Ian McEwan (author of the novel Atonement, an adaptation of it won the Golden Globe yesterday) in an interview:
it is crucial that people who do not have a sky god and don't have a set of supernatural beliefs assert their belief in moral values and in love and in the transcendence that they might experience in landscape or art or music or sculpture or whatever. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, it makes them give more valence to life itself. The little spark that we do have becomes all the more valuable when you can't be trading off any moments for eternity.
Rejecting afterlife has certainly liberated me in this life.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Salon has an interview with Karen Armstrong, and I don't know whether the interviewer just did a poor job or whether her ideas really are that sloppy and confused. She definitely has interesting ideas about religion, but while she's dismissing simplistic ideas about gods and the afterlife on the…
McGrath is back, straining to refute atheism. This time, his argument is with the claim that faith is blind. Is not, he says! And then proceeds to muddle together faith with belief with morality with science until he's got a nice incoherent stew, at which time he points to a few floaty bits in the…
Afterlife? What afterlife?
Religion has always fluorished in ignorance. What is it but a collection of stories and claims to explain the mysteries of life — wherever there is something we don't understand, that we lack real knowledge about, there is a priest ready to rush in and fill the gap with a…
As I hear people debate about evolution and religion, I feel like I'm listening to a political debate between two middle schoolers. One says that you have to vote republican because taxes are bad and the other says no, democrats are right because the republican kid has cooties. No one seems to…
Very true, Selva.
That is incidentally the core issue in religiously hot places like India where people devote critical time to supernatural beliefs, idol-worship and attempting to shape their lives based on them.
I feel it is foolish to analyse any afterlife when your this life is not accomplished. It is like ending up at a movie and ruining it thinking about the next one instead.
This is not however a flavour of atheism. That is the related issue to this one. There is more to god when godliness is practised through the heart for better relations with others than not to have genuine relations but go to religious places hoping to get 'favours' from the almighty for selfish purposes.
Yous see that happen everywhere, and in all religions.
Therefore, I choose not to believe in religion (except unfortunately when I have to enter it in admission forms to various academic centres).
True, there is more to science than what appears. You will see. As science progresses everything comes explained -- one day, even solving the mysteries of 'supernatural' and consciousness. And even clearly determine how stupid the concept of afterlife is.
Mind and spirit is the final frontier that science will seek to capture. Just watch!