I've never understood how fundamentalist Christians in the United States are able to argue that they're supporters of a culture of life, while the rest of us godless heathens apparently favor a culture of death.
The way I see it, the truth is exactly opposite.
Those who don't believe in God, an afterlife, or commandments handed down by a distant divinity are much more likely to favor individual actions, and collective social policies, that favor life over death.
For example, here in Oregon a jury currently is deliberating whether the parents of 15 month old Ava Worthington are guilty of manslaughter for letting her die of a treatable infection because their Christian religious beliefs taught that prayer is the solution to medical problems, not doctors.
To me, they're guilty, no matter what the jury legally decides.
What parents would stand by and watch their child die when they could have easily saved her? Answer: fundamentalists who surely believe that now Ava is in the hands of Jesus and God is pleased with them for choosing death over life.
If this life each of us is living now is the only existence we'll ever have, then every moment is almost (or exactly) infinitely precious. Life shouldn't be discarded lightly based on an evidence-less assumption that there will more of it to enjoy after the body dies.
This usually isn't talked about explicitly, but I'm convinced that the beliefs of the Christian majority in this country go a long way toward explaining why dying often is taken so lightly by Americans.
Grieving parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, or the wife of a man killed in a mountain climbing accident, will say in an interview, "I know he's in a better place now."
Actually, they don't know this. They believe this.
And that belief supports a culture of death -- in that a foreshortened life isn't viewed as having taken away a good part of a person's only chance to experience living, but merely transferred their existence to another domain of reality: heaven.
Now, I'm not arguing that progressive political policies, which I generally favor, are more in tune with a culture of life than conservative policies. (Others have, though.)
I'm simply suggesting that both individual and societal moral decisions would be made more wisely in the absence of metaphysical assumptions about an afterlife, God's will, and such. What we know is that people are born, and eventually they die.
What happens to an individual, if anything, before birth and after death is a belief -- not a knowing. If living a life here on Earth is needlessly sacrificed, cut short, or considered insignificant for any other-worldly reason, that's wrong.
Which is why I see religion as supporting a culture of death, not life.
(For another perspective on this, in a continuation here's a recent comment from Adam on a post about death and non-existence, followed by my response to him.)
From Adam:
It has been three years since your post. You are the only person I have EVER heard describe exactly what i feel. I dont just "kinda get it", I FULLY understand and experience EXACTLY what you described and I have never been able to describe it like you have. Contact me if you ever get the chance. I would love to know ways you get through it. I have these attacks on a nightly basis, almost every day, and I feel like im gonna go NUTS!
My response:
I
don't have the quasi panic attacks about not existing the way I used
to. The idea of dying and never existing again doesn't thrill me (to
say the least), but it seems that my psyche has come to some sort of
accommodation with this aspect of reality. Here's how I approach the problem of dying, Adam. These aren't
original ideas (read Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" for a better take
on the Stoic side). They're just how I talk to myself when my mind gets
a bit, or a lot, overwrought with anxiety. (1) While I'm alive, I should really live. Living is living. Dying
is dying. No one knows what happens after we die. I know what living is
like, because I'm alive now. If this is my only chance at living, I
need to embrace life whole-heartedly now. Being fearful of dying
prevents me from doing that. I can't really cheat physical death. But I
can in this sense: by living in such a fashion, that I can take my last
breath with no regrets. Or at least, few, because I've lived life the
way I wanted to while alive. (2) We can't be sure what will happen to us after we die. Yes,
almost all of the evidence points to death being the end of an
individual's existence. However, most (if not all) of the world's
religious traditions point to some sort of continuing form of
consciousness. Buddhism, for example, says that probably a "soul" doesn't carry on,
but our consciousness takes on another form that lives again in another
body. So there is a possibility that fear of death is misplaced, in
that we'll die and find that some aspect of us continues to exist. I
can't accept a firm religious belief in this. But I can embrace a
not-knowing that says, "Only death will reveal the answer, so I won't
fret about knowing the answer now." (3) We're all in the same boat: that of living and dying. I'd like
to be special. For many years, when I was a true believer in an Eastern
religious faith, I considered that I'd be taken of after death by my
guru and/or God in a fashion that wasn't available to people of other
faiths. Now, I figure that whatever happens to me is going to happen to
other people at death, and vice versa. This is comforting in a way. I
don't worry any more about following commandments that will ensure my
salvation. I feel a kinship with everyone who is alive, because we're
all going to face death in the same way. (4) My dog is wiser than me in some respects. As are other animals.
She doesn't fret about the future (though she nags me to go for a walk
most afternoons). Now, I wouldn't want to give up my human capacity to
be self-aware. Still, unnecessary or excessive self-awareness isn't
productive. Sometimes an unexamined life is well worth living. For most of my life I've spent a lot of time pondering the Big
Questions of Life, including "what does it mean if death is the final
end of my existence?" As I get older, though, I've done less of this.
Maybe my dog is teaching me something. When she's happy, she's happy.
When tired, tired. And so on. We love animals because they are so in
the moment (by and large; our dog does have a fear of thunder and
fireworks caused by a close lightning strike). This is related to (1)
above, of course. (5) Fear of non-existence is, really, non-existent. Why? Because we
can only have that fear while we're existing. Some Greek philosophers I
quoted in this post (Seneca and Epicurus) made this point better than I
can. See: This relates to (2). I feel anxious about not-existing while I'm
alive. When I'm dead, if I'm really dead and gone, there won't be
anybody around to know it. And if I'm still alive after death, I'll be
feeling good about that fact -- unless I'm cast into hellfire, or
something, which I consider to be exceedingly doubtful. (6) When I worry about going crazy from my worrying, getting crazier
isn't a bad way of dealing with the situation. Now, I'm not
recommending this to you. It's just another option to consider. I was
around in the '60s and did a lot of psychedelic drugs back then. I'm
considerably less wild and crazy now. But I'm not completely sane and sober either. For a long time I
didn't drink alcohol at all. Now I have a glass of red wine most
evenings. It relaxes me. When I occasionally drink two glasses, I'm
relaxed even more. I'm not suggesting that alcohol or other drugs are a
solution to life's philosophical or existential problems. However,
altering one's consciousness and finding that the problems either don't
exist any more or don't seem as serious, shows that the real problem is
with our own psyche. Hope this helps, or at least is of some interest to you. As I may
have said on a blog post, people like you who have this realization of
life's finitude should be grateful, really. The same feeling that makes
you and me anxious about death also can make us much more appreciative
of life. Here we are, alive, right here and now! And we won't always be.
Perhaps for eternity. This makes every moment of life infinitely
precious. We need to suck every possible bit of living from each moment
of life.
http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2007/06/body-worlds-3-h.html
As always, great post! I take great comfort from the fact that, despite what some believe, nobody knows the answers to the big questions. Any self-doubts I may have are shared by everyone else.
Posted by: The Rambling Taoist | July 19, 2009 at 08:49 PM