Reasonism Blog
On the fear of death and being wrong
Question from a newly-deconverted (and still deconverting) person:
"What do you do about fear? Not the outside fear, but the nagging, creeping, inside fear that sneaks up on you at night when you're tired, and makes it so your arguments all suddenly disappear, and you wonder if you've been wrong this whole time?
It's happening to me a lot, and making me feel a little insane, especially since I've done deep study of everything from apologetics to philosophy to rhetoric to get here. I'm an atheist because I don't see any evidence for any God(s), but am willing to admit I'm wrong. However...what if we *are* wrong?
...I'm very new to atheism, still scared, and very, very lonely."
(Source: Facebook, name withheld)
REPLY
Mark Twain said:
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
If you think about it, you and I and everybody else did not exist before our parents got together. We have all been somewhat dead, non-existent. Parts of us belonged to the yet unborn animals, vegetables and fruits we were yet to eat: fellow creatures that provided what we needed to sustain our growth and mature. It wasn't so terrible, was it?
The Tyranny Of God
Paperback Edition
Is there a God? Where do the animals, plants and human beings come from? Are scriptures the words of gods? Does religion teach us to live moral lives? Why do so many people kill and are killed over it? How should we live our lives if God exists? How should we live it if God does NOT exist?
This book explores the truth behind our beliefs in God and the propensity of human beings to be religious. In an honest attempt to seek the answers to life's deepest questions, I probe into how life began. I then progress to investigate the true nature of religions and their impact on our lives and the rest of humanity.
The main purpose of this book is not to argue against religion. Rather, it tells our story and how we have come to oppress ourselves with the tyranny of our own beliefs. I wrote this book to include everything I discovered to be relevant in my search for the truth, not just the truth behind God and morality, but also behind us and our existence. Instead of reading this book with the expectation that it is trying to prove the tyranny of God, I would like to recommend you read it as a story book: as a book that tells the story of humanity from the Big Bang.
REVIEW
"While Comelab's writing is always moderate in tone, its message clearly undermines current distractions with accommodationist arguments towards presumed religious "moderates". It is written with the fresh confidence of a young man who has had early success in his adopted country and only recently come to realise the truth of atheism. For those like me whose only worry about Atheism has long been its faultering progress, Comelab reminds us that much of the energy must continue to come from those who have more recently learned the truth. He seems more than bright enough to soon progress to seeing atheism not as an end but as a starting point to the kind of understanding that should enable us to work towards a future incomparably better than any heaven the faithful can imagine."
- TONY SMITH (AUSTRALIA)