steamer

When my first wife fell ill and the doctors refused to operate, how would it have helped anyone to have an imaginary invisible friend in magic never never land? It was all I could do to perform damage control when my wife's stupid mother told my daughter that she went to be with god and my equally stupid sister-in-law told her that god "took" her.

You have no idea what a pain in the ass it was to ensure my 5 year old didn't think her mother abandoned her or that some invisible boogie man in the sky was running around "taking" people.

Let's not pretend this imaginary hope is a good thing or that it has no consequences. If some old guy is afraid of dying I can understand it. That doesn't mean the living are excused from all rational thought.

It's not any less of a lie than it was when they were healthy. I wouldn't argue with a dying man that he deserves to die as deluded as he lived. I'd let him go as he is. If a doctor wants to offer imaginary hope, I'd prefer a doctor that offered real hope. Wouldn't you?

Lógos Sokratikós

For believers, the comfort that, in the end, she will be ok, because agony and death is not the end. Which is the comfort of "knowing" there's an infinite wisdom that let it happen for a reason, etc.

Many believers get angry at their god(s) because they have that SantaClaus picture of god. Clerics tell them to look past that, into eternity.

Not that it's appealing to everybody. And for some believers it's not enough and they decide to stay angry at God or simply conclude there is none. For outsiders it's sheer madness, even though many find comfort in it.

Just a thought.

steamer

Far an atheist, death is also the end of agony. There is comfort in knowing that your loved one is no longer sufferring. The reason for their death is the mechanical failure of some bodily system and there is nothing to be angry at unless the doctors themselves botched their part.

...and atheists tell them to look past death into eternal oblivion and the comfort that she is beyond any pain.

An atheistic death is a comforting one. The dead no longer suffer any pain nor do they have any worries. There is nothing to blame on natural death but a malfunctioning body and there is nothing in it to cause fear. It requires no magic that fails and no miraculous rebirths or judgments. It requires exactly what it does from every other animal on the planet, nothing.

Lógos Sokratikós

I really like that phrase. But it might be better to omit the word "oblivion", makes it sound like "you die, then you are forgotten", but "she's beyond any pain" is golden.

True. And as such, sobering.

Lógos Sokratikós

This has been a fantastic investigation into the implications of atheism for "ultimate realities", the kind of stuff that concerns all men and women of all ages and from all times, no matter what your theological convictions.

I'm glad I opened it for philosophical reasons (and personally I have benefitted very much from it!).

Thank you very much, all of you. And I would still like to continue with other questions of paramount philosophical and spiritual importance.