depends on just how much of a pisser life actually was. In that, if you were me knowing that God\'God' exists and being subjected to the knowledge that it exists to the point of wishing one was crucified rather than continue being subjected to its existence..
...would you wish to ever live again?

No?

Well lets stick to atheism then. Perhaps one would console themselves in the fact that recursion is a very efficient method upon logic and that as our minds are bastions of logic riding on a wave of matter within fields of sub atomic particles, one perhaps could console themselves in a belief that where one once emitted within such matter, one perhaps could remit back within another conflagration of matter.

TIME reversed EMIT

http://www.androcies.com