Recently, Roger Ebert wrote a wonderful essay about death – his death in particular. Overall, I think his attitude towards his own demise is a very healthy one. It also shows that one can approach the end of life fearlessly without any belief in an afterlife.

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter.

He goes on to write:

But certainly, some readers have informed me, it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. I have no desire to live forever. The concept frightens me.

I’ve had that very same fear when I did believe in an afterlife. Another option, annihilation, is much more appealing. My reasoning is captured in a Nietzsche quote, “Against boredom the gods themselves fight in vain.” Immortality sounds more like a burden than bonus to me. Others go even further, “I prefer not continuing to exist merely at the whim of a deity.”

The entire essay is well worth the read. Also of interest is a discussion of personal death that took place after this essay was posted on Dawkins’s website. It’s good insight into how non-believers think about their own inevitable demise.

On a side note, Ebert links to an interesting religious quiz in his essay. It’s purpose is to rank worldviews according to their compatibility with your beliefs. You can see my results below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am an Unaffiliatist (among other things) – that is, I am unaffiliated with any religion. I’m also a statistic. According to the results of a recent Pew survey that explores how Americans change religions, “The group that has grown the most in recent years due to religious change is the unaffiliated population.” 16% of the U.S. population identify with having no religion while only 7% were raised that way.

They list a few reasons these apostates gave up religion. For instance, about 40% no longer believed in God or the teachings of any religion. More interestingly many left their religion because they felt it was too rule-based or because the leaders were more concerned with money or power than spirituality. It seems that the movement to inject evangelical Christianity into U.S. politics has backfired. They failed to learn from history that separation of church and state is beneficial for both institutions.

One reason for leaving one’s religion that was not very prominent in the survey was that science disproves religion. This means that science-based arguments against religion are not a major factor in creating apostates. The self-destructive antics of the religions themselves are much more effective. The anti-religion segment of non-believers that list science as a reason get quite a lot of attention but actually make up a small percentage of the unaffiliated population. I compare this to the way fundamentalist Christians get more coverage than mainstream ones.