Are There Hopeful Ways for Atheists to Think About Death?

In the eternal words of Freddie Mercury, someone whose life was cut tragically short: “Who wants to live forever?”

Lots of people, it turns out. Or at least they want to live for a very long time (I doubt anyone would really want to live forever, which I discuss here).

But what about atheists (or agnostics) who can’t summon the cognitive dissonance required to believe we’ll spend eternity at a happy place in the sky described in a book written ages before heliocentrism or the germ theory of disease? We for whom traditional religion has been irrelevant since On the Origin of Species? We’re the fastest-growing “religion” in the world, after all.

I’m in my mid-30s. Statistically I’m still playing the front nine and should have many good decades ahead of me, assuming our Mad Max future doesn’t arrive ahead of schedule. But my generation is losing our parents, and our parents are losing their friends. Many of my friends, myself included, recently had kids (thanks Covid), which really crystalizes the whole cycle of life thing and how you’re just the briefest of torchbearers in an incomprehensibly long relay race through the ages.

Most people prefer not to dwell on their inevitable oblivion. And for understandable reasons — they feel like the protagonist in “Thoughts of a Dying Atheist” by Muse, who in the chorus repeats: “It scares the hell out of me. And the end is all I can see.” Fortunately, the modern age provides ample distraction and overstimulation so you need not contemplate your coming annihilation.

But I prefer to face reality head-on. I’ve thought, read, and listened to a lot about death. I’ve found it an immensely useful way to ensure I make the most of life. And it’s not all bleak; there are some potentially legitimate (and fascinating) reasons not to fear death, or at least ways to reframe it. Most of these ideas are also relevant for non-human animals, who are often arbitrarily left out of traditional religions.

So, with eyes wide open and a sense of humor, let’s discuss 15 hopeful ways atheists can think about death (or its potential absence), ranked in roughly ascending order of how good they make me — a random stranger on the internet — feel.

A few notes:

• There’s overlap between some of these ideas.
• Many of these silver clouds have dark linings because the potential existence of some form of heaven usually also comes with the possibility of some form of hell. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, especially if it’s a bottomless buffet. The intellectual honesty that pushes me into atheism also forces me to briefly mention these, but I’ll focus on the bull cases.
• I could write a full-length book on this subject (perhaps I will one day), but this is only a brief tour. There’s lots more to dive into if anything intrigues you.

Let’s go!

There might be a god after all.

And he/she/it/they might actually be benevolent, instead of for example the Judeo-Christian god who created a universe where the vast majority of his supposedly beloved children burn in hell forever.

Humanity has dreamt up thousands of religions over the years. Maybe one or more are partially correct, or no one has gotten it right yet. Perhaps you’ll awaken at an epic feast in Valhalla or be reborn as a cow or a king. Or…you could end up in the underworld.

Of course, the definition of “god” is pretty vague. In addition to these older more traditional religions, there are plenty of new techno-utopian ones, which leads us to the next idea.

We may be living in a simulation with an afterlife.

If you take the simulation hypothesis seriously, then not only is it likely we’re in a simulation, but the reason why is there are many more simulations than the one base reality. Civilizations with the computing power to trivially run such simulations could also trivially run simulations of afterlives.

Or, if computing power is a concern for those running the simulations, it could make sense to recycle your consciousness for efficiency. You might respawn in the next version in a kind of technocratic Buddhism.

These approaches would also resolve some ethical issues for those capable of creating simulations with sentient agents. There’s an argument that any civilization intelligent and resilient enough to attain such technological prowess would necessarily possess values like minimizing the suffering and maximizing the flourishing of sentient beings. TBD if humanity will get there.

Digital technology may advance in your lifetime such that you can upload your consciousness to a computer.

There might be a way to spend eternity in the clouds, but it would be at a server farm. Less sexy, I know. Science fiction is rife with this idea. My favorite (and the most hopeful) take is the “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror. The scariest is Iain M. Banks’s novel Surface Detail.

However, consciousness is still largely an enigma, and we don’t seem anywhere near attaining this capability, so its appeal depends on your age. But you never know with exponentially accelerating technologies. Speaking of which…

We may create artificial superintelligence and reach the technological singularity.

What if we create our own god in the form of AGI? Singularitarianism has been derided as “the rapture for nerds” and “religion for smart people.” But again, you never know with exponentially accelerating technologies.

Of course, a major hurdle is how to build something with superhuman intelligence that shares our values. There’s an intriguing thought experiment known as Roko’s Basilisk, which argues that now that you’re aware of the prospect of bringing about such a being, you’d better help or else it will torture you when it arrives (sorry).

The singularity is one of those things that’s always “a few decades away.” However, there are other reasons to believe you may be around to cross the event horizon…

Medicine (including nanomedicine) and biotech may advance in your lifetime such that you can reach “escape velocity.”

Science doesn’t have to find a cure for death or discover the fountain of youth. At least not all at once. It just needs to keep you alive until the next medical advance, which just needs to keep you alive until the next medical advance, which…you get the point. This is the concept of “escape velocity.” Like the last two ideas, it’s age-dependent.

Of course, you could still get hit by a bus (presumably it will be self-driving, making you a victim of the trolley problem).

…aliens?

This idea essentially takes several others and substitutes superadvanced aliens for god, AI, or future humans. It benefits from not relying on the supernatural or a species that can’t agree the Earth is round or billions of years old.

Of course, there’s the question of why a sufficiently advanced alien race would be interested in helping us, especially when we appear unwilling to help ourselves. But again, there’s an argument that such a powerful civilization would necessarily have such values due to survivor bias. If humans could make our pets live forever, we would obviously do so, and I like to think we’d extend the privilege to other species if we had the capability, potentially even to those elsewhere in the universe.

But we may not extend it to ants, and the delta between such beings’ intelligence and ours could be similarly vast. There are also other more pessimistic theories of life in the universe, such as Cixin Liu’s Dark Forest solution to the Fermi Paradox. Even in an infinite universe, everything is a zero-sum game on some level. Others argue that the Fermi Paradox is not a paradox — there are no signs of other intelligent life in our cosmic neighborhood, and the back-of-the-envelope math that supposes it should be everywhere is based on a series of erroneous assumptions.

But there is intelligent life on Earth, which leads to the next idea…

Future humans may use advanced technology to resurrect you.

The light version of this idea is cryonics — vitrifying or freezing your head/body in the hopes that technology will advance such that you can one day be revived. Many celebrities, from Peter Thiel to Britney Spears, have signed up at Alcor and other facilities. Here’s a thought-provoking essay from Wait But Why’s Tim Urban exploring why this might make sense.

The hard version is that technology will advance so all or most humans can be resurrected based solely on their DNA and other physical and digital information they left behind. This is essentially what the futurist Ray Kurzweil wants to do with his dad.

They could also use something resembling time travel to bring you to the immortal future, assuming the paradoxes get worked out.

Many people, such as those in the effective altruism movement, have expanded their sphere of concern to include other species and future humans. Perhaps one day it will extend back into the past. If future humans ever achieve such technology, they may feel ethically obligated to bring back those unfortunate enough to live and die before its arrival.

According to many physicists, a version of you exists in an infinite number of parallel universes.

Per the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, anything that can happen, does. The branching of the wave function results in infinite versions of you in an infinite number of universes.

A related idea is that we live in a multiverse — an endlessly expanding universe would have an endless number of bubble or pocket universes within it, where again, everything that can happen does happen. Theoretically there may be even more types of multiverses.

Interesting things happen when you take the concept of infinity seriously (Boltzmann Brains are my favorite), especially combined with some of the abovementioned ideas. Everything that can happen presumably includes a civilization that develops godlike technologies and wants to help us cheat death.

Of course, everything that can happen also includes many bad things that won’t happen in this universe.

You can live on through your genes, memes, the memories of others, or something bigger than yourself.

As a writer who recently had his first child, this one is close to home. There’s a saying that you die twice: once when physical death occurs and again the last time someone remembers you. These deaths are less than a century apart for most people — do you know the names of all your great grandparents? — but for some remarkable individuals they span millennia.

If you choose to have children, your genes (although very diluted) and the impact of that decision can persist far beyond when you’re forgotten. I sometimes think of my life and the countless generations of faceless ancestors who procreated and kept their kids alive (no easy feat!) to make it possible. I have over 1,500 DNA relatives in 23andMe, and the actual number is surely much higher.

Ideas/memes are another means by which you can hang around in some sense. Even if information on the internet doesn’t actually last forever and is lucky to persist for a decade, it’s likely you regularly consume works of art or benefit from ideas that are hundreds or thousands of years old, even if you don’t particularly care about their creator.

You can also become a part of something larger than yourself, like an institution or a movement. And even if these only last a few centuries or millennia, you’re already part of things much grander in scope, whether you like it or not: the collective projects of humanity, Earth, even the universe, which leads us to…

Matter/energy is never created or destroyed.

You’ll “live on” in a way not dependent on human or any other civilization surviving. The matter/energy that comprised you will exist forever, at least according to modern physics. So will the effect you had on that matter. And according to chaos theory (or the “butterfly effect”), that impact could be massive.

Of course, this is a far cry from “you” continuing to exist, but the idea of a consistent you who persists throughout your life is itself an incoherent illusion.

It’s often said we are made of stardust because the elements that comprise us were forged in the cores of stars via nuclear fusion and blasted into space by supernovas before eventually finding their way into our bodies. Whether the universe ultimately ends in a Big Freeze, Crunch, Bounce, Rip, or some other fate in trillions of years, the atoms that were once you, for the blink of an eye, will be along for the ride.

Who knows what they’ll get up to along the way.

No heaven means no hell.

There’s an unfortunate asymmetry between pleasure and pain. It’s a reasonable argument that the risk of eternal suffering outweighs the upside of an infinite paradise (and do you really want to sing Christian rock songs forever?).

The expected value of such a prospect is likely negative.

And as discussed above, in many religions the majority of people end up drawing the short straw (and it is the luck of the draw). This is why I love Penn Jillette’s spiel about not respecting people who don’t proselytize, and one reason why I think rates of actual religious belief are far lower than reported. The delta between stated and revealed preferences can be significant. People desperately want to believe, but we’re often even better at lying to ourselves than to others.

Most physicists believe we live in a “block universe,” where the past, present, and future are equally and always real.

The prevailing understanding of spacetime is that time is another dimension, just like space. We only perceive it differently. This is aptly known as eternalism.

Just like every point in space, from your house to China to Andromeda, exists out there somewhere, so too with yesterday, the year 3000 A.D., and every point in time, including every instant of your life.

Einstein is often quoted about this idea. In a letter about the passing of a dear friend, he said: “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” (there are slightly different versions of this quote floating around because it’s translated from German)

Of course, if we do live in such a universe, then a miserable life also perpetually exists, so try to make it count!

You won’t even notice.

You already know what it’s like not to exist — you did it for about 14 billion years. It wasn’t so bad. Or maybe you’ve been under general anesthesia, which is kind of a trial run. It quite literally will not be your concern.

In the words of Mark Twain: “Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born — a hundred million years — and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.”

Much of the universe, reality, and consciousness is still a mystery.

This is a bit of a catchall bucket. I’m no fan of the woo woo shit peddled by new age charlatans and don’t believe that just because something seems spooky or is currently unexplained means there must be a supernatural explanation (see god of the gaps). That said, there may be much more going on than we realize, or can realize.

We evolved to survive and seduce under limited circumstances, not to fathom the fundamentals of reality. We’ve made immense progress in the past several hundred years, but 95% of the matter/energy in the universe is “dark” and mysterious. We don’t have a grand unified theory of physics, and quantum mechanics is downright bonkers. No one has a good explanation for these UFO videos. We don’t know how consciousness arises or how life initially arose on Earth, and there are wild ideas like panpsychism that are taken seriously by (some) serious people.

Furthermore — and you knew this was coming — taking a sufficiently large dose of psychedelics can raise profound questions about just what exactly is going on here and what’s possible. Sam Harris does about as good a job as you can do describing the indescribable, but you really have to experience it for yourself. Caveats apply.

I don’t count myself among those who have converted from atheism after such an experience (or experiences…), but it was one of the most important and eye-opening events of my life. It’s not surprising that psychedelics are among the best-known methods to alleviate death anxiety. The clinical work finally being done with compounds like psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, after decades of suppression is one of the most exciting developments in medicine.

And finally…

Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.

You can’t write an essay about atheism without mentioning Richard Dawkins, who has a perfect quote summarizing this last idea: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.” The stoic philosophers also have many useful quotes about death, some of which fall into this category.

Dying is a privilege. The combination of events that led to you specifically existing — even for the briefest of moments — is astounding. A borderline miracle. It’s almost so unfathomable as to make some form of religion seem warranted (almost). Furthermore, not only do you get to be alive, but if you’re reading this then you’re among the most fortunate sentient creatures in the history of Earth, and possibly the universe; you’re a human being in the 21st century, not a peasant in the dark ages or a Greenland Shark.

Well, I hope you found some of that hopeful. I certainly don’t spend my time racked with existential dread. I’d love to learn about any ideas I missed or may be unaware of. If you found this interesting or important, please clap or share.

Follow me on Medium, Twitter, or subscribe on my website to stay in the loop on future writings about similarly provocative subjects. I also explore some of these ideas to various extents, along with lots of other fun stuff, in my science fiction novels Mind Painter and Circadian Algorithms.

Thanks for reading!