Atheistic afterlife: What's it like?

Mahavira Nirvana from Kalpasutra     (Public Domain)

Does being an atheist preclude the possibility of an afterlife?  Or at least of a good afterlife?

Depends somewhat upon how “atheist” is defined.  Although some self-proclaimed

atheists have no belief in “the traditional personal deity imagined by Western religions,” they do tend to believe “in an impersonal supernatural realm.”  Such a realm would not be “presided over by a god,” but might instead coincide with “some Buddhist conceptions of karma and reincarnation.”

Others more broadly define atheism as a lack of any belief in life after death.  In other words, the spectrum of atheism includes many and varied afterlife theories.

This indicates that afterlife beliefs do not necessarily hinge upon religious ones.  They can instead be based on physics, i.e., the idea that matter can never be destroyed, but only transformed.

Resources

http://wwrn.org/articles/46177/?place=united-states 

Copyright July 2915 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved