Speak like the devil pt. 2

As an atheist I tend to get a lot of existential questions from curious or and crititcal religious people alike. One of the most common being "how can you NOT believe that there is an afterlife?" after a lot of gibberish about souls along with a few comments about how cynical it is to believe that you're the food of worms once you're dead.

Well first of all let me get one thing straight, regardless of my beliefs I do not plan to end up as worm food. That's what happens when you get buried in a coffin, underground, in a cemetery, which is the last thing I want. Burn me, use my body to make a fancy skeleton to teach biology classes, pilfer my organs or hell, donate the corpse to the local club of necrophiliacs. Just do me the favour of not having my body be part of religious traditions and add to their false sense of legitimacy. So there, I said it.

As for death itself, what does an atheist think death is like? Well I thought about it for a while and I’ve come up with a simple answer. Think back, waaay back. What did you experience during the tenth century? Were you alive? I think not. So what was it like? Do you have any memories of the time you spent not being a part of existence? The time before you were born? Try hard and you might get a glimpse of what I am pointing at-it’s called entropy.

Simply put you didn’t feel anything because you didn’t have a body to feel, you don’t remember any of it because you didn’t have a brain to remember with, you weren’t aware of your current state of non-existence because you didn’t have an awareness to be aware of. A blank slate, a transparent nothing. That’s what you were then, and that’s what you will be when you die. No memories, no personal quirks, no stress, no worries, no planning, no nothing. That’s what it means to be dead and that’s what you will likely believe as someone free from delusions of heaven. It may sound like a harsh or even sad truth, but honestly, once you’re dead you won’t care because naturally there’s no sadness there either. You’re just… gone.

With that in mind I think it’s obvious that it doesn’t matter what happens to your body, all you really have to do is perhaps take those still alive into consideration. Perhaps THEY would like to see a proper burial? Well that’s what your last will is for, give them the piece of mind to tell them what you really want and be done with it, it’s not like you’ll ever be able to do anything else ever again.