Reply #1: It was the paradoxes surrounding the afterlife, and retribution, [View All]

[Taxloss]

that destroyed my faith. As soon as logic and an enquiring mind turned to the problem of salvation ... it was like a warm hand pressing against a frosted window. I saw straight through it. It melted like it was never there. Of course there's nothing after death; how can there be?

And you know what - I didn't feel a sickening spiritual emptiness, like the believers seem to think we all feel. I felt like a drunk sobering up for the first time in years. I felt clear, unmuddled, unalarmed. There is life, and then there is death. There was no abyss; the abyss is what the superstitious see. I see simply a blank page, like an endpaper in a book.

A lot is made of atheists "finding God" at their moment of death. In some ways, this might be understanable; Pascal's gambit, and so on. I wonder how many theists, conscious of their imminent mortality, look up expecting the face of their creator and see .... nothing? How many fall from faith in those final moments? I do not exaggerate when I say I would be surprised if it wasn't millions, or billions.

Henry Ward Beecher, the noted evangelist, died on 8 March 1887 - incidentally, my birthday is 8 March 1978. His last words indicate a that he was less than certain of the salavation he should have been guaranteed:

"Now comes the mystery."