“I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” —Woody Allen

Humans are, I think, the only animals that really comprehend their own mortality, and much of religion involves trying to show that we live on in some form after death. We atheists don’t believe that, and the natural reaction would be to think that atheism, and its attendant notion that when we’re gone, we’re totally gone, entails an increased fear of mortality. Curiously, though, an atheist friend recently told me that the rejection of gods had freed her from the fear of death. One can, as the New Atheists have often emphasized, see our finitude as liberating: we have but one life, and we should enjoy it while we’re here rather than wasting our time supplicating nonexistent sky-gods for a nonexistent future.

On the other hand, atheism could make our mortality even more depressing, or, as it did to the existentialists, make life seem like some sort of absurd and meaningless charade. I think this is what Camus meant when he said “There is but one truly serious philosophical question, and that is suicide.”

On the third hand, atheism could free us from the fear—one that drives Catholicism, for instance—that we’re all bound to be tortured in some form after death.

I’m interested in readers’ opinions on this issue. Does your atheism make you feel better or worse about your mortality, and why?



