Why do atheists reject immortality

Existential security is more fallible than it seems. In a moment, everything can change: a drunk driver can kill a loved one; a tornado can destroy a town; a doctor can issue a terminal diagnosis. As climate change wreaks havoc on the world in coming years and natural resources potentially grow scarce, then suffering and hardship could fuel religiosity.

This phenomenon constantly plays out in hospital rooms and disaster zones around the world. In , for example, a massive earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand — a highly secular society. There was a sudden spike of religiosity in the people who experienced that event, but the rest of the country remained as secular as ever.

While exceptions to this rule do exist — religion in Japan plummeted following World War II, for instance — for the most part, Zuckerman says, we adhere by the Christchurch model. A rabbi reads during Purim festivities Getty Images. This psychological staple states that we have two very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2.

System 2 evolved relatively recently. System 1, on the other hand, is intuitive, instinctual and automatic. These capabilities regularly develop in humans, regardless of where they are born. They are survival mechanisms. System 1 bestows us with an innate revulsion of rotting meat, allows us to speak our native language without thinking about it and gives babies the ability to recognise parents and distinguish between living and nonliving objects.

It makes us prone to looking for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning for seemingly random events like natural disasters or the death of loved ones. In addition to helping us navigate the dangers of the world and find a mate, some scholars think that System 1 also enabled religions to evolve and perpetuate.

Millennia ago, that tendency probably helped us avoid concealed danger, such as lions crouched in the grass or venomous snakes concealed in the bush. I aimed to recruit at least 30 participants per cell, and deliberately oversampled to meet this goal. All sample size decisions were made a priori. Three participants failed an Instrumental Manipulation Check [31] and were excluded before any analyses were conducted.

Participants first completed an IRB-approved online consent procedure. Participants read a consent form. After reading the form and having an opportunity to email with any questions, participants checked a box to confirm that they were at least 18 years old, had read and understood the consent form, and agreed to participate. After giving digital consent, participants proceeded to the main survey.

In the main survey, participants were first presented with the following description of a moral transgressor:. When Dax was young, he began inflicting harm on animals. It started with just pulling the wings off flies, but eventually progressed to torturing squirrels and stray cats in his neighborhood. As an adult, Dax found that he did not get much thrill from harming animals, so he began hurting people instead.

He has killed 5 homeless people that he abducted from poor neighborhoods in his home city. Their dismembered bodies are currently buried in his basement. Immediately following the conjunction question, participants had one additional item as an Instrumental Manipulation Check [31] to exclude participants not paying attention to directions. This item included a question about US Presidents, with a drop down menu providing several response choices.

However, in the instructions for this item, participants were told to skip the question without leaving a response. Next, participants proceeded to a different screen that included four syllogistic reasoning problems.

These items were included to better conceal the true nature of the conjunction task as merely one in a series of logic puzzles. It should be noted that because the distractor items followed the primary measure of interest in the study, they could not have affected responses. Rather, they were included to reduce the already slight risk that performing a task measuring perceptions of a religion-morality link might create social desirability pressures that would compromise participants' own self-reported religious demographics.

Finally, participants completed a series of demographic measures. Participants provided information about age, gender, ethnicity, and religious affiliation, as well as measures of belief in God, political attitudes, and subjective socioeconomic status. Participants rated belief in God, from 0 God definitely does not exist to God definitely exists. For subjective socioeconomic status [32] , participants rated their own perceived status on a ladder from 0—10 , relative to the people in the USA who are the worst off the bottom of the ladder, 0 and the people in the USA who are the best off the top of the ladder, Finally, participants entered their state of residence and current zip code before being redirected to an online debriefing with instructions on how to redeem their Mechanical Turk payments.

All analyses were performed in R [33]. Participants were significantly more likely to commit a conjunction error i. Participants viewed animal torture and serial murder as representative of atheists, but not of various religious groups. A Given a description of serial murder and animal torture, participants were significantly more likely to commit a conjunction error for the atheist target than for any of five religious targets.

B Given a description of consensual incest, participants were significantly more likely to commit a conjunction error for the atheist target than for any of five religious targets. C Given a description of a man having sex with, then eating, a dead chicken, participants were significantly more likely to commit a conjunction error for the atheist target than for any of five ethnic targets. Experiment 1 demonstrated that one particularly vivid example of immorality—serial murder—is seen as representative of atheists.

Subsequent studies relied on widely studied examples of people's moral intuitions, drawing upon examples from the work of Haidt and other Moral Foundations Theory researchers [30] , [34].

Murder presents a strong and clear example of immorality. Yet people often intuitively find other acts immoral even if the acts do not involve harm to others [34]. Experiment 2 followed the procedure of Experiment 1 , and tested whether one such seemingly victimless moral violation—consensual incest—was similarly judged as more representative of atheists than of other groups.

Two hundred eleven American adults from Mechanical Turk participated in Experiment 2. The participants represented a wide variety of religious backgrounds full demographics for all experiments are presented in the Online Supplement. As in Experiment 1 , I aimed to recruit at least 30 participants per cell, and deliberately oversampled to meet this goal. The procedure of Experiment 2 was identical to that used in Experiment 1. Only the contents of the described moral violation differed.

Participants read the following description, before completing the rest of the study exactly as in Experiment 1 :. Graeme and his sister were traveling together in France. One night they were staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decided that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love.

At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Graeme's sister was already taking birth control pills, but Graeme used a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoyed it, but they decided not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. The career listed for the villain i. In Experiment 2 , participants intuitively judged a description of a man engaging in consensual incest with his sister to be more representative of people who do not believe in God As with serial murder and animal torture, participants found a description of someone engaging in consensual incest to be more representative of atheists than of other religious groups.

Rather than compare atheists to different religious groups, Experiment 3 compared atheists to different ethnic groups. Two hundred twenty one American adults from Mechanical Turk participated in Experiment 3. The participants represented a wide variety of religious backgrounds full demographics for all experiments are presented in File S1. As in Experiments 1 — 2 , I aimed to recruit at least 30 participants per cell, and deliberately oversampled to meet this goal.

Nine participants failed an Instrumental Manipulation Check [31] and were excluded before any analyses were conducted. The procedure of Experiment 3 was identical to that used in Experiments 1 — 2. Only the contents of the described moral violation and the potential group memberships differed. Participants read the following description, before completing the rest of the study exactly as in Experiments 1 — 2 :. On the way home from work, Jack decided to stop at the butcher shop to pick up something for dinner.

He decided to roast a whole chicken. He got home, unwrapped the chicken carcass, and decided to make love to it. He used a condom, and fully sterilized the carcass when he was finished.

He then roasted the chicken and ate it for dinner alongside a nice glass of Chardonnay. Participants intuitively judged a description of a man having sexual intercourse with, then cooking and eating, a dead chicken to be more representative of people who do not believe in God As with the case of incest presented in Experiment 2 , participants intuitively found a description of a man having sex with and eating a dead chicken to be representative of atheists.

This effect was not apparent for any of five ethnic group memberships. Experiment 4 extended the findings of Experiments 1 — 3 in two ways. First, following previous research [22] — [23] , Experiment 4 used perceptions of gay men—another cultural outgroup frequently excluded in the U.

Both atheists and gays have concealable identities and are often derogated in explicitly moralistic terms. Yet, negative perceptions of atheists and gays appear to derive from different psychological bases [23] , potentially leading moral violations to be viewed as more representative of atheists than of gays. Second, Experiment 4 used a broader range of moral violations, following Moral Foundations Theory [30] , [34] , which posits five basic themes for moral judgment: harm, fairness, loyalty to the ingroup, obedience to authority, and purity.

In Experiment 4 , participants were presented with descriptions of people violating each of the five foundations Harm: ridiculing an obese woman and kicking a dog; Fairness: reneging on reciprocity norms and cheating at cards; Ingroup: renouncing national and family ties; Authority: disrespecting employers and police officers; Purity: eating human flesh; full scenarios are included in the Online Supplement. Experiment 4 thus utilized a 5 type of moral violation by 2 potential atheist target vs.

Three hundred twenty seven American adults from Mechanical Turk participated in Experiment 4. As in Experiments 1 — 3 , I aimed to recruit at least 30 participants per cell, and deliberately oversampled to meet this goal.

The final sample sizes across atheist and gay conditions respectively were as follows: Harm 34, 34 , Fairness 27, 29 , Ingroup 39, 34 , Authority 35, 33 , and Purity 30, The general procedure of Experiment 4 was identical to that used in Experiments 1 — 3. Experiment 4 did not include an Instrumental Manipulation Check or distractor syllogisms.

Life is good, worthy work that I'm proud of and that makes me feel good, for the most part, but even though I'll probably be sad to die and I'd hate to think I was about to die any time soon , I'm still glad, in principle, that some day life will cease, and my burdens will dissolve with my joys.

I don't want to live forever. Speaking as someone who shares Kevin's view on this topic, what we think happens when we die is that we die, only our contributions to the world we are departing will live on, and that's all there is to it.

We're not going to be around to experience it afterwards. Would it be nice not to die? Maybe, certainly sounds interesting although I could see myself wishing fervently for death to put me out of my boredom when I turned a million, and considering it an inhuman and sadistic torment to deny that to me But if we wish to live in a reality based world we need to acknowledge that there is no rational reason to believe this to be true and it is a monumental case of group wishful thinking to put it politely.

How do I feel about it? I accepted my mortality and that of everyone else I know a long time ago, I dealt with it, and now I rarely give it much thought unless circumstances call it to my attention. I have better things to do with my life than obsessing over a time when it's going to be over.

And no, that is not me declaring how incredibly brave and stoic in the face of death that makes atheists, I don't imagine I'd be any less scared facing the imminent ending of my life when the time comes than your average person Wringing my hands over it would be about as pointless as wailing over the gravitational constant of the universe not having a different value more to my liking.

Reality is what it is. And reality is that people aren't immortal. I think the fact that you have to ask this question at all says a lot about how the fear of death is inextricably tied to a belief in higher powers in the minds of theists. To one such as I, who shares Kevin's views, the answer is rather obvious and intuitive. Nothing is going to happen to him when he dies, because there won't be a 'him' for anything to happen to.

As for your follow up question- "And how does he feel about that - not just emotionally but existentially? Forgive me if this sounds overly judgmental, but to me terms like "faith" and "spirituality" are just shorthand for an individual's inability to cope with the concept of oblivion. Why must one feel anything particular about it in the first place?

One day, I will not be. This doesn't bother me and I don't understand the need to waste the precious gift of sentience agonizing about such things. I recognize that some people can't shrug off the idea of not existing in some form. Take my husband for instance. He has an overdeveloped fear of oblivion but can't bring himself to believe in fairy tales.

He takes comfort in philosophy. In the words of probably Marcus Aurelius:. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.

If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. As an atheist who has just recently had two friends die, I can say that not all atheists are as lucky as Kevin.

For me, the fear of death is far and away the most immediate and challenging aspect of my atheism. Death affects me in a profound way, because I know it's not a matter of belief at this point, for me that this life is all we get. As much as I would like to believe platitudes like "He's in a better place now" and "I know he's smiling down on us," I see them for what they are, and what they represent: attempts to avoid facing the reality of death.

So if you truly believe that "Facing [death] is our life's task," may I suggest you try atheism? It's the common thread in all religions, from the most ancient to the most modern: "When we die, it's not really the end. So don't worry so much. The atheist willfully rejects God, though this is precipitated by immoral indulgences and typically a broken relationship with his or her father. Thus, the choice of the atheist paradigm is motivated by non-rational factors, some of which are psychological and some of which are moral in nature.

The hardening of the atheist mind-set occurs through cognitive malfunction due to two principle causes. First, atheists suffer from paradigm-induced blindness, as their worldview inhibits their ability to recognize the reality of God that is manifest in creation. Both of these mechanisms are aspects of the noetic effects of sin.

Spegiel is, it seems, trying to give a best explanation argument for atheism, which is based on a Christian account of such. Since it is as rational to believe in theism, how can we account for atheism? However, Spiegel does not specifically lay out the specifics of how such an argument works. What, exactly, is a best explanation? What are the germane criteria, and so on? Atheists may find themselves looking in an unexpected mirror.