A Good Question...

A few days ago, professional web cartoonist Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content fame pondered what, as an atheist, he would someday tell his children should the question of life after death arise:

”Like, I wouldn't want to make up a bunch of stuff about an afterlife or use some religion's version of things, since I don't believe in that myself, but I also wouldn't want to completely horrify my kid by being all ‘oh there is just nothing. You cease to be aware and that is it.' I know that concept freaked me out nearly as bad as the concept of hell when I was little. I guess ‘make up something comforting' is the lesser of the two evils, but still...”

It's a solid question that's been rattling around in my brain for the past couple of days. As a Catholic, I've been raised with a fairly solid notion of my spirit's two options once I use up my physical form. Nonexistence is terrifying on several levels. In the grand scheme of the universe, it seems like a cosmic joke that any single consciousness only gets an average of 80-100 years of being. That's nothing, a drop in the bucket. A select few do great things with their time on Earth, contribute serious scientific, medical, historical, musical, or other accomplishments for which they are remembered long after they are gone. Most of us are lucky if we touch our family and a few friends let alone the world. Existence is pointless if this is all there is.

I've had friends of varying beliefs and lack of beliefs. I can accept people who don't share my beliefs, and though we might disagree, I can understand their point of view, even debate it if I'm in the mood. Most days, it seems like it's easier to be friends with people if things like politics or religion aren't among our topics of discussion. Our pastor touched on this compartmentalizing of religion in his sermon this weekend, about how we sometimes put God in a box, leave Him in church where it's safe and live our lives without His presence, visiting Him for one hour each week before putting Him away again. As a child, I admit that there was a certain phase of paranoia when I thought about this omniscient entity who was always watching each and every one of us every second of the day. I get annoyed when people start up conversations at urinals. The idea of an ever-present God was more terrifying than comforting. I think this as well as the stigma the secular world places on “religious nuts” may be among the reasons for the practice our priest was describing.

Still, God sees the good we do as well as the evil, and I was raised to believe in a forgiving God. A parent may get angry, but ignoring the parent makes the problem worse; asking for forgiveness is the way to go. In the grand scheme of things, the notion of a creator is a lot more comforting than the notion of randomness. Our universe, and the genetic complexities behind life itself, has far too much order to it. If my religious beliefs are wrong, then someone else's are right. Every effect has a cause, and every cause is an effect of another cause, and so on. Everything has to trace back to something.

So what do atheists tell their children? Jacques reluctantly leaned toward “make up something comforting”, but to me that's kind of a Santa Claus approach to faith, that God is just something you tell children about to comfort them or make them behave, a fairy tale they'll outgrow as adults. Are the millions of adults embracing various religions nothing more than deluded children who need to grow up? I suppose you could make a good case for Tom Cruise... Seriously though, is telling your children that they'll see Grandma again in heaven the same as telling them the family dog you had put to sleep was actually taken to live at a farm out in the country? That seems kind of cruel.

When I watched Waking Life, one of the many discussions in the film that sparked my neurons involved a woman musing that she was not in fact living her life, but that she was a memory being relived by an old woman on her deathbed looking back. Are the dreams in the last few seconds of our lives, as long as they might seem, our only true experience of an afterlife? Even if that were true, who would want to go through a life in which death was “goodbye forever” instead of “see you later”? I'm not sure how anyone rationalizes that attitude. Is the fact that you won't know you no longer exist because you are no longer aware comforting? In the decades we exist, we would matter to our contemporaries, but mean nothing within centuries.

Through our experiences, we all reach a point where we must decide for ourselves what we believe or want to believe, no matter what we were told as children. It can be very challenging for parents. I see kids talking in church, playing with toys, scribbling on bulletins, and generally squirming in their seats and misbehaving just as I did when I was their age. I know the challenges parents face in getting kids to go to church and show respect. But Jacques' quandary raises an issue I'd never thought about before. I've encountered atheists who reached that point because of a bad experience with religion. Faith can be a good thing but it can also be twisted in the wrong hands, and we've all seen it used to rationalize some horrible acts. Regardless of which deity's name these acts are perpetrated in, they remain the acts of human beings. Unfortunately, the fallibility of man sometimes causes people to lose faith in an entire religion. I've seen the path that leads people to lose their beliefs, but never thought about those who didn't have any to begin with. What does an atheist tell a child? A lie? Their idea of the truth? Or perhaps nothing, which they believe is the final destination for us all...