This is from a comment I made a while ago but which I thought merited a repeat on my own blog, so here it is. It’s in response to a post made by a fervent religious person who claimed that atheists ultimately tremble in fear before God at the hour of their death (A version of the old “There are no atheists in foxholes” argument).- Grinningthorn
While I’m sure the thought of atheists trembling in their death beds satisfies a dark sense of self righteousness for some, it has not been my experience that atheists face death in this way.
I have personally known one atheist, one of two people in my life I have called my “best friend”, who when suffering a long fatal illness never altered his views on religion and suffered no anxiety over retribution in an “afterlife”. Carl Sagan is a more public example that comes to mind. Never once during his battle with Leukemia did he alter his lifelong atheistic stance. There are others.
People of faith should not find it threatening to think that there are people of good education and sound personal principles who lead fulfilled, happy, creative and meaningful lives- without utilizing any concept of God– right up to the end. If all “God” does for you is stave off a fear of existential meaninglessness, then you don’t have faith, you have Marx’s “opium of the masses”.
Would that those who call themselves religious behaved with half of the dignity and respect for others that I have seen many an atheist (While not an atheist myself, I am a scientist and hence my occupation places me among many atheists). A few more atheists in the Moslem world and what a different place we would all be in. Northern Ireland could use a few also, to say nothing of the millions of people tortured, burned, boiled, sawed, stoned and shot in the name of God through out history.
