What do atheists think of death?

A common train of thought among some of the atheists I know seems to be that the root cause of religion is a fear of death. People generally want to believe that their minds don't just disappear after death and so are more likely to practice a religion that tells them what they want to hear. I have heard conversations between atheists and religious people that go something like this. Religious person: "well what do you think happens after you die"? Atheist: "Nothing, I'll just stop existing. That sucks, but since there's no evidence of the supernatural, that's the most logical outcome."My question to atheists is, assuming you're right and the universe is entirely governed by logic with no supernatural phenomena, why does it follow that when you die you will no longer exist? A counterexample would be that if the universe is sufficiently large or infinite (which is certainly possible according to what is known of current cosmology unless I am well off my mark), then assuming the laws of physics are roughly constant over large distances, it is inevitable that you also exist elsewhere. Then when you die you will still exist, just in a different location.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Changed topic title from "A question for atheists" to "What do atheists think of death?".

OK, your topic title is better than "A question". It's still pretty poor. How about something that actually describes the theme of the topic?Didn't Karl Marx call religion "The opiate of the masses"? In other words, it was something to dull the pain of life and give hope for a better afterlife. As such, the root cause of religion would not be the fear of death; rather it would be the desirable anticipation of death.My impression is that multiple universe considerations is rather a smokescreen, in the context of the topic as a whole.AdminnemooseusEdited by Adminnemooseus, : Changed the Marx quote from "The opiate of the people" to the probably more accurate "The opiate of the masses".

Hello Adminnemooseus. I would be glad to change the title to whatever you think appropriate. Is this something an admin has to do? Perhaps something like "What do atheists think of death"?As for the content perhaps I should rephrase. The topic I intended to address is "If you assume no supernatural influences, is it inevitable that when you die (pick a reasonable non-supernatural definition of 'you') you will cease to exist?" I think this question is interesting because the answer has religious implications, which are what I was trying to get at in my first paragraph. It seems to me that a desire to continue to exist drives a lot of people to believe in the supernatural. But the real content I wanted to address is in the second paragraph. If you don't think that topic is interesting, then feel free to not promote it.As I tried to get at in my first post, I do not think it is at all inevitable that a person will cease to exist when they die, even in the absence of supernatural influences. Only one sufficiently large universe and the laws of statistics are necessary for my counterexample ... having multiple universes would be quite optional.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Footnote from Adminnemooseus - Topic title changes are done via editing message 1. That can be done by the topic originator. In this case, I made the change.

Thread copied to the What do atheists think of death? thread in the Faith and Belief forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.