If you don’t believe in God, does that mean that your life has no meaning?

No, in fact it’s quite the reverse – to me, life is incredibly precious, because it is the only life we get.

In fact, I see the other side of the argument as reversed, too – a belief in an afterlife sometimes puts less value on this life. I see this whenever someone talks about how they will be reunited with their loved ones after death, or when they speak of someone who has passed away and say “He is in a better place now.”

For me, these things don’t work. For all that I know, I won’t see my parents, relatives, or friends who have died, ever again. This makes my time with them infinitely precious.

Then there are those who firmly believe that the good things we do in this life are absolutely worthless, and that faith in their god is the only thing that counts. To me, this is one of the biggest examples of someone giving zero value to life that I can imagine. (In fact, it creates a huge contradiction when someone who believes this also claims that atheists have no reason to be moral, but that’s another topic…)

Have you ever been dead?

(This is the 22nd – and last – question in Brett Keane’s Atheist Challenge)

Yes, I have.  To borrow the wisdom of Mark Twain:  “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.”

And that does it for Brett Keane’s 22-question Atheist Challenge.  Feel free to look back at all of my answers and see if they spark any new discussions – that’s what this blog is all about!

Explain in detail the process of death.

(This is the 21st question in Brett Keane’s Atheist Challenge)

I’m not sure of the exact process, but I know it involves the brain shutting down, followed by all of the body’s organs and functions that it controls. After that, it’s all rigor mortis and decomposition from there.

I’m still a bit iffy on what this has to do with atheism…

Would you sacrifice yourself for a loved one, with the chance that you may end up in hell because you are an atheist?

(This is the 20th question in Brett Keane’s Atheist Challenge)

Simply put: Yes.

Not-so-simply put: If there was a way to lie, cheat, steal, or kill to spare the precious lives of myself and my loved ones, I would do it in a heartbeat. Otherwise, yes.

As for the “hell” portion of the question – thinking about which of the many hells from the myriad of world religions that I would go to would take way too long, and probably distract me from jumping in front of the bullet / knife / car / train / herd of water buffalo in order to save my loved one. So I’d probably skip it, for the moment.

Should we try to save animals from going extinct?

(This is the 17th question in Brett Keane’s Atheist Challenge)

I love animals, and I think we should try to save them from going extinct, especially in cases where human interaction has been the cause of their endangerment.

I’m not really sure what connection this has to my atheism, but that has been the case for the last few questions as well.

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler or Stalin as babies so they never kill the millions in the future, would you do it if time travel was possible?

(This is the 13th question in Brett Keane’s Atheist Challenge)

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler or Stalin as babies so they never kill the millions in the future, would you do it if time travel was possible?

Kill, no. Prevent all of the destruction and pain that they caused, yes.

If you died and discovered that a god exists, what would you say to he/she/it?

(This is the 7th question in Brett Keane’s Atheist Challenge)

If you died and discovered that a god exists, what would you say to he/she/it?

“You have a lot of explaining to do!”

If I was in the mood, I might even do it in a Ricky Ricardo accent.

Would you die for your religious beliefs?

In the post “Would you kill for atheism?,” Mark made the following comment:

That’s the wrong question. The question should be, would you die for your religious beliefs?

My answer isn’t different, however: No. Since I don’t have any religious beliefs, I don’t have anything to die for.

(We’ll save the “atheism is a religion” question for a future post, but here’s a quick spoiler:  No, it isn’t.)

But maybe this is the wrong question, too. Perhaps it should be “Would you die for your lack of religious belief?” or “Would you die to defend atheism?”

And for those, the answer is the same. No. Life is far too precious to waste it over ideological disagreements.

The fact is, if I were in a stressful situation, where someone was pointing a gun to my head and telling me that I needed to accept Christ or Mohammed or any other savior, or threatening to kill me if I admitted to being an atheist, I would lie to save my own life. I’d pretend to accept any religion my captor wanted me to right then and there, just for my own self-preservation.

Yep, I would lie – something I normally have a rule against – to keep myself (or others) from dying. And I’m convinced that this would be the most reasonable, rational thing to do.

Cowardly? Maybe. That’s for others to judge, and I’m not particularly interested in their decision. My life is all that I have, and there are a few people beside myself who treasure it – my daughters and partner in particular.

Really, I think most other people would do the same thing in the same situation. But I could be wrong about that.

Thanks for the question, Mark!