Fear… As Frank Herbert said, can be the..”mind killer”. Fear is a strong emotion among all of us in life. There are many things that people fear and many reasons that people fear them, most well founded reasons. As an atheist, some fears in life are a little different, and that is what I want to talk about in this blog post – I encourage you to post and share your fears below.
One of the most basic fears in life is a fear of survival, which comes in several versions, from what I can tell. The most basic level of survival fear is that of physical well being. This is a primal fear, it enables us as human beings to let our instincts take over, and often serves us well during times when quick decisions are needed. I’m sure there are many people whose instincts helped to get them out of dangerous situations safely. I accept that this fear is well justified in many, many situations, and has helped humanity to progress to where we are today… It helps to ensure our survival.
Then we come to some of the more mental fears. Legitimate, but not immediately life threatening… Things such as fear of repercussions of one’s actions or perhaps financial fears. These fears I also find to be healthy and beneficial, they allow us as human beings to cognitively process life choices and generally give us insight to the future results of our actions and inspire us to action to avoid things like going hungry or being evicted from an apartment. These fears also allow us to avoid emotional trauma too, when we understand what negative repercussions of our actions mean we can avoid the heart and head aches associated with those decisions easier.
Now we arrive at unfounded fears.. Fears of things you cannot control or will not be able to do anything about. Things like whether or not you’ll end up in heaven or hell, or whether or not it will rain today. These are generally things that a person can not influence or change.. Only prepare one’s self as best as possible… Have an umbrella handy, make sure the windows in your vehicle are closed, check the weather. Again, these actions have no effect on whether or not it rains, but it allows you to cope with it.
Now obviously there are a lot of people who believe in heaven and hell, which is also obviously an abstract concept that we, as atheists, do not believe in, but it does draw some interesting debate and insight from our perspective too… One’s fear of hell is predicated on their specific religion’s definitions and their specific god’s ‘commandments’. With that said, and given the multi-millennia worth of various gods of various religions, how is one to know which version would even be right? Pascal’s wager claims that it is better to believe in god, because if he does then you’re in a better place… Well, the inverse of that is the thought that if you worship the wrong ‘god’ then you’re offending the ‘real’ one… When in all reality we as conscious, alive human beings won’t ever know if there is an afterlife predicated on a deity. So, in part, I adhere to the philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, who suggested:
“Live a good life. If there are Gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but 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.“
Now, it’s not to say that that it is complete or perfect in its ideals, but the concept allows for one to take the innate sense of morality inside human beings, mesh it with other rules and ideals that society has deemed to be of importance and live an exemplary life (note: I did not say perfect, as none of us are). When you live your life under the pretense that there are no gods, you allow yourself to live for the sake of living, being able to enjoy moments more fully, because you’re not concerned with an afterlife, you know this is the only one you have and want to be sure not to ruin in with poor decisions either (jail time, dying young, poor reputation, etc).
So, as an atheist what do I fear? My biggest fear is mediocrity… I fear not being able to leave a positive legacy in life. I fear not being looked upon favorably by those around me and being forgotten after my death. Is this fear a founded fear? Possibly not, but it does promise immortality in a more realistic way than religion. Only when one lives on in the memories and manuscripts of subsequent generations, do then achieve a degree of immortality. Think of all the great minds – poets, writers, artists, scientists, kings, rulers, wise men, leaders, educators – who live on in the minds of those who have come millennia after them.
Carl Sagan has an amazing piece of insight as to how we are able to connect to people thousands of years away from ourselves:
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat flexible parts imprinted with dark pigment squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across millennia, the author Is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”
Perhaps my life will lead me down a path that will allow me to touch more lives at some point and my legacy in history will be secured, but alas at some point I will be dead, and it will matter very little to me, and perhaps this is an unfounded fear. But I do strive to make the world a better, brighter place one way or another.
There are many other fears that I personally face, that I’m sure many other atheists face on a regular basis also, but these, that I’ve talked about, seem to give brief examples of the main types of fear in life.
So as my final thoughts, don’t fear being afraid always. It can drive us toward safety, it can drive us to excel, and it can drive us toward our goals. Just be mindful of things that you are unable to do anything about and don’t spend time being afraid of something that you can’t do anything about.
Share in the comments below what your fears are in life, but remember, it’s our one life to live, enjoy it as much as you can and don’t allow fears to get in the way!
Atheist Tyler 