The most popular atheistic view is that death is non-existence, not a black nothingness but rather dreamless sleep. It’s one of the most irrational copes science has ever created. My arguments against:
1. Every organism values life and survival as its only goal:
If non-existence after death was painless, conscious-less state, why would any organism want to survive and reproduce? Nothingness is objectively better than existence, and while we can explain that human may want to survive for some higher purpose (to teach his children, to find love, to earn money), by Ockham razor we have to strip these illusions, and so, look at the simplest organism possible which is a bacterium, we know that bacterium actively runs towards nutrients and away from toxins, if life was meaningless and death was neutral it wouldn’t be the case, every being knows that death is actively evil, that it needs to be actively avoided.
2. Death as punishment.
Capital punishment is not merely about isolation from society ( banishment), across all cultures death is seen as something actively evil and harmful, if death was mere non-existence then murder and capital punishment wouldn’t be seen as unethical, as what’s unethical in putting someone in state they couldn’t even perceive?
3. Before birth.
Favorite comparison used by atheists is that death is same feeling as before birth, but actually the fact we are born proves that consciousness can appear in organized matter on itself out of non-existence therefore it’s irrational to state with full certainty that “dreamless sleep” would be eternal, our birth proves it doesn’t have to. Similarly in case of dual-brain surgery (severing connection between brain hemispheres), totally new consciousness appears in right hemisphere, not as blank slate but as fully formed separate entity, it proves consciousness doesn’t reside in any particular area of the brain and that unused brain area can be occupied by completely new consciousness (like virtual machine)
1. Every organism values life and survival as its only goal:
If non-existence after death was painless, conscious-less state, why would any organism want to survive and reproduce? Nothingness is objectively better than existence, and while we can explain that human may want to survive for some higher purpose (to teach his children, to find love, to earn money), by Ockham razor we have to strip these illusions, and so, look at the simplest organism possible which is a bacterium, we know that bacterium actively runs towards nutrients and away from toxins, if life was meaningless and death was neutral it wouldn’t be the case, every being knows that death is actively evil, that it needs to be actively avoided.
2. Death as punishment.
Capital punishment is not merely about isolation from society ( banishment), across all cultures death is seen as something actively evil and harmful, if death was mere non-existence then murder and capital punishment wouldn’t be seen as unethical, as what’s unethical in putting someone in state they couldn’t even perceive?
3. Before birth.
Favorite comparison used by atheists is that death is same feeling as before birth, but actually the fact we are born proves that consciousness can appear in organized matter on itself out of non-existence therefore it’s irrational to state with full certainty that “dreamless sleep” would be eternal, our birth proves it doesn’t have to. Similarly in case of dual-brain surgery (severing connection between brain hemispheres), totally new consciousness appears in right hemisphere, not as blank slate but as fully formed separate entity, it proves consciousness doesn’t reside in any particular area of the brain and that unused brain area can be occupied by completely new consciousness (like virtual machine)
