Reason's Greetings

Anon: What do you think will happens to you when you die? I’ve never been able to ask an atheist without them freaking out. Just out of curiosity What do you think will happen other than “you die”?

Well, I think saying that we just “die” is kind of cheating.  I think the question of who we are in the first place is a lot more than just a single life going about it’s business.

Let’s put it this way.  Every time we interact with someone, we change their lives in some way.  Maybe we just plant a smallish insignificant memory in their brains.  Maybe we give them words that give them new information.

Everyone who reads my blog…reads my posts, gets to see what my thoughts were for a few instances while I was writing them.  If I convey these thoughts properly, then these thoughts get incorporated into their world view in some way.  It may reinforce a negative view of my thoughts, or it may become part of their own belief set.  Either way, some aspect of myself carries on through other people.  These people then interact with other people, and who my influence might carry on through these people as well.  My existence and influence spreads out like a wave across the whole of humanity.

When I die, all of these ripples of my influence do not stop.  Someone, having been influenced by my thoughts, may combine them with their own experiences and derive a entirely new thought based on my own thinking.

So, in some ways the influence of who I was to the rest of the world does not stop at all.  While I, as a single entity, do not exist anymore, the fact that I existed at all can’t help but influence reality for as long as people exist.  To an extent.

And, if you were killed tomorrow, but had all of your thoughts transferred to another brain, when that other body woke up the next day it would still think it was you.  My interactions with the world are of course far less influential than that, but still, little pieces of who I was will still be all over the place.  This is far from a typical theist definition of “soul”, but, for me, it is still very meaningful.

In the mean time, my body will decompose and become part of the matter that makes up the universe again.  I will be part of the rain, the air, and trees and the grass.   Some of my molecules will eventually end up in other people.  After the sun explodes, some of my molecules may one day again rejoin the stars.

So yes, I do just die, if you look at it from one perspective.  From another perspective, my influence will never really stop, and that which I was goes on to affect humanity and creation for as long as it exists.

Could be a lot worse.  I could just end up in a heaven and have no affect anymore on anything.  :)

~ Steve

This is great. You’ve definitely helped continue to form and influence my worldview with this post Steve. :P

(via lostinthought92)