There is a nice quote which I really like. I feel it puts things quite succinctly:
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
That really does ring true with me.
I don't fear being dead. I haven't for quite sometime. Like any rational person I'm quite pensive about going out in a grotesquely painful manner. Things like burning alive or not being able to die with dignity at the end of a battle with a progressive disease thanks to so called right to 'life' lunatics don't top my list of things I like to ponder. The actual state of death holds no sway over me though. This has provided me with a point of view which I never could have had while religion was in my life. I see it in a lot of those in my life who do have theistic beliefs, even really lax ones. It seems a lot of their personal and life decisions have to pass a kind of litmus test founded in superstition and it saddens me when this causes them undue grief. Grief which is totally unfounded and objectively superfluous. Using a yardstick of fantasy obfuscated in tradition and 'morality' extending not from one's own being but from which ultimately can be traced back to the likes of illiterate goat herders living out of tents. That my friends is a tragedy.
It's a waste of the very life which was never ordained by anyone or asked for by any of us. I don't believe in heaven, hell, or any kind of afterlife. Nor do I believe in any kind of higher power or gods. Far from taking away from my life and stripping meaning from my existence it has brought great meaning to every moment I live. Every time I wake from sleeping I get to experience the joys of life. Little simple things which no one could ever substitute with superstitious vapidity. Though never substitute these things, it could poison them and without sufficient or legitimate reasons to do so. I had a simple moment the other day which illustrates this perfectly:
A few days ago came home from running errands and opened my garage door as I pulled up in the driveway. A young dove flew haphazardly into the garage, obviously startled at the roll up door opening suddenly and loudly. It landed beside the single step leading to the door inside and was petrified, it couldn't see a way out. I walked up to it and bent down to look at it. It was mortified, birds tend to behave a certain way when they are. It looked up at me not knowing what to make of me. I tried to imagine what it must be feeling as it gazed up at me, closing in on it. I got my hands under it and as soon as I picked it up enough to clear the step and see light it flew off. moments like that one make my life meaningful and worthwhile to me. I needed no creator to marvel at or thank for sharing this world with such a creature. No magic had to be invoked in order to appreciate this animal, which at some point in the 3.8 billion year or so known history of life on this world I know I shared an ancestor with . Knowledge and self awareness allowed me to experience that moment and multiplying it with unnecessary entities would serve only to take away from it.
Enjoying the music I love, learning things I previously didn't and correcting things I was in error about, the unconditional love of little girls, a nice thunderstorm, are a few things on a very long list of experiences which make my life worth living. They enrich my life and if by existing I have made a difference for the better in some of the lives around me then all I feel I can rightfully ask for is already mine.
When I die I will not lose any of it. Not because I can take any of it with me but because I will not exist and be unable to be deprived of it. After every shred my existence in memory, engraved, recorded or otherwise is gone, indeed, even humanity is gone, I will have lost none of it. It's for this very real reason that I can honestly say that death now has no dominion over me, and never will again.
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
~Richard Dawkins
I don't fear being dead. I haven't for quite sometime. Like any rational person I'm quite pensive about going out in a grotesquely painful manner. Things like burning alive or not being able to die with dignity at the end of a battle with a progressive disease thanks to so called right to 'life' lunatics don't top my list of things I like to ponder. The actual state of death holds no sway over me though. This has provided me with a point of view which I never could have had while religion was in my life. I see it in a lot of those in my life who do have theistic beliefs, even really lax ones. It seems a lot of their personal and life decisions have to pass a kind of litmus test founded in superstition and it saddens me when this causes them undue grief. Grief which is totally unfounded and objectively superfluous. Using a yardstick of fantasy obfuscated in tradition and 'morality' extending not from one's own being but from which ultimately can be traced back to the likes of illiterate goat herders living out of tents. That my friends is a tragedy.
It's a waste of the very life which was never ordained by anyone or asked for by any of us. I don't believe in heaven, hell, or any kind of afterlife. Nor do I believe in any kind of higher power or gods. Far from taking away from my life and stripping meaning from my existence it has brought great meaning to every moment I live. Every time I wake from sleeping I get to experience the joys of life. Little simple things which no one could ever substitute with superstitious vapidity. Though never substitute these things, it could poison them and without sufficient or legitimate reasons to do so. I had a simple moment the other day which illustrates this perfectly:
A few days ago came home from running errands and opened my garage door as I pulled up in the driveway. A young dove flew haphazardly into the garage, obviously startled at the roll up door opening suddenly and loudly. It landed beside the single step leading to the door inside and was petrified, it couldn't see a way out. I walked up to it and bent down to look at it. It was mortified, birds tend to behave a certain way when they are. It looked up at me not knowing what to make of me. I tried to imagine what it must be feeling as it gazed up at me, closing in on it. I got my hands under it and as soon as I picked it up enough to clear the step and see light it flew off. moments like that one make my life meaningful and worthwhile to me. I needed no creator to marvel at or thank for sharing this world with such a creature. No magic had to be invoked in order to appreciate this animal, which at some point in the 3.8 billion year or so known history of life on this world I know I shared an ancestor with . Knowledge and self awareness allowed me to experience that moment and multiplying it with unnecessary entities would serve only to take away from it.
Enjoying the music I love, learning things I previously didn't and correcting things I was in error about, the unconditional love of little girls, a nice thunderstorm, are a few things on a very long list of experiences which make my life worth living. They enrich my life and if by existing I have made a difference for the better in some of the lives around me then all I feel I can rightfully ask for is already mine.
When I die I will not lose any of it. Not because I can take any of it with me but because I will not exist and be unable to be deprived of it. After every shred my existence in memory, engraved, recorded or otherwise is gone, indeed, even humanity is gone, I will have lost none of it. It's for this very real reason that I can honestly say that death now has no dominion over me, and never will again.
