Atheism Central for Secondary Schools

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life - our desire to go on living - our dread of coming to an end."

Thomas Edison, American inventor

"At bottom, all knowledge grasped by the human mind is inherently uncertain. Or to put it more succinctly, ultimate truth is unknowable. Furthermore, it is more or less irrelevant to human life. Any conceivable ANSWER would have to come in the form of an equation, or a set of laws, or some other form of intellectual conception, and as such could play no significant role in the emotional life of mankind. In short, it is all a bit academic, more so considering that the existence of an ANSWER is doubtful, owing to the uncertainty of all human knowledge."

Richard Feynman, Mathematician, Physicist

We can't die and disappear into oblivion - it's unfair, after all, we are such wonderful creatures and so important to ourselves.

Belief in an afterlife is one of the underlying principles of theism. Theists never question the oblivion which existed before birth - even those who believe in a series of incarnations believe that there was a first incarnation before which nothing existed. Wishful thinking - wouldn't it be nice if we could live forever? - is not a good reason for belief in anything. But it is probably why there are so many old people in church nowadays.

We are wonderful creatures from our point of view - but of course we would think that, wouldn't we?

It is clear that the cosmos was made just for us.

Looking around at the vast size of the cosmos it is unreasonable to believe that such immensity is necessary if we are the purpose of the cosmos's existence. Why should we have anything to do with it?

We have received a Divine Revelation telling us all about God.

Of course we have! Those fools who believe in other religions are mistaken about their divine revelations.

Actually, this is the dangerous thing about religion. Believing in a super-being is harmless enough - it's when people imagine that the super-being is talking to them that the real problems start. And there's no arguing with a superbeing - especially one who cares even less about your life than a WW1 general.

Why do we exist then, if you're so sure there isn't a God?

Why didn't lots of people who never lived never live? If nothing existed, why would that be? Where was I before I was born? Why don't I remember being an octopus in a previous existence? Why don't people with two legs have three legs? Just because we can ask a question doesn't make it reasonable to expect there there should be an answer. Not all questions are reasonable to ask. (In other words we can apply Leibniz's doctrine regarding statements to questions as well - see Why do we exist?).

We can imagine that there's something so mysterious that we can't imagine it so it must exist. That is God.

Yes, we can confuse small children with that can't we? (See 'Tricks of the trade - Wayne's World'). Well I can imagine becoming so rich I'll live in luxury and never have to work again. Actually, it's nearly midnight and I've got to stop now or I'll never get up in the morning.

Special quote:

"...when we think of the relation between our conscious selves and our bodies, it seems just too horrible to think there is nothing to our selves except out bodies. It seems too awful to think that when my body is destroyed I will cease to exist; and even if in moments of great courage I can accept my own future nonexistence, it is much harder to accept the ultimate extinction of the people I most deeply love and admire. It seems too horrible to contemplate that such wonderful people will simply be annihilated with the inevitable death, decay and destruction of their bodies, which after all, are just material objects in the world like any others."

John Searle, Mind Language and Society, 1999

Of course, Searle has much more to say in this very readable book.

In fact, it is the view of the author of this site that it is a more profound human achievement to face death in this way, absorbing its significance in the way you live your life, than to deny it by religious escapism. Very many religious people find themselves in a kind of living limbo in which they fluctuate between belief and skepticism. They panic periodically when they face the realization of death as complete extinction but are unable to progress because they are drawn back to the inadequate 'cure' of belief in a god and an afterlife. This belief periodically fails them because the core of their being rejects it for the rather obvious reason that belief in a god is nonsensical and conflicts with their experience of the real world around them. Elsewhere on the site I describe this as 'reality conflict'.