Can We Be Optimistic in a World Without an Afterlife?

Many religious people insist, in what can only be described as one of the worst cases of pyschological projection, that nonreligious people like myself only disbelieve out of fear of God. In reality, though, I find my own skeptical position much more fearful. I wish more than anything that there were an afterlife, that my existince would continue indefinitely in some form, but I know this is not plausible. Considering my own inevitable mortality fills me with fear, not because I expect to feel any pain or suffering, but because I will not feel anything at all. Unlike many, I don’t think of death as something mysterious or unknown. I suspect being dead will merely mimic unconsciousness—with no dreams, thoughts, or feelings—only extended indefinitely. Unfortunately, I don’t want to be unconscious. There are so many different things that I want to do with my life for which I simply don’t have the time. Hell, I even hate having to sleep every night for precisely this reason—I could be awake, doing something!

Of course, this is not to say that skepticism can’t be optimistic about death and dying. Were it not for death, for instance, would we treat our lives with such value? If life were not always perched precariously upon the cliff of nonexistence, perhaps we wouldn’t think life is anything special, and we’d go through eternity as bored slobs. I personally don’t buy this argument because there would still be aspects of life that we could value. We could still strive to better ourselves, to learn more, to do more. Death is not needed to strive for such things.

Perhaps the most inane form of skeptical optimism concerning death, though, is the rather misguided reassurance that though we may die, we live on in the fact that energy is not created nor destroyed. Our energy has not vanished, but has merely changed form, and in that respect we supposedly persist indefinitely. This consolation, of course, is cold comfort; it is so cold of a comfort that it is like sitting on a loveseat made of ice. Even while we are alive, for instance, our conciousness and thoughts are turned into different forms of energy. This is why our heads give off so much heat, because of our always vigilant cognitive centers in our brain, working endlessly. Notice, of course, that the heat energy we emit from our brains is not conscious itself. When our brain states create heat, we do not live on through this heat in any existentially meaningful way. Our personalities and thoughts, for better or worse, are kept stored within our brains, within a particular arrangement of neurons, and these are not passed on to other forms of energy. When we die, the molecules that make us up will be absorbed into the soil and the air, and we may be broken up into various forms of energy like the chemical energy in a bacteria or heat energy from cremation, but our selves will be gone forever.

Does all this make me a cynical skeptic? I don’t think so. The only reason I abhor these attempted justifications is because I love experiencing life so much. To say that we’d be bored by eternity or not appreciate an ever-lasting life is ridiculous in my eyes, because I’d enjoy what life has to offer regardless of its length. And to say that we can look forward to persisting as molecules, atoms, and energy likewise attempts to devalue the beauty of living consciousness and the capacity to experience and learn about the world. I am optimistic about what little life I have, but I won’t pretend to be optimistic about the reality that awaits me, though I will accept it as inevitable. Life is a wonderful thing, and it doesn’t need to be endless to remain wonderful—though I’d prefer it if life were.