Why I, an Atheist, Am Looking Forward to the Afterlife
No, life doesn’t stop after death — even if there’s no such thing as a soul.
What am I?
What are you?
These questions get very different answers depending on who you ask.
If you ask a religious person from within the Abrahamic tradition, and you really got down to earth with them, they’d likely mention souls. Yes, we consist of atoms and molecules physically, but we are really much more than that: we are embodied souls. Having souls is what many believe sets us apart from animals and plants. The theory of souls is probably one of the oldest theories we have; it is just so intuitive to most that there must be a ‘spirit in the machine’.
I stopped believing in souls a few years ago now, when I couldn’t find good enough answers to my exponentially growing questions to justify calling myself “one of the faithful” anymore. I accepted monism, a belief in the physical, in the absence of anything else.
The prospects of heaven and hell disappeared into the mists whence they came, and life became just that: life. Afterlives became, to me, meaningless myths to placate the young and the old. There was a period of nihilism that I think is common to recent apostates.
