The Atheist Under Your Bed: FAQ

Do I have another kindred spirit? Maybe!

“How can atheists get up in the morning and get through their day knowing that they’re eventually going to die? Without heaven and an afterlife, it’s pointless! Why don’t atheists just kill themselves and be done with it?”

Here's how I respond to that:

People who ask this question seem to be making a few unwarranted assumptions about life and the nature of things.

Their thinking can be summarized in the following syllogism (or a similar one):

First Premise: Things that don’t last forever have no value.

Second Premise: Human life doesn’t last forever.

Conclusion: Human life has no value.

To avoid the conclusion that human life has no value, many theists deny the second premise and assert that human life DOES last forever in some form.

Atheists like myself prefer to deny the first premise. We believe that even if something doesn’t last forever, it can still have value.

For example: My car has value today even though it almost certainly won’t be around 20 years from now. The fact that it gets me to where I want to go now isn’t changed or diminished by the fact that the day will come when it no longer runs.

Another, perhaps even better way of looking at it: Just because the flavor of a chocolate chip cookie doesn’t last much longer than the time it takes to eat the cookie is no reason not to eat cookies!

What’s more, believing or not believing in gOd or the afterlife neither increases nor decreases the power of cookies to make us happy.

Indeed, it seems to me terribly greedy of people to expect both chocolate chip cookies AND immortality.

(Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe it’s time for me to revisit my own little bag of heaven.)

As I said in an earlier post, I am against Christianity because its values are backwards. I'm glad this blog put it so succinctly.