Infinite Night

My feelings regarding the afterlife are well-known and may be found on this blog.  They are based not just on science, but common sense (and by that I mean a common method of reasoning, not popular sentiment).  That there is nothing beyond this life, no conscious existence outside of the present, is without doubt. 

It is interesting that others have accused those of us who hold this position of wishful thinking!  The reasoning goes like this: "When forced to choose between eternal damnation and complete annihilation the choice is an easy one.  You deny an afterlife out of fear, yes out of psychological necessity."  On the face of it and from a certain perspective this is a reasonable critique.  A similar one is made in the opposite direction, namely, that heaven is the product of a similar type of wishful thinking, a consolation in a world desperately in need of such a comforting thought.  The two arguments are not equal however.  In the former, a certain assumption is being made: it presupposes belief in a place of damnation or hell.  Out of fear of this place, a real possibility, one turns to annihilation.  This argument can only be framed from the perspective of faith.  As such it constructs a straw man, only to blow him down.  It is simply not the case that those who reject the notion of an afterlife are secretly harbouring religious beliefs.  Now regarding the latter critique the presumption of faith is warranted.  Those who believe in an afterlife, for the most part, hold religious beliefs.  While wishful thinking may shape the debate on both sides, one should not define that wishful thinking on the side of the afterlife deniers as a religious fear of hell.  This is simply a false attribution, a religious projection.

This latter view also makes the assumption that annihilation is a comforting thought to afterlife deniers.  This again is a reflection of the influence of a religious alternative creeping in, i.e. hell.  On the contrary, the thought of nothingness can be somewhat unsettling at times.  Even when one reflects that the same condition will exist after death as it did before conception and development of the nervous system, it is still quite a pill to swallow at times.  Before conception and nervous system development, one had no relations, no memories or loved ones.  At death, however, one has all these (unless the brain has already started to decline).  It seems like a great loss, and I suppose it is at one level.  But I suppose there is also something quite fitting about it.. a kind of sacred simplicity even.  Every symphony must end..  every string on every instrument cease its vibration.. We must all, as conductors of our own lives, lay down the baton a final time.