Prof Ehrman’s podcast this week is titled The Omnipresent Fear of Death and deals with how views of death shaped both the ancient world and the development of Christianity. Of course this subject is a bottomless pit and Ehrman here can only really provide a brief survey of common attitudes. I’m going to focus on a single aspect of the discussion myself.
One criticism of Christian belief by sceptics is that acceptance is largely motivated by a fear of death. A common though perhaps uncharitable observation is the outpouring of grief at the funeral of a Christian. If you truly believe in an afterlife of bliss in the presence of Christ then why is everyone crying their eyes out? For the friends and family of such a person shouldn’t their death be an occasion of happiness? Unless of course your belief is motivated by the utter terror of death itself.
Well, the unwritten 11th commandment is thou shall not do theology at the funeral, but it doesn’t hurt to pause later and consider. I’m told there are people who have an existential dread of non-existence but I think to most people non-existence is simply incomprehensible. I think what most people are terrified of is the process of dying. Most people experience non-existence regularly in a dreamless sleep without trauma. I have never had a fear of oblivion. What scares the living crap out of me is decay, the slow dissolution. In this I feel pretty typical.
But as a non-believer with no hope of glory, who expects to be eventually snuffed out like a candle flame, why am I not afraid of death? Of nothingness? Shouldn’t I be a perpetual Gloomy Gus? Perhaps it’s useful to note at this point the, perhaps at first blush, odd fact that the happiest most well adjusted societies seem to be the secular welfare states of western Europe where the citizen’s minimum survival needs are satisfied and which record the lowest levels of personal religiosity. On the other hand the most roiled and agitated societies are dominated by religion.
Hence my question. I recall Marx’s oft quoted but oft misunderstood comment-
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
Is Christianity a phony cure for a real disease? When you develop a real cure then you discard the misbegotten attempts. When no one’s life is wasted, when our human needs are satisfied, when we accept our human condition and the constraints associated with that life, then perhaps we are content to lie down at the end and rest.
I finish by pointing out that this post is not an answer but a question.
Most people experience non-existence regularly in a dreamless sleep without trauma
No, we don’t experience non-existence. Perhaps we experience something like non-existence, but you continue to exist while you are passed out.
f you truly believe in an afterlife of bliss in the presence of Christ then why is everyone crying their eyes out?
Because you still miss the person in a very immediate way. There are lots of situations in which we can know intellectually that something is for the best, that it’s a short term pain that will be followed by something better, but the knowledge that something better will follow is precious little comfort in dulling the acute, immediate pain.
For myself, I’m a Ciceronian: whatever follows death is either painless non-existence, or pleasant, so death is not–as such–to be feared. The only fear I have in that regard is fear of regret . . . knowing that this is my last moment, and that it is simply too late to do or experience something I then judge to be important.
Why fear decay? You won’t be around to experience it
I suspect Stephen was referring to the process of aging–slowly withering away while losing one’s faculties–rather than the process that follows death.
Edit, and having continued to finish your comment, I see you realized that.
Eventually we all lose our lives but losing your mind, your “self”, the thing that makes you a person, is something else. Both my parents flew from this world in their 80s, slow but clearheaded, right up to the end. I did have an Aunt with Alzheimer’s. A terrible fate. And it’s no cakewalk for family and friends either.
The Norse god Odin had two ravens, Hugin and Munin, whose task it was to fly everyday across the earth and report back to him what they heard and saw. In the Edda, Odin said –
Hugin and Munin
Fly every day
Over all the world;
I worry for Hugin (“Thought”)
That he might not return,
But I worry more for Munin (“Memory”) .
I’m informed by actual experts that “memory” is an inexact translation of the word “munin”. It includes not just the remembrance of past events but also our needs and wants and desires. Odin fears their loss while living more than death.
Porphyry wrote
No, we don’t experience non-existence. Perhaps we experience something like non-existence, but you continue to exist while you are passed out.
But we can only be said to “experience” non-existence precisely because we wake up out of a sleep and have something to compare it to. When we’re actually dead we won’t experience non-existence precisely because there will be no one to have an experience.
But we can only be said to “experience” non-existence precisely because we wake up out of a sleep and have something to compare it to. When we’re actually dead we won’t experience non-existence precisely because there will be no one to have an experience.
True, and that leads me to conclude that speaking of an “experience of non-existence” is itself nonsense. To have experience one must exist (which it occurs to me is the logical inverse of Descartes’s and Augustine’s Cogito ergo sum). What were you experiencing the day before you parents met?
Can we awaken before we die?
Dreams are funny. Only once have I experienced a kind of telepathic dream where it was actually confirmed. When she was alive, my sister-in-law whom I barely knew and with whom spent almost zero hours socializing and I had the very same dream. She confirmed it to me soon afterward, though, I never confirmed it to her. My sister-in-law seemed to have had a knack for this kind of thing, in and out of sleep, with others as well; a visual for example. One story is she was driving in her car along a riverbank and her husband who was at home, picked up what she was seeing. Later when she was near death, she “sent” me a dreaming telling me, “I don’t have much time left.” I really deeply regret now that I didn’t go visit with her before she was gone. (I should add I haven’t heard from her since. Seriously though, why not?)
Shortly after my father died, I was lying next to my mom while we were going to sleep; but mind you, not dreaming. And I heard my mom talking, in response to some comment made for her ears only; and just then I heard some feminine presence say, “I can try!” Then I just absolutely knew my father was there. He had been speaking to my mom and then must have asked for this feminine presence to assist in getting through to me. He would ask like that, I know it. I saw him too, a month later or something, in a dream. He had grown a beard (!) and was wearing a beautiful red woolen flannel shirt and standing at the base of a mountain (about to go up I guess). But he was smiling and cheerful sending me a vision. Those are instances of personal experiences; but I’ve had a number of dreaming communications I have no way of confirming of course because they’ve been from certain deceased beloved. And I’m somewhat convinced of it.
I know it’s nuts. I have reason to believe I have a guardian angel! I’ve heard her voice several times! All of my life but just a few times. (I know, auditory hallucination, right?)
Who doesn’t dream? We have dreams when we’re in – what – a beta state? You know, we walk through this space – all around us there’s stuff. It’s like we’re just there in the midst of all this stuff. Air is stuff even. Just gas? Is that all? Aside from viruses and plant spores, may be there is something else there in that Stuff that we only process while in dream state. Maybe we’re carrying it around with us too.
Do the dreaming ones experience some eternal form of life? Seems it could be. Gosh, who can say!
Jill, I’ve always had very intense dreams. They are very apocalyptic at times, even Biblical. Natural given my upbringing I suppose. I have seen Jesus and Mary and all sorts of weird sights. I had a recently deceased loved one appear to me and give me words of comfort. Interestingly this all continued even after I became a non-believer. If I had lived in an ancient culture that believed that we traveled to other worlds when we dream I could accept that. But I think our minds function on multiple levels not all of which are consciously available. We are greater artists than we realize.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to discover that something of our selves survives physical death. But we can’t rely on that. We only know for sure we have our brief lives. What else there might be is unknown. What really bothers me is when people are willing to diminish the only life they know they have in favor of something they can only hope for.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert