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Atheism and grief (view source)
Revision as of 03:16, September 29, 2016
, 03:16, September 29, 2016→Atheism, grief and tragedies
“The dead do not suffer” is atheism’s consolation to the parents of murdered children? This sentiment can provide some consolation — though still nothing comparable to the affirmation of an afterlife — to those who lose a loved one who had been suffering from a debilitating disease. But it not only offers the parents of Sandy Hook no consolation, it actually (unintentionally) insults them: Were these children suffering before their lives were taken? Would they have suffered if they had lived on? Moreover, it is the parents who are suffering, so the fact that their child isn’t suffering while decomposing in the grave is of no relevance. And, most germane to our subject, this atheist message offers no consolation at all when compared with the religious message that we humans are not just matter, but possess eternal souls.<ref>[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/337673/atheist-response-sandy-hook-dennis-prager The Atheist Response to Sandy Hook]</ref>}}
“The dead do not suffer” is atheism’s consolation to the parents of murdered children? This sentiment can provide some consolation — though still nothing comparable to the affirmation of an afterlife — to those who lose a loved one who had been suffering from a debilitating disease. But it not only offers the parents of Sandy Hook no consolation, it actually (unintentionally) insults them: Were these children suffering before their lives were taken? Would they have suffered if they had lived on? Moreover, it is the parents who are suffering, so the fact that their child isn’t suffering while decomposing in the grave is of no relevance. And, most germane to our subject, this atheist message offers no consolation at all when compared with the religious message that we humans are not just matter, but possess eternal souls.<ref>[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/337673/atheist-response-sandy-hook-dennis-prager The Atheist Response to Sandy Hook]</ref>}}
== Atheism, pantheism and lack of consolation ==
Gary DeLashmutt wrote:
{{Cquote|Atheism promises only personal annihilation. [[Bertrand Russell]] said: “No fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life from the grave...Brief and powerless is Man's life; on his and all his race the slow, sure doom falls, pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way. For Man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gates of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day.” The best you can do is try not to think about death!
[[Pantheism]] may sound more hopeful with its belief in reincarnation, but this holds no promise for reunion with loved ones. Our spirits come back in different forms, and ultimately are absorbed into the impersonal oneness—which is just another form of personal annihilation. Aldous Huxley rejected atheism and embraced pantheism. But when his mother died, he had no comfort for his sister: “My dearest sister, I offer you no consolation, for I know of none. There are things which each must bear as best he may with the strength that has been allotted to him.”<ref>[Hope in the Face of Death] by Gary DeLashmutt</ref>}}
== See also ==
== See also ==