Make the Most of This Life: It's All We Get

I'm always amazed and saddened by people who give away the only life they have in hopes of an afterlife that doesn't exist. They remind me of the guy a few years ago who took the $3,000 he'd saved for college and bought Powerball tickets in hope of a $350 million windfall. I don't have to tell you what happened.

They're everywhere: accepting the injustice of low pay and bad treatment because a preacher says that's the price of admission to heaven, suffering decades in a sexual closet because homos burn for eternity, giving money they can't afford to a church that promises a post-death reward, suffering psychological wounds for life because betraying a priest's crimes will send them to hell ... the abominations of the carrot-and-stick religion are infinite.

Human ethics require neither bribes nor threats to do the right thing. That my life will end when my brain stops working instills in me no fear, because I bet not a single moment of my life on the afterlife scam. I live every moment to the fullest, because these moments are all I have. And that brings me true joy.

PZ Myers on "Mortal Lies":

It's a hard sell for atheists, isn't it? We offer nothing but the prospect of personal oblivion, while our opponents promise paradise. If all we had to go on was belief, you'd have to be crazy to go with the atheists. But we do have something more than just a desire to believe: we have reason and evidence, and most importantly of all, an overriding interest in the truth. Why, we'll accept the most horrible, terrifying ideas if they are true: that we'll fall if we jump off a ten story building, that we can electrocute ourselves if we stick a silverware in an electric socket, and that someday we will inevitably stop and no longer exist.

Reality matters. The only way to argue for an afterlife is to argue otherwise, that what is is unimportant compared to what you wish were true. I can't do that. In fact, I can't even offer anyone soothing words and the promise of consolation, because there are none. We stand naked before the universe, a product of its rules, and one of the facts of our existence is our eventual obliteration. Running away won't help. Believing in a magical savior won't save you. You face reality bravely, or you hide in fear — and that won't help you either.

The essential principle, though, the one that the religious cannot abide, is that you can face it honestly. And there's at least a little dignity in that.

Read the whole thing.

More than a little dignity, PZ. Far more.