Secular Morality Begins with Death

While I am certain there are atheists who believe in an afterlife. I am, however, not one of them. For me it is a certain fact that when any living creature dies the components of its body completely break down and are redistributed throughout the world from where they originally came. The mind, or spirit, of an individual is merely the product of the arrangement of structures inside the brain of the individual and are lost forever after death.

For me, this is where secular morality has its foundation. Consider that an individual fork, although useful, is not important simply because it is easily replaced. However, a human being is not like a fork and cannot be replaced. This is where I draw the sanctity of life from. When I think about my friends, family, loved ones and even those people whom I do not like... then I imagine the gravity of death means I find myself struggling to express the full horror that is death. Simply because there is not afterlife, there is no resurrection. Once dead a person is always dead and their spirit lost forever and irreplacable. Their beauty, physically and spiritually, lost to us forever. Their love, care, help, kindness and company never to be felt again. The places they made come alive will also died without them... their prized possessions will become knick-knacks and junk... their deeper meaning also lost to the living.

For this reason there is no crime worse than murder, and the reason for this conclusion is simply because there is no afterlife. If there was an afterlike, then yes, so what if you kill someone? They'll be alive somewhere else or they'll simply reincarnate. As an atheist I often feel uncomfortable with people who believe in an afterlife because I am scared that they don't value human life as preciously as I do.

I sometimes sit next to war memorials and weep as I read the names of the people who gave their lives for their country and communities - wittingly and unwittingly. As an atheist I find their heroism truly inspiring because I don't have nearly that much courage. Sometimes I think to myself, "Did they only offer their lives like that because they sincerely believed in heaven? Or did they on some level know that they were going to die and that would be the end of it and therefore their love and sacrifice was so noble it rightly makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end in awe?"

Honestly, I suspect most people know on some level that death really is final. It doesn't make sense why we would be against murder and war if the great mass of people didn't realise there wasn't an atherlife. The idea that people are against murder on the grounds that a benevolent God would cast them into a lake of eternal fire a punishment doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense in the logically internally consistent way a good argument should but also when someone close to oneself dies one is deeply affected by the loss unless one actually believes in an afterlife. If this person does believe in an afterlife then once again, I feel scared that they do not value life as strongly as I do because feeling deeply affected by a loved ones passing is a natural, rational emotion and for me as an atheist, it is the foundation of a strong moral sensibility.

Once I realised with full consciousness how fleeting, short and fragile life is that is when I feel that I ceased to be a moral entity based primarily on obeying a code of rules but became a person from whom justice truly lives in the heart. To hate murder, to hate war, to hate people who damage the enjoyment of other people's lives pointlessly.

And yes, I do hate, I hate those who take life or spend other peoples life as though they were currency. These people are verily the enemy of life itself.