alt Hacker NewsThe most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death.
> My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. (italics mine)
I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas Nagel wrote something along those lines.) I sort of get it but regardless I think it's very interesting.
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It is the safest and easiest solution. You die, nothing happens.
When there is an afterlife or perhaps even eternity, the problems begin.
religious beliefs aside, there’s something pleasing about living a good life and facing a decent death: closure.
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I'm just 40, and while I won't go into it, I've lived a very long life so far. An incredible amount of joy, but also grief and pain. Memory for me, when I'm drinking my coffee in the morning, is warm and cozy in a numbing sort of way, but I have to be careful where I walk in it.
I certainly don't wish for death, I still find so much beauty and joy in life, and I still find and experience love. But I don't wish for an afterlife, or prolonged life. If I'm fortunate to live until my natural death, I will welcome it.
Humanity will go on, there are billions of threads of consciousness right now, and I feel so much gratitude that I was and am one of those. I have a lot of comfort in being wrapped and surrounded by those threads, and that they will continue around me when mine frays and ends.
My cannon view is that we're just the universe experiencing itself, and that while my consciousness will end, that universe will go on, my atoms part of it.