I have reached an age when I am hearing more frequently of the deaths of people I have known. I’m not talking about those in the public eye. Rather, I am talking about individuals whom I have known personally—former colleagues and clients as well as friends and acquaintances. If this keeps up, everyone I know will be gone . . . including myself.
How do I deal with this fact? I find myself relating to this information and to the idea of death on two different levels—intellectually and emotionally.
Given my world view, understanding death on an intellectual level is relatively straightforward. As I have said repeatedly, in my view we are made of the same stuff as the rest of the world, elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells, anatomical systems—all governed by the physical laws of nature. That’s it. We do not have “souls” that somehow survive our physical beings. Death is final as far as we individually are concerned.
Moreover, to my knowledge we, along with all other biological organisms, are built with limited lifespans. Medical science has lengthened that lifespan, but much of that has come by reducing childhood mortality rates and by finding cures for certain diseases. Anyone who has spent time with the very elderly will understand that the bodies of even the most physically fortunate ultimately begin to break down. I certainly witnessed that with my father-in-law, who died a couple of years ago at the age of 104. By then his systems, one after another, were simply failing. At this point in time there is no one left alive who was born before the beginning of the 20th century. And, with but a single exception, there is no reliable record of anyone ever having lived beyond the age of 120. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people] Almost certainly this has been true throughout history, despite biblical tales of patriarchs living for hundreds of years.
In short, I was born, I will live for the briefest of spans on a cosmic timescale, I will die. End of story. I experienced nothing before my birth, and I will experience nothing following my death. My only wish is that those who know me will, for a time, retain fond memories of my life.
Does this sound grim? I don’t see it that way. I have had good fortune in my life. I have been blessed with good health. I have family and friends whom I love, who love me in return and who hold me in high regard (at least that’s what they tell me). I find meaning in the things that I do and love the experience that life has granted me.
And that brings me to the issue of dealing with death on an emotional basis.
During my professional career I had occasion from time to time to consult actuarial life expectancy tables. These are tables that tell you how long you can expect to live, given your gender and current age. The first thing I noted was that men have shorter life expectancies than do women. But beyond that, in my mid-30s I noted that somewhere around age 38 the remaining life expectancy for men began to be shorter than their age. (This was 40 years ago, by the way.) That is, at age 37 a man’s life expectancy was around 38 years, but at age 38, it had dropped to an expectancy of 37 years. I interpreted this to mean that somewhere in my late 30s I was “cresting the hill,” at least on an actuarial basis. By the time I was in my 40s, I had stopped looking at those life expectancy tables. I knew I was coasting down the other side of the hill, actuarily speaking.
Dealing with death on an emotional basis is a very different issue for those who believe in a soul. They can look to the expectation of surviving death, at least on a nonphysical basis.
I have an acquaintance who confided to me that she believes unequivocally that she will be resurrected at Christ’s second coming. In fact, she believes that everyone, regardless of how they may have lived their lives, will also be resurrected and enjoy eternal life in God’s presence. Moreover, she believes that for everyone death will be experienced as “the twinkling of an eye,” that they will wake up at the resurrection as if it had instantaneously followed their death, and that they will be able to join all of their family and friends, who will be resurrected at the same time, in a state of eternal bliss. My only question to my acquaintance was, since the next life will be so wonderful, what are you waiting for?
This raises a more general question regarding how firmly those who believe in a soul and in an afterlife actually hold those beliefs, at least in the case of those who believe that their fate in the next life is dependent on their conduct in this one. After all, if you believe that your eternal destiny, heaven versus hell (or just nonexistence), is determined by how you live this life, shouldn’t you make a supreme effort to wind up in the “good” place rather than the alternative? After all, we’re talking eternity here. The fact that people exhibit sinful behavior seems to be an indication of a lack of commitment to a belief in the hereafter.
The fact that I cannot accept the notion of a soul that can survive death creates a different dynamic for how I deal with death on an emotional basis.
I can say this: I certainly do not fear death. I am confident that nothing awaits me at death, neither heaven (which, by the way, I would find incredibly boring) nor hell. Nor any other existence, for that matter. To quote Epicurus, “Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?”
I addressed this issue in this blog five years ago [http://skepticreflections.blogspot.com/2013/08/anesthesia-dreaming-death-and-fruit.html], and I feel my thoughts then bear repeating here:
“Since I will never know what might occur in the future, all future events are irrelevant. The sun could suddenly blow up and engulf the earth in flame, charring it to a crisp--wouldn’t matter. More personally, tragedy could devastate family or friends--wouldn’t matter. I could be vilified, considered the 21st century’s Hitler, the history of my life sullied for all time, and it wouldn’t matter. I won’t know. And I can take some real comfort in that.
“But I’m not ready to go yet. I’m having way too much fun.”
© 2018 John M. Phillips
Extremely well written. I d9nt agree with much of it.
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