Atheists: What will it feel like not to exist?

Question

Your belief is that when you die, you simply no longer exist. What will that be like? What does it feel like to not exist? I know that sounds like an oxymoron, because if you don't exist, you couldn't feel, but still, I wonder what it would be like to be nonexistant, I cannot fathom such a concept. I could imagine it may be like what it would feel like before being born, but I don't remember that.
(I'm not an atheist, but I'm still interested in hearing what you have to say about this. No god vs. no god debate please, that's not the point of my question, so let's avoid fighting shall we?)

MC I asked for no rude insulting of each others beliefs, is that so much to ask? Why should we respect atheists when you can't even respect us?

Answer 1

I think you hit the nail on the head with the before birth thing.
I think there is some kind of sleep, i cant remember its name, but it is usually the sleep that occurs when sleeping is induced. Anyhow this state of sleep has no dreams so this would be your best chance of knowing what not existing feels like, of course, you only get to think about it when you are back in the waking world.

Answer 2

The phenomenon of non-being is really insanely hard to grasp through any conceptual form. It is easy to say consciousness will just end. And periodically we do have lapses of consciousness in deep sleep, where neurologists have seen that the dreaming activity of the brain stops. But do we remember such non-consciousness? That kind of awareness can't exist if all consciousness is, is being able to grasp a state of being. Buddhists claim there are other states of awareness beyond the conceptual, thinking plane we exist on.. and that through tremendous practice, they can grasp what it is like to stop thinking, yet retain awareness. There are all sorts of spooky schemata and levels of attainment, of that which is very contradictory seeming-- being that they purport to grasp what is also a letting-go.

I'm sure that all people realize this, however, contrary to what you've said, though I agree it's not easy to understand what we patently can't understand-- that the possibility of the impossibility of being is what we face in death. This is Heidegger's notion, and it relates to our everyday experience in the world of being - that which we know and live with. That death will be characterized by lack and nothingness.. we can't truly know, even from a religious point of view, if being (the way which we are now) will exist at all. Anthropomorphising life beyond death is how many choose to cope facing this mystery. But this is a running-away from the phenomenon. Just as incorrect as to fashion God as a human being looming over the earth on a cloud.

Existence is completely questionable after death. If you don't face it, you will get stuck thinking of life as a continuum and never reach any authentic relationship to it.

Answer 3

Nothingness, or rather no-thingness, when properly apprehended by an existing mind, can lead to enlightenment. The hardest thing to know is no-thing. I can't claim to know it. Nor do I understand that to find a lost bull is to know it was never missing.

We are animated by bio-chemical/electrical impulses. That's energy. In my lay understanding of physics, I believe that while energy can change form, it cannot be destroyed. Perhaps, when we leave this shell, this body, our energy rejoins the ambient background radiation of the universe. Perhaps to cease to exist on earth is to feel one with the entire universe. Perhaps I'm not actually atheistic, and instead, while I do not believe in a personified god, separate from and able to influence human affairs, I believe in god as the totality, the sum of everything that there is.

Answer 4

The question presents a hidden contradiction. For it to feel like anything, there must be a subject of feeling, i.e. you. But if you don't exist, there can't be a subject of feeling. So it can't feel like anything at all, because you won't be around to feel it. The difficulty for you is that you are trying to imagine NOW what not existing is like. But you can't do it, because right now you still exist. You can't project yourself into a nonexistent condition in order to see what it might feel like. You won't "find out" when you die either, because then you won't be around to feel anything. This isn't just true for atheists, it's true for everybody.

Answer 5

We didnt feel before we were conceived, so why would we feel anything after we die? And really nobody knows anything about an afterlife until they are dead anyways, and they cant/wont communicate to the living if such thing exists. Live your earthly life to the fullest cuz there's only this one.

Answer 6

When you die, you die. You don't exist; so you can't feel anything. That is it. I think the afterlife is what remains of your memory with people that loved you and that still lives on earth.

I think it's just as difficult to imagine the afterlife in "heaven" though. Where is that? Do they take dogs too? i don't mean to be mean, but it is an interesting question to think about - both ways : )

Answer 7

I have to ask, and I'm not trying to be rude - how will it feel to you to find out that you don't get to go to Heaven when you die? That God doesn't exist, but was something some Alien culture instilled in us so that we would behave ourselves? I haven't died yet so I don't know, but if you are going to ask 'living' people what it's going to be like when they die, if they don't go to Heaven or Hell, then you have to also ask yourself what it's going to be like if there is no Heaven or Hell. Even Jesus said in the Bible that we should question and seek the TRUTH. To understand what someone else's afterlife is going to be like the only true answer is to talk to someone who has died.

I'm not an Atheist either, but your question offended me.

Answer 8

Sleep, as many people have mentioned, is a good approximation. As is being put under a general anaesthetic or losing consciousness due to too much of a good time...

But ultimately, I do believe that your question does indeed make *no sense whatsoever!* What does a round square feel like?

Answer 9

It's not possible for that which doesn't exist to feel or experience anything.

Try this: Remove the contents of your closet. Yes, everything. Now close the door. Close your eyes and picture the empty darkness in that little enclosed space.

That's nonexistence. Or as close as you or I can come to experiencing it.

Answer 10

Have you ever gone to sleep and woke up the next morning having had no dreams at all (or at least unable to remember your dreams)? It will feel like you did in the middle of that night while unconscious. In truth, death is a permanent state on unconscious since the conscious self ceases to be.