Gee, That’s Sad
September 14, 2007 by TJM Admin
I was having a discussion with a friend of mine the other day. During the discussion, the fact that I am an atheist came about and the following discussion ensued.
“So, you don’t believe in God?”
“To which one would you be referring to?”
“You know, God. Like the God who is in the Bible?”
“Oh, you mean the Judeo-Christian God? No, I do not.”
“Which God do you believe in?”
(chuckling just slightly) “I do not believe in ANY gods.”
“What about when you die? What happens then?”
“I will be dead. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Hopefully, I have provided well for my surviving family.”
“That seems like a sad way to look at it.”
I have encountered this line of thinking several times before, but I still do not quite understand it. Why is it sad that I do not believe in an afterlife? I do not find it disheartening in the least. Christians do not think that it is sad that other animals die without hope of a life hereafter. Of course, we are not trying to control an animal now, are we?
That’s what it all seems to come down to, control. After all, if I do not have the fear of an eternal damnation after death, certainly you cannot offer me a belief system that will quell that fear. Hence, I am out of the control of your theological dogma.
The other side of the coin is that without punishment, there can be no reason to do good. A good example of this is the current feelings in America towards atheists. How can an atheist be morally responsible without a belief in a god that will dish out punishment or accolades according to your works? Of course, this is an atrocious argument. Is it morality to only do good out of fear of what will happen if you do not? I would argue that it is not. If we only do good simply for a reward later, this is nothing more than succumbing to bribery. If we do good only out of fear, you have made this decision under duress. Neither is morally justified.
So, Why is it “sad” that I do not believe in an afterlife? Or, I should say, why do YOU feel that it is sad that I do not believe in an afterlife? Does what I believe in (or disbelieve, in this instance) truly affect you that much? After all, I could say that I find it sad that you believe so much in the afterlife that you seem to let THIS life pass you by.
I have had this kind of conversation many times. My brother even told me that I am not going to see my deceased parents ever again, with him almost sneering that he will have the privilege whilst I burn in hell.
Sometimes I fee like giving up; it;s like talking to a brick wall. These people are so brainwashed and indoctrinated, mostly by fear, that they don’t even dare to THINK for themselves.
As you say: This life passes them by while they hope for something that there has never been any proof.
Would they accept a position at a company that promises massive dividends after death? That’s exactly what they do by believing in an afterlife.
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Just curious, Luci. Did you ever ask him (your brother) if he loves you? If he does, How does he think that he will be eternally blissful with the knowledge that you are burning in hell for all eternity while sings the praises of god forever? Never quite understood that.
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Well, at the moment he and his wife are not talking to, me, as according to them, being an atheist equals a satanist, a whore and a drug addict.
In the meantime, they are born again Christians.
The double standards is one aspect of believers I never could understand.
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I would say my first reaction to such a statement would have been anger. Because it’s very condescending to basically say “I pity you.” Rationally speaking though, I find that most atheists are very grounded in the present, in living, while many believers spend a part of their lives fascinated with death and the concept of hell.
Also, certain Christian groups have been taught that non-believers can’t ever be truly happy. Their reaction to atheist statements is conditioned to be “sad,” regardless of whether it is true sadness or not. That’s the christian thing to do, to be sad in the face of ungodliness.
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I am sad to report that my best friend, who always acted very “understanding” of my disbelief has decided now that she can’t handle it after all, and is now keeping her distance. All the good times we had? Forgotten. Worthless. That’s what’s really sad…
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Surely the sad thing is to delude yourself that when you die you don’t really die but go on to spend the rest of eternity in paradise. An adult who believes that an invisible sky fairy is watching over you – now that’s sad.
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Well, it is a comforting idea to think that 1) you’ll see your deceased friends and family again, and 2) you’ll have another chance at life. My own religion taught reincarnation, not heaven and hell. It’s been fairly devastating to give up that belief. Frankly I find it depressing sometimes to know this life is all we get. I know many atheists are either in denial about this, or are actually okay with it. But many of us do in fact find the lack of an external meaning to be depressing.
Please don’t patronize me by trying to talk me out of my feelings. I know that life is still wonderful and I enjoy and value each day as it comes now. But it doesn’t compare to the myth I believed in as a theist.
Would I go back to my delusion if I could? Hell, no. I’d much rather KNOW this is all I get and make the most of every day than imagine I had all the time in the universe and waste the time I do have.
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Slut, loosing my (christian) faith was a very depressing episode in my life. But I realized, that this is an aftereffect of religion, just as a hangover is an aftereffect of alcohol.
Even though I could no longer believe the external meaning of life taught by christianity, I still believed that everybody needs such an external meaning. But this is simply not the case, it’s nothing more but another falsehood propagated by religion in order to lock the people into their believe system. I realized that there is no need to rationalize everything I do. I eat, I love, I help people. Just because.
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The saddest thing is that someone (many? most?) of those that say they believe in the Judeo-Christian God, do not accurately reflect the character of that belief, clearly spelled out in the Bible. So often the agnostic or atheist has a better grasp of helping/loving his fellow man than the Christian does. I would also suggest that both sides of this issue have a problem with condescension of those who hold to the other opinion. I personally am a believer, and have an IQ quite a bit higher than average, graduated first in my university class with a computer science degree, and do not consider myself either stupid or brainwashed. I also do not consider an atheist who truly has considered the issue, to be either stupid or brainwashed. Strangely enough, we CAN all get along, if we just stop pointing fingers and judging others. It isn’t that hard, it is just against our human nature.
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Thank you all for the comments thus far! I will certainly try to reply to them all tonight after work.
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Why are you using words like “good” ? There is no “good” or “bad” without a God. Without a God all you would have is a bunch of meaningless events. Who’s to say anything is good or evil without a standard? What makes something wrong?
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Terms like “good” and “evil” are socially driven. Example: cannibalism. For most of us, this would be considered taboo or evil, if you will. However, in some cultures, this is still is an acceptable practice.
As far as what makes something “wrong,” we hardly have enough space here to delve into the mechanics of ethics.
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I don’t approve of the condescension shown in those comments, but I do somewhat understand the mindset. As a believer, and as someone who has lost people who were emotionally close to me, the thought that I’ll see those people again was one of the things that comforted me after their deaths. I’m not worried about punishment too much, (after all, Jesus was pretty emphatic about the “loving” aspect) but I love the idea that I’ll see my grandparents again someday.
I also don’t feel that believing that there’s something better waiting after this life means I shouldn’t live this life to the fullest and do my best to help my fellow man. Salvation, as I see it, is not earned by faith alone. You have to work for it. And work doesn’t mean yelling obscenities at people who don’t share your faith, it means helping the less fortunate. The problem with American Christianity is that there’s too much of the former and not enough of the latter.
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Michael-
I appreciate what you have said. If you look back at my posts starting in mid March you will see what I have felt and are still feeling regarding the comfort and logic struggle that I have been having for almost 11 years now. I have a degree in social work from a private, Catholic college, and when I decided what I was going to do for the rest of my life, it wasn’t because I wanted to help people so I could earn brownie points to use in the afterlife, it was to help people live the best lives they can here. You are right. There is too little of the help, and if some people were to truly follow what some of the Bible states then we wouldn’t have to point that out.
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I totally agree with you and I found out that it’s almost unpossible to have reasonable conversation about that with “god fans” as I see them (most cases) as fanatics and because they don’t DOUBT, non-existance debate is not an option. It’s interesting they can doubt about other’s gods at the same time.
The problem is alsto that they don’t let the chance that other’s feeling and believes are legitime as well.
Never the less, as my friend who is also atheist says, if there’s something after all, let’s urprise ourselves, but let’s live here and now.
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I don’t believe in any organized religions but I do believe in a higher power and an after-life. I’ve studied near death experiences for years and talked to many people who have had them or been in the room as it happened (emergency room nurses, ect.) I’ve also studied the few hallucinogens (especially the brain chemical DMT) that transports the human mind to other dimensions.
It seems to me that there is a continuation of spirit AND an accounting of sorts after death, not from an outside source but from within. While some people do have a ‘Christian’ type of near death experience, others who believe in other religions have experiences related to their beliefs. Many who have been through it, including atheists, sense that we have an experience dependent on ‘what we can perceive’, or ‘what we can handle’, as the experiences are generally very profound and often life changing.
I don’t think that at this stage of existence the human race is even close to explaining or figuring out what it’s all about. I am confident, however, that there is a continuation and that we are here to learn, love, and advance as much as possible. No single religion, created by man, can hope to grasp it all. It is terribly ironic (and sad) that religions that claim love as it base so often express the exact opposite.
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God is good, he gave us polio, malaria, T.B, earthquakes, floods, poisonous plants and insects… I can’t wait to meet him, he has a lot of questions to answer!
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If someone I’m conversing with suggests that it must be sad to realize there is no afterlife.
I say to them “Well, I suppose you can look at it like that, but it can’t compare with how sad I felt when I found out there was no Santa Claus, which is really quite similar if you think about it.”
This usually shuts’ them up or gets them to laugh. But if it gets them to argue, boy does this line of argument end in a dead end for them.
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I found this to be a very interesting article…
I personally believe that there is a higher power that created everything but I certainly Do NOT believe that it was the same being that is portrayed as “God” in any biblical text….
That god is just way too human for me to believe in…
The one creator could not possibly have such weak human traits as jealousy, vengeance and anger….
Hell is an illusion created to keep the fearful in line….
I know for certain that I will not be going anywhere like that….
I just pity those people that are too blind to question things….
I think many people need religion or they wouldn’t be able to do things alone…people need faith (just too often it’s blind faith)
Anyway…I can’t really take much more time here…got some work to do
Ciao
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I agree with “slut”. it would simply be much cooler if there was an afterlife, or an (almost) endless reincarnation. or some sort of spirit-world. or whatever… the fact that this life it is is not as “cool” and jolly as the expectation that it somehow goes on.
i do not agree with “unique2″; it has nothing to do with religious propaganda that i feel that way. it simply is my desire to keep going. if you like life as it is, it does not come naturally to everyone to be content with it ending some day.
it’s like with a nice and good movie. sure it comes to an end eventually, but do we not all sometimes feel that we could have gone on watching just a bit longer to maintain the nice feeling it gives us for a while?
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I don’t believe in death. Everything is always alive. I do think most Atheism is a reaction to Christianity rather than a well thought out belief. Religion does give God a bad name. But before we can discuss God, we have to determine what we mean by God. Since I don’t believe “something” came from “nothing”, to me God is the first Cause of all that is.
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But Dave, If “something” can’t come from “nothing” where did the “first cause” come from? Wouldn’t something that created our complex universe need to be much more complex? Wouldn’t that also need to be created?
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jmil,
A classic, I love it!
I like to go the other way - Nothingness is only possible in a world with God in it. Science has no means for destroying something, only for converting it to other things.
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I recently saw an interview with André Comte-Sponville:
http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/christiane/modele-document.asp?docnumero=28724&numero=1880
For the French speakers.
One of the things he pointed out is that the problem isn’t between religion and atheism as two extremes, but extremism, fundamentalism vs tolerance. Another thing he mentioned is that when it is claimed that society without God is impossible, many religions DON’T have a God (mostly eastern religions) and they seem to be doing fine.
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A question for HipDave in reference to the comment, “…God is the first Cause of all that is.” What exactly do you mean by that? For example, in cosmology, there was the singularity, which “exploded” (the Big Bang, theory) and resulted in the Universe we observe today. Is that what you meant? In that case, there might be two ways of looking at it: God no longer exists, because after causing the first event, He transformed and is no longer God or God is the equivalent of the Universe and is all around us. However, does that make him worthy of worship and supplication? You did mention that religion messes things up, but why refer to a “God” if we already have a way of looking at, understanding and naming the Universe? Admittedly, AFAIK, we don’t know how the singularity came about, but then, are you referring to God as the cause of the singularity? If so, what’s the evidence or theoretical explanation for that? BTW, I disagree with the stance that atheism is a reaction to Christianity, as there were atheists before “Christ”.
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I have no problem with God, it’s his fan club I can’t stand.
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Hi!
I’m an athiest, born and bred, and my family has been so for 3 generations. I really have no problem with theists. I’m against bloody converters who want me to change my athiest ways. I believe what can be consistently scientifically proven. I have no absolute scientific proof that there is any form of deity/deities, and so it is against my principles to believe in any of them. Since most religion is based on faith, you must truly beleive that what that religion is teaching is true, or else it’s quite futile.
What also really annoys me is when people take their holy book of whatever their religion is literally, or use it to say that somehing is bad/good. Those books were written centuries ago, and so most of it doesn’t apply. For instance, many anti-gays quote Leviticus 18:22, which says “Thou shalt no lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Many of these people then go to Red Lobster and order crab legs, which Leviticus has also stated as an abomination. People should spend more time dissecting their holy book, since there is certainly much good to be found in it if you look. I have read the Bible and the Tao Te Ching, and found many powerful messages in them that have reminded me to be a generally good person. Then I find someone who tells me that I’m going to hell if I don’t go to their church, and when I say no, they punch my gut. Of course, then I kick them to the ground (in self-defense,) but it just shows what can happen when you take a religion too literally. I read the same book someone else does and we get completely different things out of it.
I like your post, dbeau! Hooray for theists actually trying to find the good in ther religion! It’s nice to know that there are at least some people out there llike that who aren’t blind to what they are taught in their churches.
Magic Smoothie, a.k.a. Kanakuro Yamataka, a.k.a. Purple Lioness, a.k.a. Marutaka Fujitsu, a.k.a. Cesium, a.k.a. Samantha Daniels ( They’re all aliases)
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How profound? do you really think that you’re the first person to give this response? we all agree with you. Just be more original. (i’m talking to all of you).
Do you have your own opinion or do you just sit there an mimic some BS website or TV show you observed?
Grow up and use your real names.
dbeau and magic smoothie - props for intelligence and thoughtful responses.
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The idea there has to be a God for there to be good and evil is a common one, but it actually makes no logical sense.
Does God just make up what is good and what is evil, arbitrarily? For example, if God says it’s good to torture children, is it really good, or is that kind of behavior just evil regardless of what God says? If God doesn’t just make up good and evil as He goes, then that means those concepts don’t need God to exist.
If God is just making up good and evil as He goes, then how does God know what is truly good and evil? Is there some objective standard that God uses as a reference? If so, then the standard of good and evil doesn’t need God to exist.
So, we are left with three basic options for good and evil. 1) Standards of good and evil exist on their own. 2) God just makes up His own version on good and evil and is free to change the standards at will. 3) We recognize certain kinds of actions as good or evil, because of our evolutionary heritage.
Our ancestors all lived in dangerous environments, where it really mattered what kind of behavior the engaged in. Certain kinds of things brought death while others brought survival. Our basic sense of morality has helped our species’ survival immensely.
We are reluctant to kill others, especially those in our group. We have strong drives to promote social unity. We have a feeling of compassion for others.
Just as evolution has shaped the details of our eyes and our neurons, it has also profoundly shaped our sense of what is right and wrong, so that we are motivated to act in ways that promote the survival of our species.
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I don’t know that it’s sad that you have those beliefs just for yourself, but I would find them sad if everyone were expected to have them. The same goes for the Christian who walks around telling other people that their beliefs are sad. What really depresses me is the sense of superiority people think they are entitled to because of their beliefs, when, truly, it is out of anyone’s hands. Every belief system has some deeper meaning and reality attached to it, whether it seems logical on the surface or not. And every human experience is just as valid as the next, no matter their belief system.
As a theist, the existence of God, for me, doesn’t necessarily guarantee the existence of an afterlife, so I don’t confuse the two issues. For people of certain religions they are inseparable. But I do believe that Being supercedes any body. There isn’t really a logical way to go about the question of what happens when we die. There can be no evidence for the non-existence of someone’s experience, just as there is no possible way of verifying the existence of someone’s experience to begin with. It all depends on what reality really is, and I don’t think our science is anywhere close to answering that question. In the meantime you can look at it either way: life is more than the body vs. life is a product of the body. I prefer the former, because, if nothing else, it’s not as limited as the latter. I believe that there is far more to reality than humans typically perceive. I would be very surprised if this were all as simple as “we’re just computers”.
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Guys you are not alone believe me. I’m absolutely agree with you. It doesn’t matter what other people would say just trust me. I know for sure that it’s about real events.
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I enjoyed the discussion, and I’m sorry this is such a late post to some of the earlier posts (I just “Stumbled Upon” it). However, I do take issue with the idea that “good” and “bad” are social terms. I emphatically deny that idea. Just because one does not believe in a god does not mean that Ethics just goes out the window. Rather, you now have a charge to defend and own your definitions of “good” and “bad”, so they’d better be good (no pun intended - OK, yes it was). Absence of belief in a supernatural being means that you know have some work to do: Namely, determining on what foundation you build your philosophy. Unfortunately, my friends (and I mean that, it is not meant as patronizing), atheism is not a philosophy. It’s simply the absence of belief in a god. I’d argue that everyone is really an atheist, and that those who claim to be so simply believe in one less god (in monotheistic cultures, that is). So, what on what do you base your decisions? How do you determine whether something is “good” or “bad” regardless of the social ramifications? That requires courage, and a lot of work, to really answer. As an atheist that is happy with a newly vocal atheist and agnostic group coming out in the US, I challenge all of you to not just let it rest at non-believing. There’s more, and the more you work at it, the better it gets.
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Not to be a stickler on grammar, but I meant to type, “… Absence of belief in a supernatural being means that you now (not know)…”. Likewise, later in the article I duplicated my “what” in a sentence… all apologies. Sorry, I get defensive about fixing my grammar now that so many people disregard arguments based on one’s grammatical errors.
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I really hope that there is an afterlife. Otherwise, I would feel like I had been playing a lengthy video game and right when I beat the final boss, it just shuts off. That’s lame.
I think that if people live after death, then so do animals. And whatever happens to us, be it heaven, hell, Valhalla, Hades, whatever, I would accept it. I just want there to be some sort of postscript where we find out what all this was about. Maybe life isn’t even the main act. There’s no way of knowing.
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i think that all people who believe in a deity should be declared legally delusional and disallowed from voting.
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