As an atheist, I don’t believe in all that nonsense–not Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Nirvana, or anything like that.

When you’re dead, you’re dead, [...]]]> Several recent posts of mine have discussed various aspects of the fundamentalist Christian’s concept of Hell–that horrendous destination supposedly reserved for all but a select few lucky human beings when they die.

As an atheist, I don’t believe in all that nonsense–not Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Nirvana, or anything like that.

When you’re dead, you’re dead, nothing more.

That viewpoint can seem pretty bleak, of course, but I can’t just believe in some fantastical afterlife because I want to believe in it. That would be indulging in wishful thinking.

But that doesn’t mean atheists never engage in speculation about the possibility of  life after death, even in a strictly material universe. Personally, I believe such a thing to be highly improbable (i.e. almost certainly not true, but not impossible) and of the ideas I have heard of, here are a couple of possibilities that sound quite intriguing:

The Omega Point

The first of these is based on the concept of the Omega Point, first developed by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his book The Future of Man, published in 1950. He talks of the Universe constantly developing towards higher levels of material complexity and consciousness until it reaches the Omega Point–the supreme point of complexity and consciousness–and thus becomes transcendent and independent of the evolving Universe. In short, I guess, the Universe evolves its own God.

More recently, cosmologist Frank Tipler has postulated that once the Omega Point is reached, the processing capacity of the Universe will become infinite, then whatever intelligences are present at that time will be able to simulate every possible future. Wikipedia states that:

Within this environment, Tipler imagines that intelligent beings, human personalities, will be run as simulations within the system. As a result, after the Omega Point, humans will have omnipotence, able to see all of history and predict all of the future. Additionally, as all history becomes available, past personalities will be able to run as well. Within the simulation, this appears to be the dead rising. Tipler equates this state with the Christian heaven.

Now, this is all at the extreme edge of speculation, and I don’t hold out any hope that something like this could remotely happen. Even if it did happen, does recreating a simulation of me–even a perfect one–count as life after death? Maybe it does, but it’s not my life that would go on, but the life of a copy, or clone instead. Perhaps to the rest of the Universe it would make no difference, but I would be just as dead and gone as before.

Nonetheless, it’s an interesting idea, and perhaps if our distant descendants, in their new found omnipotence, had a way to reach back in time to snatch us–or at least our brain patterns–from our lives at the point of death instead of creating perfect simulations of them, that would be more like it. But there are still some serious issues to deal with. What do you do with people who suffer from brain-destroying diseases like Alzheimer’s before they die? Do you take them earlier? And are they still just copies, like the simulations?

The Ultimate Matrix

Just about everyone is familiar with The Matrix trilogy of movies, where the vast majority of the human race, after being enslaved by “the machines” live out their lives in a virtual world that is completely indistinguishable from reality.

I’m not sure where I first read about this idea, or what its proper name is (please leave a comment if you know where it comes from), but the argument for an afterlife based on virtual reality goes like this:

• Let’s assume that at least one intelligent species in the entire Universe that succeeds in evolving into a highly-advanced civilization.
• That civilization will likely develop the technology that will allow them to create a virtual reality that is indistinguishable from the real Universe.
• Give enough resources, if you can create one such virtual reality, you are likely to be able to create an unlimited number of them.
• Thus while there is only one real universe, if just one such advanced civilization exists, there could be millions–maybe even billions–of virtual universes out there that are indistinguishable from the real thing.
• Therefore, if true, the odds of us living in the one and only real universe are less than a million-to-one, making it far more likely that we are, in fact, living inside a virtual “Matrix-style” universe instead.

If all that happens to be true, then maybe we are all just advanced alien beings who have plugged ourselves into one of a limitless variety of virtual realities to experience what it is like to live out the life of a human being on a backward little planet called Earth. (Or perhaps I am the only avatar in this entire virtual universe and all of you out there reading this are merely simulations created to complete my illusion of reality…)

Thus, when you die, you simply exit the simulation and back into your real life, where you can simply enter another simulation and be “born again” into an entirely different life in a completely different Universe.

Why would anyone want to do that? Who knows? Perhaps, having conquered death and lived long enough to experience everything that life has to offer, they/we have a need to live out a series of virtual lives as the ultimate form of thrill seeking. Few people get the same excitement from their 50th sky dive, roller coaster ride, mountain climb, sexual conquest, etc. as they do from their first. Diving right into a virtual life with no memory of any previous existence would allow you to experience everything life has to offer again, for the first time.

Like the Omega Point, this scenario would seem to be very unlikely to be true (though certainly no less likely than the usual supernatural concepts of an afterlife), but I would regard the possibility of living in a virtual world as the more likely of the two. I would not be at all surprised if, one day, virtual reality becomes all but indistinguishable from real life and becomes an increasingly popular pastime for those who wish to experience not just all that life has to offer, but all that many lives have to offer.

In the end, though, it’s all just idle dreams, and it all boils down to what we believe, not what we know, since we really don’t know anything about what happens after we die, if there is anything at all.

As Shakespeare says:

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

One topic that came up—and invariably [...]]]> I was watching “The Great God Debate” featuring atheist Christopher Hitchens and the Jewish Rabbi David Wolpe on YouTube the other day. Like many of the encounters Hitchens has with religious leaders, the debate was spirited and quite enjoyable, particularly because Wolpe isn’t your typical fire-breathing religious fundamentalist.

One topic that came up—and invariably does in these debates—was the issue of charitable giving, and the fact that religious people give appreciably more of their time and money to charity than secular people.

While Hitchens attempted to rebut that assertion by pointing out that religious charitable giving often comes with strings attached—i.e. as part of some type of evangelical outreach to win more converts—I think the basic truth that religious people give more is hard to deny. Hitches also talked about the Richard Dawkins Foundation’s effort to raise money for survivors of the Haitian earthquake which, while laudable, but doesn’t begin to cover the shortfall.

While I was looking for more information on the subject, I came across this article on the Hoover Institute’s web site, Religious Faith and Charitable Giving by Arthur C. Brooks. The numbers Brooks presents are quite compelling:

The differences in charity between secular and religious people are dramatic. Religious people are 25 percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91 percent to 66 percent) and 23 points more likely to volunteer time (67 percent to 44 percent). And, consistent with the findings of other writers, these data show that practicing a religion is more important than the actual religion itself in predicting charitable behavior. For example, among those who attend worship services regularly, 92 percent of Protestants give charitably, compared with 91 percent of Catholics, 91 percent of Jews, and 89 percent from other religions.

But note that the difference doesn’t just apply to Christians. People of all religious faiths are equally generous with their time and money. So whatever the reason is, it’s not a reason specific to one religion. Thus believers cannot legitimately claim that their generosity is because of some intrinsic moral virtue or rectitude of their faith. There must be factors at work that are common to all major religious groups.

Furthermore, the importance of charitable giving isn’t restricted to one political group within a religion either:

Note that neither political ideology nor income is responsible for much of the charitable differences between secular and religious people. For example, religious liberals are 19 points more likely than secular liberals to give to charity, while religious conservatives are 28 points more likely than secular conservatives to do so. In other words, religious conservatives (who give and volunteer at rates of 91 percent and 67 percent) appear to differ from secular liberals (who give and volunteer at rates of 72 percent and 52 percent) more due to religion than to politics.

Religious liberals are also much more likely to donate time and money to charitable causes than their non-believing counterparts. (This does not surprise me in the least since my parents are both liberal Christians and have always donated a lot of their time and money to charitable works.) Now it is true that liberals typically believe that the government should have a greater role in helping the poor and needy in society which, in turn, should reduce the need for private donations, but that belief certainly doesn’t stop religious liberals donating their time and money at the higher rates typical of all religious believers, so the reason why religious people give more is little to do with politics.

Finally, after a lengthy critique of government welfare and how he believes it is harming religious faith and charitable giving, Brooks gets around to addressing the causes of why religious believers tend to be more generous than non-believers:

It might be that religion simply has a strong pedagogical (endogenous) influence over giving and volunteering. Houses of worship might teach their congregants the religious duty to give, and about both the physical and spiritual needs of the poor. Simply put, people may be more likely to learn charity inside a church, synagogue, or mosque than outside.

I don’t think there is any doubt that houses of worship are highly influential when it comes to charitable giving. But it’s much more than just teaching people that they should give.

First, congregants are not only taught that it is their moral duty to give, they are often told in no uncertain terms that “they will be known by their fruits”—that if they are indeed faithful to their religion, they will show it by donating their time and money to worthy causes. This is an incentive above and beyond just telling people that it is the right thing to do.

Second, religious leaders are constantly reminding their congregants of their religious duty to give generously, particularly in times of crisis. For example, how many American pastors passed up the opportunity to preach a sermon about the moral responsibility of looking after those less fortunate than ourselves in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Very few, I’d wager. And it’s not just the leaders who regularly remind believers about charity, it’s peer pressure too. In any congregation there will always be a number of people looking for help with one worthy cause or another—looking for people to help staff the local homeless shelter, looking for sponsors for a marathon run in aid of earthquake victims, and so on. If you are an active member of religious community, it’s hard to avoid all these requests for your time and money.

Finally, religious institutions encourage charitable donations by setting up the infrastructure that makes giving as easy and painless as possible. Every Sunday in millions of churches around the world, a collection plate is passed under every congregant’s nose. In many of those churches, you can even set up a monthly direct debit to send your money from your bank account to the church’s own coffers without lifting a finger. And as a bonus, you get to save some money on your taxes too. There are stalls in the church coffee room selling Traidcraft goods in aid of Third World poverty, and tables set up where people can volunteer their time to help out in the local community—no need to organize anything, just turn up on the day and help. The list of ways that religious institutions help people donate their time and money to charitable causes is endless.

It’s also worth remembering that while most organizations charge a membership fee in order to help fund its financial obligations, religious organizations typically do not, and thus all monies collected from members in support of their operations are classed as charity, thus greatly boosting the overall amount religious people donate.

Compare all that with the experience of the non-believer. There is little question that the vast majority of non-religious people believe that charitable giving is a good and moral thing to do. Even without access to a vast religious infrastructure to help them, two-thirds of all non-believers still donate money to charity on a regular basis. So why don’t non-believers donate as much or as often?

Simply put, they lack the same motivations and opportunities that religious people have.

Non-believers do not have their moral duty to give to charity preached at fifty-two Sundays a year. They do not have a collection plate waved in their face every week reminding them of their obligation to make a donation. They do not typically frequent places where large on-going efforts to raise money for charity are underway, and they usually only have their consciences stirred when some great tragedy hits the news headlines—like the Ethiopian famines, Hurricane Katrina, or the Haitian earthquake.

So I don’t think that it is at all surprising that non-religious people give less of their time and money to charity. But it’s not because non-believers are intrinsically less moral in any way, it’s simply because they lack the same obligations, encouragement, and outlets that religious people have.

Brooks finishes his article with an excellent suggestion:

If charity is indeed a learned behavior, it may be that houses of worship are only one means (albeit an especially efficacious one) to teach it. Secularists interested in increasing charitable giving and volunteering among their ranks might spend some effort thinking of alternative ways to foster these habits.

From personal experience, I know this can be done. I used to work for a corporation that provided the means to donate part of your paycheck directly to a charity of your choice. Once a year, they asked for a volunteer from each department to give a presentation to their colleagues reminding them of the good causes that are helped by the money donated through this program. They then spent the next month encouraging their employees, almost daily, to sign up and donate part of their paycheck every month for the next year.

This is small beans when compared to the things religious institutions do, but it works. Millions of dollars are raised every year through programs like this—millions of dollars that likely would not have been donated at all without them. I am not afraid to admit that my charitable giving has dropped off quite steeply since I left full-time employment, precisely because I am no longer regularly exposed to exhortations and convenient opportunities to donate on a regular basis. Yes, I know it would take the minimum of effort to go to the website of my favorite charity and start a monthly direct debit from my bank account, but human nature dictates that when we’re not regularly reminded of the importance of donating to charity, we tend to let it slip from our mind.

The Internet has certainly helped when it comes to getting the message out, and for creating ways to make it easier to donate your money and time. And if you wanted to donate a small sum to the Haitian earthquake appeal earlier this year, you only had to tap about 15 keystrokes on your cell phone using the “text HAITI to 90999 service,” but I think it would be foolish to suggest that anything can fully replace the utility of the vast ecosystem surrounding charitable giving that religious institutions have built up over many decades, even centuries.

If there is one hope, then it would be in efforts to give many more people a taste of what it’s like to donate one’s time to charitable works. Study after study have shown that engaging in regular volunteer work can be a great benefit to one’s mental and physical health. It doesn’t matter if the volunteerism is conducted through a religious institution or not, almost everyone who tries it, even for a short time, begins to experience those personal benefits first hand, making it more likely that they would want to continue doing it on a regular basis.

Naturally, it is also important for non-believers to introduce their children to the concept of charity. When I was a kid, the church I attended would hold sponsored walks and other activities that exposed me to such things. I don’t have any children of my own, but my brother and his wife (who are both non-believers) have two daughters, and just this past Christmas, the girls unilaterally decided that they didn’t need all the usual expensive Christmas presents, and suggested that we spent less on gifts to each other and spent the rest on charitable gifts in each other’s names instead. The rest of us agreed to take part, and as a result we must have raised between $500-$700 for various charities just within our extended family.

So there are plenty of ways to encourage charitable giving and instill good habits outside of the auspices of a religious group, though I do not underestimate the scale of the task of matching the charitable work encouraged by and performed through religious institutions. But the key point to remember is that there is nothing mystical or supernatural about the greater generosity of religious people. It is merely a product of the education, indoctrination, promotion, and facilitation carried out by the religious institutions they belong to.

A 19-year-old Army gunner, Spec. Ross Andrew McGinnis, from outside Pittsburgh, was on patrol in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah neighborhood. A grenade was lobbed through [...]]]> Another Easter has passed, and with it another round of homilies and articles about the “greatest sacrifice” of Jesus going to the Cross to die for our sins:

A 19-year-old Army gunner, Spec. Ross Andrew McGinnis, from outside Pittsburgh, was on patrol in Baghdad’s Adhamiyah neighborhood. A grenade was lobbed through his hatch and into the Humvee. Realizing the four soldiers inside would not be able to escape in time, McGinnis dove into the vehicle, threw himself on the grenade and absorbed the full force of the explosion.

McGinnis was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. “He had the opportunity to escape,” his father said. “He chose not to.”

Every story of sacrifice holds up a mirror to the greatest sacrifice of all, the one Christians around the globe commemorate this week – the sacrifice of Christ.

But really, assuming that Jesus was the son of God incarnate and did indeed die on the cross, was his sacrifice greater than that of Spec. Ross Andrew McGinnis, or of any other person who has given their life to protect others from harm?

Not hardly.

Jesus, according to orthodoxy, is not only the son of God, but God himself, omnipotent and omniscient. And while he may have wrapped himself in the limited cloak of humanity, no theologian ever suggests that Jesus didn’t know of his true nature when he went to the cross, or that he didn’t know he would “rise again” a mere three days later.

What did God—what did Jesus—really sacrifice? His life? Everyone dies, and millions of people have died agonizing deaths either through illness or at the hands of others, and unlike Jesus, not one of them had the comfort of being certain that they would “rise to glory” immediately upon their death. Reports say that Spec. McGinnis was a member of his local Lutheran church, and I have no reason to doubt that he was a Christian, but even if he believed that he was “going to be with the Lord” as he made the ultimate sacrifice, it’s still not the same as knowing.  There is still doubt, worry that you might be giving up the only life and existence you will ever have.

And what of the doubters, the non-believers or agnostics who makes the same sacrifice? They have no hope for an afterlife of eternal glory when they lay down their lives to protect others. They believe they are truly sacrificing everything. They have nothing more to give. There is no sacrifice greater than that.

Of course, the ultimate absurdity of it all is that God supposedly concocted the whole sacrificial lamb plan in the first place. It was entirely his decision to do it that way, and I am sure that an omniscient being could have thought of a billion other ways to go about “saving” a small portion of the human race that didn’t involve him being nailed to a cross for a few hours before ending up back in Heaven and entirely none the worse for wear for the experience.

No, unlike the real and noble sacrifice of Spec. McGinnis, there was hardly any sacrifice involved at all. In the grand scheme of things, Jesus’ sacrifice is much more the equivalent of the sacrifices made by the bosses who worked for a week in the most menial jobs in their company for the CBS show Undercover Boss.  In other words, it was voluntary, planned, self-inflicted, and the consequences were entirely temporary.