The Curse of the God-Less Ones

Recently, a friend and former colleague of mine passed away suddenly. After attending the wake with a group of friends, I went home and on logging onto the internet saw that a friend of mine has added the below message to her msn nick "You have been a good brother to me. Goodbye till I see you again."

Seeing this message brought another wave of sadness not just for my recently deceased friend and those who would miss him dearly but for myself as well. For those of us in the world, who hold on to some kind of religious beliefs, the death of loved ones though painful might be partially staved off by the belief that the parting is but temporary in this world. There is always the prospects of a "reunion" in the life thereafter to "look forward to" (for lack of better words). There is solace to be sought in believing that loved ones who passed on, would not just continue to exist in memories but live on in another world.

But for people like myself who subscribes to a more physical view of the world and perhaps even an atheistic belief, we do not have such solace. For we are the God-Less ones, the unbelievers that according to Christian doctrine is doomed to languish in hell because we choose to turn away from God. In a sense, they are right because for the God-Less Ones, death is final. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, no heavens, no hell, only emptiness.

I remembered long ago that someone once asked me why I choose to hold on to such a bleak view of the universe? Why not just believe in something? His argument which I conceded was very rational is this: Suppose Christianity and the Bible is true, by not believing in God, then you effectively condemns yourself to Hell when you could have gone on to Heaven. Now on the flip side, suppose Christianity is wrong (or rather all religions are wrong) and there is really no life after death, then, everybody loses. Even if you have been living a beautiful lie when alive thinking that you would go to Heaven after you die, you would never experience the shock of being wrong when you die simply because you cease to exist when you died! So in other words, what that person was trying to say is that an atheistic view is personally self-defeating and leads to a lose-lose situation. I cannot deny that such a logic is correct and I wonder if such rational calculation has led to some people to actually convert "just to be safe."

Although I do see the logic of such an argument, I cannot make myself subscribe to a religious belief "just to be safe". For me, the simple fact is that a life of introspection and of examining every piece of argument and evidence available has not convinced me that God or a soul exists at all. I simply cannot deceive myself into thinking of it the other way even if the deception might give me greater comfort in life. I suppose I am the type of person that if given the choice between living in brutal truth or a beautiful life, I would certainly choose the former. As long as this is so, I would continue to bear this curse.