Recently I had a health emergency that, briefly, led me to believe I might be dying. Rather than pray to an imaginary being, I focused more on what I needed to do to make sure that I would come out of it in one piece. More than afraid of death, I was aggravated that I might die with just a few weeks left before my birthday.

I have no need of fiction to calm me in times of trouble.

Posted: December 15th 2010

See all questions answered by Mike the Infidel

It’s not that “you have yet to hear”, friend, it’s that you choose not to listen. When the priest showed up to spew his drivel at my mother, a life-long Catholic, she told him to “Go away, you stupid little man, I’m not wasting what little time I have left on your invisible friend in the sky!”

You’re right about one thing, though. Death-bed conversions do happen!

Posted: December 14th 2010

See all questions answered by Blaise

So because you, personally, have yet to hear of any atheists not converting on their deathbeds, it’s never happened? And they call us arrogant.

When atheists die, it’s the end. The very end, and they know it. So many of them don’t talk about these matters at all. They comfort and farewell their loved ones, they set their affairs in order, they deal with their physical pain. Religion just isn’t very important to them, so they don’t make a big deal of denying it when there are more important things to do.

Richard Dawkins plans to have a tape-recorder by his deathbed to pre-empt any false conversion stories, so that should be one well-documented non-conversion. Christopher Hitchens may take it upon himself to do the same.

Posted: December 13th 2010

See all questions answered by SmartLX

I have no fear of death itself just like I had no fear of life before I was born. You apparently need to because you may not have chosen the correct god or have done the right things to please it even if you did choose correctly. Continue to worry about that before you die. As I am intellectually honest to see that there’s no evidence to believe in an afterlife, I got nothing to worry about. If there is an afterlife, I have used the brain that god gave me, so I got nothing to worry about that on that front either.

It always shocks me to find out what pathetic cowards certain religious believers are regarding their mortality, and how they think that everyone is as scared as they are. Many people matter of factly accept their mortality. It is appalling that you have been so sheltered and fed such a narrow perspective that you do not know this. You are the kind of religious believer that is obnoxiously ignorant and filled to the brim with ridiculousness.

My atheist sister on her death bed at the hospice made it clear that no peddlers of religious superstition would be allowed access into her room. The only focus was that she would end her only life without pain. She died an atheist. As I will. And as countless of others have died without having god(s) belief and will continue to do so.

All you have shown in your question is that your religious beliefs are based on the obsessive fear of your own mortality and your desperate, laughable, and self-centered desire to be more than worm food.

Posted: December 13th 2010

See all questions answered by logicel

I’m sorry, but that is absolute nonsense. Don’t believe all your silly religious websites tell you. How would they even know? Are they present at the death of every atheist? Or even any?

I have known several people as steadfast in their atheism as they approached death as they ever were during their lifetime. In fact, I don’t know a single person who has changed his or her considered views on the question of God (one way or the other) as death approached. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but there are many many of us who think your beliefs utterly laughable. And no, death doesn’t make them any less ludicrous.

You assume that fear of death will do the converting as we approach it. But that is to completely misunderstand something very fundamental in the atheist position: it is only the existence of a vengeful, wrathful god threatening an eternity of torment that could make death scary – and we don’t believe such a god (or indeed ANY god) exists. The fears in your mind as you contemplate death are therefore completely absent from ours, and we can approach it with a tranquility and acceptance that cannot be present for someone taught to believe in the existence of judgement and hell. For us there is nothing to fear in death and therefore no bogeyman to scare us into believing the nonsensical or the obscene. We can leave all that to those of you who follow the 'loving, comforting, compassionate’ religion of Christianity.

Posted: December 13th 2010

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby