An Artistic Atheist

A nerdy artist's ramblings about atheism, philosophy, games, movies and, on rare occasions, art.

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GASP!

I’m mentioned on TV Tropes. I recently took over as artist for the webcomic Everyday Heroes and the TV Tropes page has rather quickly reflected this. Cool.

EDIT: Should note, the latest comic is not drawn by me as I had a really busy week and Ed went ahead and did that one for me.

I saw Avenue Q earlier tonight. Fantastic show. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the musical that the song “The Internet is for Porn” comes from.

Day 12 - The 15 Day Atheist Challenge

What happens when we die? Do you fear death?

Much as even the most respected atheists like to, I think it’s a bit redundant to open my answer with “Nobody really knows, but I think that…” as it’s such an obvious declaration that I find it rather tiresome, so I’m going to just dispense with that formality.

As I don’t believe we have “souls” that supersede our living bodies, I consider my entire body to be ‘me’. My personality is controlled and established entirely by my favourite organ: My brain. Just like all of my other vital organs, my brain will cease to function when I die…that’s kind of what dying is. Without my brain functioning, my consciousness will cease to be. I will not go into a void of nothingness, I will not go to an afterlife. I simply won’t be; talking in terms of my persona anyway. I will eventually decay and deteriorate as corpses do.

To be honest, this is something that I actually find unsettling. I’m not going to choose to not believe it just because I find the idea unattractive, but it’s one of few things about my understanding of life that I’m actually rather uncomfortable with. I know following my death, the discomfort won’t exist anymore as none of my feelings will, but I do think, ludicrous though it may be, that an afterlife is a very pleasant premise. I don’t think that because I want to live in eternal salvation, but simply because I’d love to be able to keep learning about the world forever.

Some people talk about how they might consider immortality a curse; to be stuck living while everyone around you keeps dying. There would be a lot of rough times, sure, but on the whole I would love to live forever and have the opportunity to never stop learning.