{"id":782,"date":"2011-09-07T18:44:18","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T08:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=782"},"modified":"2011-09-07T18:44:18","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T08:44:18","slug":"why-do-we-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=782","title":{"rendered":"Why Do We Die?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Casey:<\/strong>
\nHow do you comprehend death? How do manage to remain sane knowing that someone has been ripped from your lives for what you believe to be no reason?
\n
\nAnswer by Andrea:<\/strong>
\nHi Casey,
\n
\nI don’t see death as being “no reason.” As a science buff\/journalist, I see it more as the natural order of things, as far as old age goes (please see the law of entropy).
\n
\nIf death is due to sickness or murder (not that I can speak from experience in latter case), I find it much more comforting to think of it as being a random event that we have no control over, rather than some capricious god who chose to “off” someone “just because.”
\n
\nMy dear grandmother passed away from old age and she often told me she was afraid of dying alone. There was not much I could do, since my life is not in Europe, but what I did do was visit for the summers and write a postcard to her every 1-2 weeks. I think it helped.
\n
\nOften we say to ourselves, we’ll do this and that with this person sometime. But in my case, I did what I could then, and when she passed away I felt awful and missed her very much, but it made me feel so much better that I did what I could while she was alive.
\nAnd that’s all you can do.
\n
\nI’m not sure what your situation is with respect to this question, but please accept my sympathies if they are warranted, and I’m so sorry there’s probably nothing I can say that time won’t eventually take care of.
\n
\nBest to you,
\nAndrea
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nThere’s always a reason why people die. There may not be any purpose to it, but there’s always a reason: they were old, or they were murdered, or there was an accident, or their immune system failed them. When we ask why<\/em> someone has died, this kind of answer is always available to some extent. Furthermore, this kind of answer is often useful in the prevention of other deaths, for example by catching the killer, fencing off the cliff edge or preventing the disease.
\n
\nTo my mind, knowing that there’s no purpose to a loved one’s death is no worse that believing there is a purpose but having no idea what it is, and no hope of ever knowing. The suffering and death of a good person is hard to explain in a world with an all-powerful, benevolent guardian watching over us (though that doesn’t stop people from explaining it…in many<\/a> different ways), but it’s really very easy to explain in a world with no such being: it happened because of this and this, and it’s sad that the person is gone but they left their mark on the world.
\n
\nIf you imagine that atheists are completely at a loss when confronted with death then you imagine that our worldviews are simply the Christian worldview with a God-shaped hole in it. (This is becoming a catchphrase with me.) It sounds obvious but it’s worth specifically considering that when one doesn’t believe in a god, one also doesn’t believe that meaning and purpose in life depend entirely on a god. Therefore the common existential challenge of comprehending death, while certainly a challenge (see this earlier question<\/a>), does not automatically shatter an atheist.
\n
\nIf a recent death affecting your life is the reason you asked this question, I sympathise along with Andrea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Casey: How do you comprehend death? How do manage to remain sane knowing that someone has been ripped from your lives for what you believe to be no reason? Answer by Andrea: Hi Casey, I don’t see death as being “no reason.” As a science buff\/journalist, I see it more as the natural … Continue reading “Why Do We Die?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,88,270,90],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-atheism","tag-death","tag-meaning","tag-purpose"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-cC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}