Loading...I have come up with a new way of thinking about our finitude, about the fact that we all die and (in my view) that’s the end of the story. At least I think it’s a new way. I don’t recall ever hearing or reading it. If it is a common view, or a least a view that is out there (and/or long has been!), I have no doubt some of you will tell me.
First, some background:
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Learn More!
For those of faith (the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen – Hebrews 11:1), perhaps death isn’t the end.
Yes, I’d say for people of (Christian) faith, death is decidedly not the end!
My mom & such are going they are in heaven. I can’t wait until I am in heaven!
My last mentor died last century in Oklahoma City.
His widow crying, replied: George is in a better place.
Thank you Dr Ehrman, you will live on as you have an organization to best convey updated concerns & thinking
Check out Jesse Lee Peterson. Not the politics but his theology. He is either an enlightened avatar or a madman. Be still and know….
I think that the present the only eternity is that excist. The past and future don’t excist.
Bart, you have written my exact thoughts about the sadness of death: that I will stop experiencing and thinking, mostly thinking. When my devout Lutheran mother was dying she asked me what i thought death would be for her. I told her it would be paradise if she was right and it would be just like before she was born if not. Either way, she had nothing to fear. I think pondering the exact moment of death is a source of anxiety more than what comes after.
Not sure if you know, but that’s pretty much the answer of Socrates in his Apology!
One of the basic views of Buddhism is impermanence, and I have read Buddhist teachings similar to what you’re saying here. Which prompts the question: have you studied Buddhist teachings? (in all your ample spare time, Ha!)
Sure, but not extensively! And yes, it’s amazing what I haven’t read….
Bart, your reflections in this post may be my favorite. That anything exists is a mystery. That you and I contemplate death because of the evolution of human consciousness is as “miraculous” as the Big Bang that somehow set all of this in motion. Why what exists is the way it and not some other way is a mystery. We create stories to make sense of this mystery. Some are better than others. None of them are fully accurate in exactly the same way that we can’t know what the original text of any gospel was.
Interesting discussion that touches on the nature of time. Are you familiar with the “block universe” or “eternalism” concept?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-02/block-universe-theory-time-past-present-future-travel/10178386
Thanks.
I first had similar thoughts when I was a 12-year-old altar boy. I was the cross-bearer at that particular graveside service looking down into the grave. That was 72 years ago.
Doctor Ehrman
You’re a pretty lucky man to be happy and enjoying your life. But not everyone is sharing this bliss, and how to accept the idea of anihilation whatever your life was like ? Good or bad, happy or miserable, just the same end into nothingness ? That could also induce some people to put an end to it, why should a very miserable , no future person go on living ? Look at Hamlet, to be or not to be, there’s a lot in it…
Yes, I think about that all the time. But my view is that reality is never shaped by what we or anyone else might wish it to be.
I’m sure you’re aware that many hold the opposite view of reality – that we have an active part in actually creating it. In physics terms, this is known as the “collapse of the wave function”, but who or what is, or can be, responsible for collapsing it remains a matter of debate. In the double-slit experiment, it is determined when a system is observed, but not until it is observed. If you subscribe to Hugh Everett’s many-worlds theory, there is no collapse at all – an observation is simply defined as the one universe we see among an infinite number of others we don’t. Also, at least for me, our coming into existence only at birth is an unwarrented assumption. William Wordsworth’s lines have always made big impression on me: Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Well, it’s the sadness of loosing life that is paramount for me. Not so much fear. You don’t really have much to say the sadness. As I get older, the sadness increases even though every day I live is an amazing joy.
I read your post about death as I sit here in church. I don’t believe in the transactional god of the Bible with Heaven or Hell. Only here for community. Thousands of NDE reports may be closertruth
The “me” of the present is shaped by the”me” of the past by scars both real and imagined. Sure my past self is gone, but he has carved into my identity some aspects that I will never escape (both good and bad). When I die, my memories will be gone forever. It is hard not to see that as a tragic thing. However, in general, I agree that the finitude of life is something to celebrate. To paraphrase Virgil: Death plucks my ear and says “Live, for I am coming”. What I have, at this moment, is precious, wonderful and amazing. It is also brief. And that’s why it has value. Things of infinite supply tend to be valueless.
What a wonderful post. Not the typical post by Bart. What I especially appreciate is the revelation that the past doesn’t exist, only the present exists. I’m old (73) and I often think about my past lives (plural): they were lives in the sense that in each life I lived in a certain place, had a certain circle of friends, worked with particular people in a certain place, etc., and when I think about my lives they all seem so distant and unreal. For most Christians life leads to a climax, death and ascension to heaven. I don’t know about that. But I do think about my different lives and rate them, some better than others. It makes me appreciate the present. Thank you.
Great insights, Bart. Thank you for sharing. Re your footnote, Wikipedia has a nice summary of various theories of the present, sometimes called the specious present. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception
Thanks! I suppose if the present “moment” (non-moment) is specious, then everything past and future and all that I am is as well. Sigh… Hey, where did cogito ergo sum go?? (More rambling…)
I’m 37 years old and I already think a lot about my life, my choices (the poor ones mostly), my ambitions, the people I’ve loved or wronged etc.
Ultimately, I do think that our thoughts and actions, in some way, shape or form, are most of the time a response to the existential terror, which I don’t think we can shake off – however deep we can wrestle with it philosophically. (That’s one of the reasons you can’t beat religion, by the way.)
With respect to what Einstein would call the relativity of simultaneity, I think it’s kind of abstract when you try to apply it in real life like you do. I think that, strictly speaking, from a physics point of view, there is indeed no objective “now”, but I think it’s silly to claim something along the lines of yourself is changing every milli milli second. I think that, compared to seconds ago, we are pretty much the same thing, same entity, maybe 99,999999999999999999% same, so I don’t think attempting to discard time as a fabricated tool for convenience holds water here.
I think death is a really horrifying thing, and that’s what actually makes life so indissolubly wonderful and precious.
These are my same thoughts as instructed by the great ancient philosopher Monty Python.
The end song of the Life of Brian have the lines:
“…Always look on the bright side of life,
I mean, what do you have to lose?
You come from nothing,
You go back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing!”
The classic!
Omar Khayyam.
‘Then fancy while Thou art, Thou art but what
Thou shalt be – Nothing –Thou shalt not be less’
(Tr. Fitzgerald)
‘Oh what a long time we shall not be and the world will endure,
Neither name nor sign of us will exist;
Before this we were not and there was no deficiency,
After this, when we are not it will be the same as before.’
(Tr. Avery & Heath-Stubbs)
Thank you for sharing that. I believe the emotional sadness we feel today about dying tomorrow is more about our attachment to life and the experiences it offers.
When we’re engaged in activities that we find meaningful, it creates a sense of purpose and fulfillment in our lives, shifting our focus away from anxiety and worry. So, when we’re busy doing meaningful things, we don’t have “time” to worry. As a wise man once said, the present “moment” is not even a moment; it is gone in literally “no time.”
Well, they’re certainly *interesting* ramblings. 200 words won’t do them justice. There are ontological, moral, and affective issues here. The Greeks already thought about existence through time (genidentity): e.g the Ship of Theseus problem. Human genidentity? Huge question. Psychologist talk about the “specious present.” Philosophers have long debated whether only the present exists, past and present, also the future? – what about things that exist atemporally (numbers)? Ideas: I, for one, agree that finitude makes all the more important and precious the time we have to make the world better. I used to think that fear of death/hope of an afterlife explained religious belief. I now think that a deeper reason is the desire for ultimate justice. I do find the thought of non-existence REALLY CREEPY, but it’s hard to explain why. Consciousness is also really creepy, come to think of it. Some, e.g. Wm Craig, insist that w/o heaven and hell, life is “meaningless.” I’m unsure what that’s supposed to mean, but it’s obviously false. What is true is that life is tragic. Much injustice will never be put right.
It means that William Lane Craig genuinely believes that he and others who think exactly like him are the only ones who have meaningful lives. Ai yai yai…. Where do you even start?
In a letter that Einstein wrote to the family of his close friend Michele Besso, shortly before Einstein’s own death, he wrote (in translation): “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He meant that physics describes all of spacetime as existing “at once” in a four-dimensional structure, without a privileged present moment.
So, in that sense (a sense that we’re doubtless incapable of fully comprehending), you “always” have existed and you “always” will.
Yes, very little in Einsteinian physics (let alone quantum) makes “common sense” to us mere mortals…
I couldn’t think of anything to say so I walked down to Clem’s Tap House and had a pint.
Brilliant!
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. I recently saw an interview with Woody Allen in which he expressed similar thoughts. When asked if he was concerned with how he’d be remembered he said he has zero concern because he’ll be dead and won’t have any knowledge of what people think (all paraphrased). He feels life is tragic and he feels if people can delude themselves into thinking there’s a God then that’s a perfectly good distraction. For him, his work provides a distraction from the ultimate reality and that is life will end.
I’m a doubting Thomas. Sometimes I feel spiritually connected plus I know so many who are thoroughly convinced of reincarnation or alternate dimensions or heaven or ghosts. I find comfort in the hope that my energy will live on in some form but then I circle back to Woody and realize we are all who believe using our imagination to distract ourselves from the reality of the end of our existence.
And so I work on my projects and I pray and I see what I think are signs of an afterlife and that alleviates my angst. Some may call my delusions faith. Amen.
On the origins of Hell as eternal punishment: I’ve listened to some of your interviews on this topic, and I think you make a strong exegetical case that early Christianity, rooted in Judaism, largely reflected a view closer to “annihilationism.” You show how the Old Testament generally points that direction, and how certain New Testament passages that appear, at first glance, to teach eternal punishment are often misunderstood by modern readers shaped by later influences like Dante’s Inferno or Paradise Lost. Instead, you offer a plausible alternative reading that supports an annihilationist framework.
That said, I wonder about a few New Testament passages (particularly John 5:28–29 and Revelation 20) which describe a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. If “resurrection” implies an immortal, glorified body (something angelic or deified), then wouldn’t the resurrection of the unrighteous seem to rule out the possibility that their ultimate fate is nonexistence?
Ah, no — the unrighteous are definitely raised from the dead in this view, but then they are sujected to judgment and annihilated for all time as their “eternal punishment”
You should write a book on the meaning and early understanding of the resurrection! NT Write has written a lot about it, but I personally find him hard to follow sometimes. That British accent must seep into his writing 😜
Bart, I was born in 1951, making me a few years older than you are, so it’s not surprising I too have contemplated mortality. I’ve come to the same conclusion: nonexistence is nothing to fear. Taking the idea that not having been bothered by pre-birth nonexistence, neither should we be bothered by it post mortem, and applying that to our selves of the immediate past is clever, and amplifies the point of the argument. Well done!
But although it doesn’t affect the validity of your argument, I feel compelled to point out that your past selves don’t really vanish into instant nonexistence. Most physicists agree that General Relativity means that although they are forever inaccessible to us, our past selves continue to exist (as already do our future selves) in a sort of eternity called Block Time. Our everyday experience of time “passing” is an illusion.
This is an inherent basic consequence of Relativity and its Spacetime perspective that can’t evaded. I think it’s best if I let physicist Brian Greene explain, starting at about 90 seconds into this video segment: https://youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks?si=Xvid6ubKQAFGyWxL
Thanks. I have no difficulty believing the physcists are right on the physics. But since “block time” is inaccessible to me, it doesn’ exist in my consciousness or anywhere else I can access, and so again has zero effect on me and my happiness. Kinda like whatever happens on the planet Zurbo 283 million light years from here….
“Be Here Now” (1971 book by Ram Dass). I am old enough to remember when that book came out, though I confess I never read it, only read and heard about it. But the title seems to summarize at least some of what you are saying.
Atheist here (although I usually say non-believer). I 100% have that fear of non-existence. It’s probably my #3 fear, after fearing my son or my spouse dying. I have long leaned towards the humanist view of death but it hasn’t brought me much solace–because what about all the people who have lived good lives but aren’t remembered. That’s close to what you’re expressing here, only their focus is more on our legacy as our afterlife rather than embracing the present as you advocate here. I like both takes–and yours added to theirs is making me able to actually ponder my death. So thank you. And apologies for turning your biblical blog into my therapy, but this was really helpful for me. I’m printing it out and saving it.
Hi Bart!
I have come to pretty much the same conclusion about this “me” that changes as it goes along. I studied Buddhism for years, and though no longer a Buddhist, the teachings about impermanence and the lack of an enduring “Self” (or soul), has informed my thinking. In this moment I am not the same person I was when I was a child, or teenager, or young wife, etc., etc. Outside influences as well as mental and emotional adjustments are constantly at play, changing my outlook. And that’s a good thing! I admit that I have struggled with the concept of death, of no longer existing, ever since I decided that agnosticism was the only viable way to look at things. It’s just hard to conceive that I will no longer exist, since I love life and want it to continue. But maybe, the “me” that will be aware at the moment of death won’t be distressed by it at all. At least, I hope so! Perhaps, as our brains shut down, we will just feel ourselves being drawn towards that tunnel of light, and it will be a pleasant experience, as the “near-death” experiences of others have indicated–who knows?
I would like to comment but for some reason I am listed as inactive and can’t get the whole post.I am paid
Contact “Help” to get some … help!
Some sects of Judaism believe that the only thing you can expect after death is that you are remembered.
I could go along with most of it except that this thinking leaves no justice in life or death. That is okay for most of us in North America but not so for others especially in other parts of the world who live a life of horrible suffering and injustice.
Would you say that you are a leading scholar in the historicity of Jesus?
I don’t introduce myself as the Leading X of anything!
According to Einstein’s theory of the block universe (part of his theory of relativity) time is an illusion with past present and future all existing concurrently in a “block” of space time. He once tried to console the widow of his friend by saying that her husband was still alive, just existing in another part of the block universe. We experience the illusion of time and our lives as we somehow move through the block universe. The future is pre-determined. Personally I believe more in the concept of the “growing” block universe, containing the past and the present with slices of the future being added as we live our lives.
Statistically, it seems almost impossible that the world and mankind came into existence by chance. It gives great comfort to believe in a fatherly figure that created the world and a son who came in human form that died for my sins. For me, something does not have to be true to believe in it if it brings me comfort, makes me a better person, and the world a better place. Fat, dumb and happy serves me best.
I don’t think statistics can help us much with figuring out what happened in the past. Or the present. From teh standpoint of five years ago or five years from how, what is the statistical probability that I at precisely this moment would be typing this response to your question on this particular laptop at this specific coffee shopt sitting on this specific chair manufactured by this specific company drinking from this specific cup of coffee with these specific books in view and overhearing the conversations of these specific people and …. and throw in a thousand or two other specifics of this moment. Everything is, ultimately, statistically almost impossible. But hey, I’m 100% for what makes us better people….
I have long thought similarly that I will not be aware I’m not existing after I die. So I have experienced absolutely no fear of death for many years even as it draws nearer. I’m now 76. Unlike you, however, I rarely think about the past. I also view the prior “me” as no longer existing, and I have virtually no intetest in him. The present is all that will ever exist, and that’s where I live most all of the time.
P.S. I’m not the best long-range planner!
There is some strong feeling of continuity throughout life. Although the teenager “me” now looks pretty naive and uneducated, it was nevertheless “me” and people feel responsible for shortcomings or wrongdoings of the old “me”. We are born with a personality and a growth potential, and thats what perishes.
Some fascinating insights. But I feel that the fact that we didn’t mind the nothingness we experienced (or more accurately didn’t experience) before being born, doesn’t make a future nothingness any less frightening, given that we know what it’s like to be alive.
On a slightly related note, when I read these sort of discussions, I inevitably think of reincarnation. It does seem to have cropped up in several unrelated cultures – native American, South Asian, Ancient Greek and has some, limited evidence going for it, namely past life memories sometimes containing obscure information which has been independently verified
I’ve always wondered when the souls that get reincarnated came from (say, before the Big Bang), and why there are so many more of them now than they used to be. I don’t really have the same wonderment at non-existence, either for me or that misquito I just squashed…
Dr. Ehrman, wow!!
I like this new Bart!
Physicists don’t ‘believe’ in linear time I’ve heard, so the you that wrote this post and the you that wrote the 1 John post both exist.
Sometimes I think we’re patterns that effect other patterns which effects other patterns and so on, and so reverse-engineering is possible to discover the original pattern.
But also – SUPPLEMENTATION.
Bryan Johnson in just a minimal time of repair has slowed time down to 1%. Mag glycinate and threonate, choline, D, lithium orotate, creatine, omega ratios as optimums to reduce all-cause mortality and not just DVs. Vagus nerve resets. Gene therapy. Improved protein folding with hot-cold therapies. Sleep. Dr. Joan Vernikos’ teachings are equally important.
It’s not *just* about extending lifespan and looking supercute.
Imo, the First Century gatekeeps by knowledge, and this may be why there’s parables and riddles (Gamaliel was remembered for one.) And my guess for why eating fish became an important ritual with ostensibly the world’s first religion and civilization, that of Enki/Ea/Hayya – iodine can raise IQ by up to 15 points in development, and omega-3 benefits cognition as well.
Well the past really is still with us. Not its subjectivity but its objective imortality which we carry with us and which gradually becomes trivial as time goes by. If not, our sense of even a moment ago as we are emerging out of our immediate past would not be there. We would be stuck in what has been referred to as the solipsism of the present moment. That’s obviously not the case. We have a firm sense and intuition of our past which, yes, has perished as our subjective sense, but in another sense is objectively immortalized in each new occasion of our present experiences. I suppose that sounds kind of philosophical, but the appeal there is to our own common sense and common experience.
Well, they were nice ramblings. Sounds like Buddhism without some of the fun parts 😀 How would you address the hard problem of consciousness in material monism?
It’s one of the Great Mysteries for me, along with how something comes out of nothing (Big Bang) and how life comes out of nonlife. Can’t explain any of them, though that doesn’t mean they are literally inexplicable. So was lightening once. (And so too is my toaster to my meager intelligence) My guess it that of the three, consciousness will be the last (in the distant future) to be resolved to the satisfaction of most thinking people involved…
I share the feeling of the preciousness of life DUE to the fact that we have no reason to assume an afterlife. Something that dawned on me years ago and I use as a course correcting concept is this: “If you can’t know, it doesn’t matter”. Have you read the Apology of Socrates? I find his reasoning on death as an unknown, rock solid logic.
I don’t think it is good to presently posit a future, after death, non-existence. I find it better to know I don’t know. To allow unknowns to remain unknown, to fight for them to retain their dignity and power within your own mind, to let them humble you with their grandeur, I find good. Death has always been the greatest of these unknowns.
I contend that “eternal” is a quality that life can bear, and ironically, it is made all the more difficult to realize when we seek to psychologically grasp it as infinitely enduring. When I had my “this is all there is” moment of realization, it tattooed my existence with such a depth and richness, and this was dependent upon, not in opposition to, the brevity and frailty of life.
Dr. E, it sounds like you might be getting close to one of the Buddhist approaches to where we are in this universe of ours. Self and non-Self, impermanence, and much more. The Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California has some great Dharma talks on all this: https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org
There is also a beautiful book by a French Psychiatrist and mindfulness teacher named Christophe Andre, called “Looking at Mindfulness,” that uses paintings to explore the topic more deeply. Well worth a look at both.
I have found that Buddhism helps inform and deepen my spiritual practice.
I’ve been a Christian since 1962. In that time, I’ve seen lots of people making a half-hearted Pascal Wager. Do just enough to get their ticket to heaven punched. Often, they are immoral, despicable, miserable people using the oft-repeated mantra “saved by grace, not by works.” I would not call that a meaningful life. William Lane Craig is completely wrong about Theists being the only people with meaningful lives. I’ve seen people who completely lack any religious belief live happy, productive, meaningful lives. They weren’t expecting a heavenly payout at the end. They were good-natured people who didn’t need that kind of motivation. Tied into the belief in an afterlife is the desire to extract justice- an extension of theodicy. If we don’t get the reward and justice we think we deserve here and now, we want vindication in the afterlife. Likewise, we want our enemies, oppressors, and other bad actors to get what’s coming to them. Hell provides a convenient source of comfort and personal vindication when we believe the “right” people are going there.
It looks like you are getting closer to a Buddhist understanding of the so-called self. Looks like other commenters have already pointed that out. From what I understand, the Buddha taught that the self does not even exist in the present. Since something that doesn’t exist can neither live nor die, that means you will not die, and you are not alive now. Go figure.
Modern physics shows that the present and past do exist now, but they are not experienced now. Within Buddhism, and some other monistic approaches, the `self’ which experiences and observes things is just the impersonal cosmos looking at itself. In that sense the self doesn’t die because when the body dies the impersonal cosmos doesn’t die with it. Matter doesn’t die. So, is there life after death? For the cosmos there is, so who knows? The thinking that says we are all the cosmos observing itself doesn’t answer the question.
Maybe reincarnation can happen.
@MKWilliams and BDEhrman: The issue of “statistics” here is best framed in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory or – better – reasoning to the best explanation. Bart’s point is correct: just saying that X has a low prior probability means little w/o a framework of alternative explanations. And Bayesianism, commonly applied to Fine Tuning arguments, faces multiple methodological problems. A better framing of the question would be: given the known mechanisms of evolution (together with the known mass extinctions, etc.), what is the likelihood that conscious intelligent life would emerge? The best treatment I know of is Russell Powell, Contingency and Convergence. Powell’s a philosopher of biology; it’s quite technical reading. But really eye-opening. Powell makes a strong argument that conscious intelligence is very likely to emerge given evolution, but the human capacity for abstraction not so much. The latter conclusion, however, involves considerable uncertainties.
@Hormiga, BDEhrman, et al. The issue here is really vexatious. St. Augustine famously remarked that we all know what time is – until we try to understand it. Some physicists now think time isn’t fundamental (e.g. Carlo Rovelli). One central issue is whether time “passes” (the A theory of time) or whether that’s just an illusion (the B theory). Block universes are prima facie wedded to a B theory. A good deal turns, I think, on clarifying what the semantics of “existence” claims is – while not tangling up semantic, ontological, and epistemological questions. The Wikipedia entry is clearly helpful – and clearly shows how much controversy there is. (Note: imo, some things exist outside of time altogether – e.g. numbers.) In any case, even if the block view is correct, it equally entails that all of us are going to *die* in each of the reference-frames in which we exist. Happy karma, friends.
I think the “realization” claiming the past “you” no longer exists is incorrect. It’s around and exists presently because the past “you” has moved through time to the present and is the current “you”. The claim that the “me” dies each moment requires that the “me” is reincarnated or resurrected each moment too. And so, your “me” doesn’t actually die each moment. So, the present isn’t the only thing you have, you have your future too.
Assuming death is a dreamless sleep, it’s true that you won’t be sad about anything when dead nor will you fear death when dead. But that doesn’t remove the present fear of death for those people who have that particular phobia. Because people want to continue on and death contradicts that. People want to continue on because they’re attached to their lives, the things in their lives, the pursuit of pleasure, etc. So, knowledge of loss is not only a source of sadness but also a source of fear. The fear of death is just a form of the fear of loss. For religious people, they may fear the possibility that there is no afterlife and then call that a fear of death.
Have you ever read Philip Larkin’s poem about the fear of death, ‘Aubade’ (in my mind, one of the great poems of the 20th century)? Too long to quote in its entirety here, but the key lines that immediately leapt into my mind were:
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says ‘No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel’, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
Whoa. Nope. But I need to.
Though I don’t think Epicurus, Lucretius, and so were advancing “specious stuff.” At least it has never been specius for me. It is interesting how some people cannot escape a particular fear and others can. No amount of rationality can rid me of my fear of snakes, but it can completely rid me of my fear of death (and has!).
I certainly wouldn’t call them ‘specious’ either, but it’s true that they never ‘spoke to my condition’ as the Quakers would say. I think Larkin nailed it, for me at least; when I feared death, it was *precisely* the lack of any further sensation that I feared. Being told ‘but there will be no you to know anything about it’ only restated the fear in different terms. Yes. There will be no me. And that’s what I feared. That’s why, much as I love Socrates’ ‘Apology’ (which I have taught many, many times), his comparison of death to a dreamless sleep never worked for me– because we only appreciate a night of deep, dreamless sleep *after we wake up* and look back at that sleep.
But as my next comment says, suddenly I just don’t fear that any more. The fear went away. Don’t know why.
(Continued from my previous):
When I was in my 40s and even into my 50s, I found that Larkin expressed my own feelings exactly: “This is what we fear: No sight, no sound . . . nothing to think with . . . the anaesthetic from which none come round.” The very fact that there would be no “me” to perceive any of this, or anything, was exactly the source of my dread at the thought of death.
Interestingly, though, now that I’m 69, in fairly poor health, and therefore most likely only a few years out from death, I find that the terror and dread are somehow mysteriously gone. I’m still as certain as one can be of anything that there’s no “immortality of the soul”; death is indeed “not to be here, not to be anywhere.” I don’t like that; I enjoy being a conscious individual. But somehow, I no longer dread that inevitable extinction. I remember my father saying the same thing when he was in his 70s. A lifelong atheist, he had dreaded dying when he was younger; but the older he got, the less he feared death.
Ah, right. Me too. But keep hanging in there. We need you around!
Thanks. I’m sitting in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian Library right now, so life is good — I’m not planning to kick off any time soon if I can help it!
Ah, as good as it gets…
I totally agree with Bart. At 74, I have come to avoid living in the past. Regrets of past actions do occasionally pop up as do happiness from the positive memories. Both of these item have their own special folder in the files of my personal being. Sometimes they demand attention but spending time on the negative things is self destructive. Positive things are quickly put back in their folder, only briefly serving only as inspiration to do as much good as possible for everyone. I’m fine with no longer existing at the life’s end. I am an Agnostic/Atheist, and the most important thing to me right now is following Christ’s basic principles on being a good person. I still read the new testament daily to reinforce those standards and lessons. Lastly, I want to say that my journey to this point in life and this outlook on the end of life have been greatly helped by all that I have learned from Bart over the last 15 years. My life is enrichened by anyone that can teach me something and so I appreciate the help Bart and others have provided in this last part of my life journey.
Bart, would it be fair to say that you are making two assumptions here – first, that any non-physical “you” (or “me”, or any of us) would necessarily be a soul and would require the existence of a deity; and second, that there are only two possibilities, either non-existence or the continuing existence of the current “you”, complete with your current memories, opinions, desires, etc.?
1. No, I’m not assuming it would require a deity; and if I use the term “soul” in that context it is only in the very broadest sense of a non-physical entity that retains something of my identity after the body dies; 2. No I’m not assuming that either; I absolutely believe that “I” will exist in a way: all my molecules will go back into the mix and experience the fate of all molecules, as they dutifully obey the second law of thermodynamics, ultimately into the void.
There is a saying in Irish…’bás beag is ea an codladh’ . It means ‘sleep is a little death’.
I don’t mind going to sleep at all.
My metaphor for the self is a flame: a process, not a substance, that is continually changing and that depends on things out of our control (exothermic reactions as fuel oxidizes compared to non-conscious brain processes). We only exist in this precise form for an instant, and the best life is lived by trying to make the most of our moment of existence. It is a miracle that we can be aware and have volition to any extent, and no surprise that the process is not eternally sustained.
All a mistake of language, I think. We confuse death with life because we are alive. A version of to be. When our being ends, we still naturally (?) fill that in with another version of the verb to be. We ARE alive, then we ARE dead. But death is the nonexistence of us. We cannot interact with that lack of experience, so we make up something to fill that void; but, a void in the language, not experience.
(There is something General Semantics in there I haven’t fully explored, I think.) We ARE alive, but we never ARE dead.
Perhaps Brahman will be there.
My turn toward the secular in these adult years has challenged my younger views of the primacy of humanity and the existence of consciousness, especially as I understood them from the biblical story. Now it is easy to imagine that my life and awareness will conclude much the same way as that of all fauna and flora, and furthermore my existence will come to an end much as that of the mountains, the rivers and the planet I have traversed with such joy and contentment throughout so many years. Meaning is found in being.
Thanks to Bart and commenters for interesting things to ponder.
I think the aspect that makes me sad is not knowing “how the movie ends”. When I imagine that time when I’m staring into the abyss — assuming I have a certain amount of consciousness — I expect I’ll be wondering how my loved ones’ lives will turn out. It’s inextricably tied to the feeling that I wish my parents and other loved ones who have died could be “looking down” to see how my own life has unfolded.
I don’t truly believe their souls are hovering over me. But I sometimes talk to them anyway. [I *dare* you to tell me you never do that!] It brings me some joy and comfort and why not? Life, as we’re all observing, is too short not to enjoy it to the fullest.
Funny how you writing about this is similar to what I just wrote to a friend of mine. Is this coincidence? Or are we all connected through the one original consciousness or spirit? At 75 years old sometimes I feel lucky I’ve made it this far. I like to hold on to the idea that we will somehow continue. I look at the world (nature) around me and see that everything in existence has a purpose (mostly). Plants make oxygen, humans breathe oxygen and give carbon dioxide for the plants. That type of thing. Did I start out in life knowing nothing and then acquiring all of this knowledge and then it all just goes away forever? It doesn’t seem to fit, it has no purpose. Reincarnation intrigues me. Actually, it makes sense that we have to die as much as I hate the idea of it and don’t look forward to it. (Or maybe I do?) Can you imagine the world population right now if no one ever died?
It’s hard for me to imagine the word’s population with so many people dying every second!
Thank you! I’ve read your blog and blogged in parallel for around 15yrs and loved both. Often chuckle that there’s another weirdo weirdly similar to me, also born ca.1955. Think about my own past life a lot – that’s what I blog irreverently about; plus my present life where I support a few people down on their luck and have many laughs at what they get up to. And blog about that. Love life, and it’ll end. Like your reader nanuninu I’ll have a glass on you tonight. Cheers!
OH: May some of your molecules end up in interesting places!
OH: The will, I’m sure.
@billw977 “May some of your molecules end up in interesting places” has now become my new favorite toast!
I know Dan Brown is a fiction novelist, but I wonder if you have any thoughts on his latest “The Secret of Secrets” and the idea of some dualists who feel that human consciousness may be more than just the workings of the individual brain. I am inclined to believe, as you do, that life is finite to the individual and that when we die, that is the end of our minute piece of time. However, science has not fully explained issues of multiple personalities, “idiot” savants, prior life recollections, or out of body/near death experiences. Wondered if you had thoughts about that?
I haven’t read it, I’m afraid. My view is that science hasn’t explained 99% of the universe yet, but that simply means we don’t know why things work the way they do yet. But our inability to understand something doesn’t indicate that a “super”natural explanation is needed.
Indeed. I have had similar thoughts for a long time. As I have remarked to a few friends, “How can I survive death, when I don’t even survive lunch?”
Hey guys, this one was a hard one. Another aspect to this is a fear of people around me dying.. When I think of my parents or my friends passing (even people I respect like Bart or Friedman) I weep! I worry about my nonexistence as well, but resign myself to knowing that it is inevitable. I will see some of these things happen, though, to those around me. I often don’t know what to do. Just wanted to put that out there.
Hi Dr Ehrman,
Great article.
Christ loving believer here. I figure this is a great place to ask this question. In your book Heaven and Hell (and in my own study afterward), it’s affirmed that the ancient Israelites had close to zilch concept of life after death. I want to know why is this, given the elaborate afterlife beliefs of most all other theistic religions, past or present. Egyptians, for instance, had massively elaborate beliefs and rituals concerning death. What made the Israelites believe sheol is “it?”
The OT authors (mainly Psalms) take a negative view of sheol. But not me. I think “Rest in Peace” defines exactly what death is. Rest and peace. Which sounds nice. Life is joyful and fulfilling sometimes. It also hurts. A lot. It’d be nice to just live this life then kick back and relax in the nothing for a bit. If God wants to resurrect me, great. Otherwise I’m cool here in Sheol.
Lots of ancient folk believed death was the end of the story. Even most humans still think it is for 99.99999% of all living things…(!)
Bart, have you ever considered the possibility that, although there is no God as imagined by man, our consciousness nonetheless persists “after”* this life, in some form? ( * “After” in quotes, because this term implies linear time, which is an illusion.) Are you familiar with the concept of panpsychism and, if so, what are your thoughts on it?
Yes, I’m familiar with it and I’ve htought about it. I simply don’t think there’s any reason to think it’s right; it’s a personal opinion. My (again personal) opinion is that it’s a view that makes sense to some people who simply can’t imagine they will no longer exist.
People “eternalize” themselves and their experiences .If in an afterlife you stay the same you’ll stagnate from boredom .Everything constantly changes.Eternity would be constantly saying goodbye to your time,place ,memories,history. And everyone assumes they’d just love an afterlife .God isn’t going to take the chance of us panicking if we find we hate it.So an afterlife is unknown and irrelevant.
There is a lot you mention that makes perfect sense, both about having nothing to fear about ceasing to exist, and identity not being persistent in time. My ideas basically align with what you write.
But philosophizing carries the risk of pushing true thoughts to extremes. You are not the same person as you were when you wrote this article, or even as a second ago, but you are not completely disconnected from them either. I care what will happen to me tomorrow, and not in the same way as I care about some other random person. Is it reasonable to punish or reward somebody for something their past selves (that no longer exist) did? If you say no, you may get other problems…
Ceasing to exist when we die is not a binary thing. While we accumulate experiences in our person and in our memory, we also gradually loose things along the way. I’m sure I have genuinely forgotten many things of my life as a younger person, and my personality has changed in important ways, so the younger me has ceased to exist even in practical terms. Also accidents, trauma, age can destroy essential aspects of a person while alive.
Luckily my cells that regularly die are (typically? always?) replaced by exact duplicates!
One’s death is a difficult topic, not because it assigns us to a state of oblivion, per se. It’s difficult because in the land of the living, we attribute meaning to things we’ve done (and isn’t life something we’ve done?) by the good or bad memories they created and reminiscing on artifacts we leave in our wake—all things existing only in our memories. Alzheimer’s is a disease most people consider cruel because it steals those memories from us. Death is Alzheimer’s squared.
Here on the shores of Lake Michigan, we have an annual sandcastle contest. The contestants know their art will be washed away, so why do it? Well, the act of creating the art also creates memories of the finished sculpture, the actions taken to create it, and the beautiful environment and people you met along the way. But how many would participate in the contest if they knew, like death, their sculpture and all their memories of it would be washed away with the next big wave? Wouldn’t they look at the entry application and say, “What’s the point?”
Late to this party, but your observations are very close to the concept of Generic Subjective Continuity which posits that when your present permanently ends at your physical death, the point of view will immediately shift to a completely different present in a different consciousness. Why? Because there is no such thing as non-conscious awareness. There is no black void. There was a present in a different consciousness before your current present as well. But there’s no way to access either the before present and the later present will have no access to memories of the present you since memories are brain dependent. This is not reincarnation. Only the illusion of it.
Interesting. I don’t believe in subjective continuity of any kind. I don’t think there is any continuity of consciousness. When we die we lose all consciousness for all time (in my view).
I agree. We all eventually lose personal consciousness. We’re gone. Ended. Permanently. But what happens when I permanently personally cease to be? There’s no such thing as awareness of non-awareness. To me, the only thing that makes sense is that after my consciousness ends, never to return, the channel switches to another station, so to speak.
Generic Subjective Continuity (GSC) is tough to wrap ones head around because it sounds like reincarnation, but it isn’t. Nothing is transferred. It’s almost like: you’re so erased that “you” is randomly “replaced” by another “you” (whether human, animal, or anything capable of generating some conscious awareness).
The idea dawned on me when I was doing the kind of thinking you’re doing right now, taking materialism as far as I could take it and this was the logical conclusion I came to. And then I searched the Internet to see if I was alone in this and found:
https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivity. (Or do a direct search of Tom Clark Naturalism).
Yes: someday no baby will be born. That may be the final end of consciousness. Unless consciousness continues in some other emergent source.
Anyway, it’s just a harmless completely untestable unfalsifiable thought experiment!
Addendum: I’ve listened to an old talk of Alan Watts that sounded very much like Generic Subjective Continuity. Something like “After you die, a baby will be born.” (although GSC doesn’t require that the “previous” or “next” consciousness is even human).
Yeah, I don’t believe that either. At some point in the distant past, either before or when the sun explodes, no more babies will ever be born.
Further addendum: recently encountered philosopher Bernado Kastrup, who calls himself an analytical idealist. I might call him a “naturalistic” idealist (he doesn’t deny the natural world as understood via the scientific method at all). I’m still very skeptical, but what I hear and read sounds interesting and worth investigating. Haven’t encountered any “woo-woo” stuff that would make me dismiss him as yet.
Heraclitus
Arg. Damn scribes.