Ask the Atheist - What happens after you die?

A fundamental question of human existence.  What happens after you die?  Obviously, death plays a fundamental part in religion, and I would say that death is the fundamental reason religion exists in the first place.

So, as an atheist, where do you go when you die?

Short answer, nowhere.

Long answer, nowhere.  And *you* don't go anywhere either.

There's not much more to it than that.  In all of human history and experience, there's no evidence of a key element of "life after death": the existence of the "soul", which would be a necessary component, because we know exactly what happens to the physical body.  Sure, there's lots of anecdotal evidence of people leaving their body and hovering over the room where they were dying as well as tales of corridors of light.  None of it has any compelling substantiation (see what I did there?).

Something similar to the hovering and corridors of light happens to people all the time.  When you go to sleep at night, do you ever talk in complete gibberish?  Do you ever believe you see or hear something as you're waking up that couldn't be there?  This happens to me a good deal.  I often jolt awake because I think a spider is hanging above my head.  As I wake up, for about five seconds I would swear it was real, until I realize that it's dark and I couldn't have seen it if it was real.

Why does this happen?  Because the human brain is organic and our senses are easily tricked.  When we're on the edge of consciousness, we have all sorts of weird perceptions.  It's a natural process, and it happens when someone is near death, especially when the brain is starved of oxygen.  It's become a pretty well understood phenomenon and it throws all the Near Death Experience anecdotes into doubt.

The fact is, there's no evidence that anything physically or spiritually related to a person survives their death.

But why do so many people think there's an "afterlife"?  Because it's easier.  Because it makes people feel good.  Because it allows people to ignore their own mortality or the mortality of someone they love.  It's a very human belief.  It's just not verified by any objective measurements.

I attended a funeral a few years ago in a Baptist Church.  The service was for my aunt, a very religious woman, and at some point in the service, someone said, "I'll bet right now Ann is up in heaven, worshiping Jesus."  I thought of her mindlessly singing endless hymns for all eternity to stroke the ego of some immature "god" and it was not comforting, it was horrific.  I'd prefer oblivion.

I believe that when you die, that's it.  One minute you're alive and hopefully aware, the next you aren't.  I imagine the closest I've experienced to it is when I'm in a deep sleep.  There is nothing; I have no perceptions.  Time passes and I am unaware.  I don't expect death to be any different.  I will simply cease to be.

For a long time, like almost everyone, I feared death.  When I thought of death, I thought of suffocating.  But I've reached a point in my life where I realize that it's coming closer, faster than I'd like, and it will happen.  It's happened to every person who ever lived, except those alive right now.

I take some comfort in the thought that the atoms that make up my body will continue to exist, and will likely be part of something else, actually many somethings, at some point.  I won't be aware of course, but this continuity of existence actually feels right to me.

I don't want to die, but I'm no longer afraid of it.