I’m an atheist, and I really don’t want to die — but I’d rather take my chances with the terrorists than sacrifice my principles.

Nowhere was it stated that Christians are more willing to *kill* for what they believe - which your last paragraph seems to imply the post stated.

Although, speaking as a Christian and (unfortunately) a rather worldly one, the job of the military is not to die for the country, it’s to ensure the other poor SOB dies for his. Nevertheless, it is far better if it does not have to go down like that. But if it does, then it does.

Yes, I am selfish. I couldn’t care less about my ‘meme’ (which is BS anyways), or my genes, or whatever. I want ME to continue on - otherwise, what was the point of my life, any of it? OK, good, I don’t continue but my work made other people better off? What about THEM? What happens to THEM? They die off TOO! Take it to its logical conclusion and you come up with this inescapable (and logical) statement in three parts;

1. Mankind came from nothing - just pure undirected random physical, chemical and biological processes;

2. Mankind becomes nothing - no trace of individual meta-existence after cessation of biological function;

3. Yet somehow, Mankind’s existence IN-BETWEEN those two times has some kind of meaning.

Which, if Bookworm will allow me to vent a little, is a mega codswallop and pure hogwash! Bah, humbug! to that. No, life after life is what makes the whole shebang hang together, unless you are a nihilist.

Think about it this way. In standard Monopoly, your aim is to become the richest tycoon around, and to force everyone else into bankruptcy. If you do not have an end goal (i.e. to reap the benefits of charging rent), however, then what is the point of acquiring the whole set of similar properties, and setting up strategies and deals? SImilarly, there is a point and an aim to life (a catechism says it is to worship God and enjoy Him forever, but YMMV) - and THAT is why we do what we do.

“…People who do not have a religion have no comforting philosophy about death, whether the philosophy is an immediate ascension to Heaven, resurrection on Judgment Day, or reincarnation. All they’ve got, when thinking of death, is plenty of nothing. For that reason, while it is human nature to fear dying (otherwise, how would the species survive?), the atheists among us have a particularly well-developed fear of death…”

I am sure that you mean to say that your religion gives you some ready answers about death and the worries people have about dying. If you meant that the important thing about your religion was that it provided certain philosophical answers or arguments to give to people, then, I suspect you have been hasty.

I haven’t been hard on people I know about their religion and what their religion tells them about things. I guess I’m not hard on them because they are fragile and their religious convictions are based on their reverence for their own parents and the people around them that are virtuous and well-meaning.

However, if you think philosophy provides certain answers about death, then I would want to challenge what you’ve said from the point of view that philosophy is also interested in what might be true, not just revered.

Suppose we thought a little bit about the comforting view about death that you mention here. When Dostoevsky thought about that in the character of Ivan Karamazov, for example, he thought that the system that he was told the Christian God set up was barbaric. It allowed the torturing of small innocent children and the forgiveness of those who tortured them. Ivan was so appalled that to him an honest person should realize that life in this world constituted one’s agreement with such a system,, and for such a person the only honest protest would be to “give back one’s entrance ticket.”

The business about how we are safe after death involves an involvement in an evil system to get there, was his point.

You said that people with no religion have no comforting philosophy about death. I have thought that Christians often go along with their religion just because they are so afraid of death. It isn’t just people who don’t go along with Christianity who have a fear of death.

You are so against the atheists. You should be more supportive of the Muslims, then. They have the same idea about death and God that you do. They are sure that they will be going to a better place after they pass through this life. If having the philosophy is important, then you and the Muslims are brothers.

I am not persuaded that people who reject your religion think that death is scary because its all about nothing happening afterwards. You suggest that one’s life shouldn’t mean much unless it would continue on after death. I don’t believe many people agree that this life means so little. So, if you make something of this life, then death should not make you so sad or afraid. You could die understanding that your good work has made the place a better one for those living.

You suggested that apologizing for one’s mistakes or wrongdoing and attempting to understand the people who disagree with you or threaten to harm you by “empathy” is obtuse or even dangerous. I find this reaction on your part puzzling. Doesn’t your religion, the Christian one, advocate doing these very things. So if you reject these efforts so strongly, in what sense are you committed to the Christian religion?

I understand there is some debate about this amongst the Christians. Those who are against the war-mongering argue that there’s something inauthentic about Christians actually shooting up people in foreign countries.

Christianity is not that much different from other religions. When poor kids in medieval Japan became employed by war lords and were expected to fight well in pitched battles with other gangs of armed youth, they didn’t do well. They were scared and often ran. In order to get their young assassins to kill better, the war lords had to get them to be less afraid. They did this by sending those kids to study in Buddhist Temples. The monks in those Temples at the time believed that people had to soul so that one’s life was otherwise meaningless beyond the gathering of a few brief pleasures. After awhile studying about this answer to the question of death, these kids were able to fight viciously in pitched battles without fear. They were no longer afraid because they believed that their lives were otherwise pointless and their deaths meant nothing.

The reforms brought about in Buddhism at that time were based on the idea that Gautama Siddhartha could not have meant his “religion” to prepare kids to be better killers. Instead, the idea was that their religion had to be about making people better people, better sons and daughters, parents, and citizens.

I have to say that you have made modern Christians out to be just poor young thugs who need to go to church to learn how to be better killers. We have, then, to wait for some religious reformer who can argue well enough that Jesus did not mean to prepare anyone to be better killers for one’s cause.

You must have glossed over the fact that people who have truly conquered their fears don’t need to bring up how afraid others are.

It strikes me as predictable, Book, that those that cannot adequately defend themselves would lash out first in an uncalled for pre-emptive strike.

Guy doesn’t even know when the Bronze Age was.