Sunday, September 21, 2008
Cheating for atheists
If you're an atheist, as I think I am, the scariest thing is the notion of death as total annihilation. It may be cheating, but I've allowed myself to find comfort in a passage of Ram Dass's Still Here: "To be here for fifty to eighty years only to be annihilated at the end just doesn't make sense. Nothing else in the universe is that inefficient ... A Tibetan friend of mine, Gelek Rinpoche ... says that the universe is made of matter, energy and consciousness. How can we deny this when we encounter the existence of our own and others' consciousness every single day? And how can we assume that consciousness is annihilated just because the body, the matter, gives out? Matter and energy are not destroyed—just converted into each other. I'll bet that consciousness can't be destroyed either."
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Of course, all of the leading atheists state that your consciousness is just an illusion. But, what else could they say? They have a vested interest in making sure that "this" is all there is. I'm sorry that you've found yourself in this position. It sounds really lonely. Good luck.
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