Probably the second greatest atheist philosopher of the 20 century (behind only Russel) Ayers had his atheist faith greatly shaken after a nde. I never viewed nde as very convincing but I guess some people do.
I'll take John Dewey over Bertrand Russell any day (not that Russell isn't important). Check out
A Common Faith. It's still as relevant today as when it was first written 80 years ago.
As for my views on death and immortality, that's a bit complicated. First, I want to point out that individuals don't seem well-suited to immortality.
In his article "The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality," Bernard Williams argues that rigidity of character would make subjective immortality hopelessly tedious. He cites as an example a character from a play, EM, who has access to a potion that will extend her life indefinitely. After 300 years, EM voluntarily stops drinking the potion in order that she might die. Williams offers the following analysis:
Her trouble was, it seems, boredom: a boredom connected with the fact that everything that could happen and make sense to one particular human being of 42 had already happened to her. Or, rather, all the sorts of things that could make sense to one woman of a certain character; for EM has a certain character, and indeed, except for her accumulating memories of earlier times, and no doubt some changes of style to suit the passing centuries, seems always to have been much the same sort of person.
The deep and abiding problem with immortality is that human beings demand a purpose for their existence, something to which they can meaningfully contribute. Without such a purpose, the profound boredom and apathy which Williams discusses sets in -- not a merely temporary boredom, in which we hope that something tomorrow will grab our attention, but a boredom which leads us inexorably to question the value of our continued existence. For Williams, there is no reason to suppose that there is an interest that could be so utterly absorbing as to occupy a human being for eternity. In any situation he could imagine in which he could live forever, "I would eventually have had altogether too much of myself."
Further, as far as subjective immortality goes (the idea of a soul which continues to have experiences after death) I think it is a bit silly and misses the point, because our personal horizons -- the personal perspective which we identity as "I, myself" -- is devoid of content. It is not a substance which can be saved, or that we can cherish per se. What we cherish is everything which we view within our personal horizons, but not the horizon itself, for we just are the horizon itself. It would be incoherent to speak of an "I" which values my horizon, because it is just the horizon itself doing the valuing. A horizon is the necessary condition of valuing anything at all. And what we finally wish to save is the valued constituents of our consciousness, not the consciousness itself.
It is no wonder, then, that Mark Johnston in his book
Surviving Death speaks of such supernaturalism as at best a distraction, and at worst a deadly enemy. Alfred North Whitehead describes the purpose of religion as "stretching individual interest beyond its self-defeating particularity," but the idea of subjective immortality does just the opposite by glorifying the individual while devaluing the world (and God, too, if you happen to believe in God). Along with Williams, I find it impossible to imagine a "heaven" or an afterlife which could satisfy me eternally, especially since on most conceptions I would be divorced from the hustle-and-bustle of the evolving universe. In the end, we are mortal creatures, and though we may all reasonably wish to live somewhat longer than we probably will, it seems perfectly clear that there can be such a thing as living too long.
But I do think there's something that might be called "objective immortality," in which our conscious selves do not survive, and yet our achievements and projects in this world remain for others to take up. As Charles Hartshorne says in his book
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes:
Does life end in death? A book ends with its last sentence or last word; however, the book does not become the mere silence or blank page following the word. The book of life is all its "words" (actions, experiences), and these form an imperishable totality... Death is not destruction of the reality we have achieved.
While alive, our morals, interests, and projects are our own. We are books still being written, and it is we who do the writing. But death definitively yanks the quill from our hands, with no possibility for further textual edits. It is often said a book or other work of art is never really finished, but abandoned -- so with death. Once we die, our interests no longer belong to us, but to the world -- and the readers of our own book of life will bring their own interpretations to our experiences and opinions. Some of our "readers" may hopelessly distort and misinterpret our lives and wishes, while others may transform and revitalize them in ways we never could have imagined, and it is the possibility of such creative growth and transformation that gives our lives -- and our deaths -- meaning. The most disconcerting part of all this is, of course, the very fact that we no longer have any control over whether and how our interests are carried forward -- this duty belongs solely to those who survive us. It is not what
we thought was most valuable about our own lives that will survive, but what
others felt was valuable about us. All knowledge is partial in its own way, and our value to the larger world is precisely in the way that we fill in the gaps of knowledge and experience that others lack. In this sense, at least, we really do live on in the lives of those we have influenced, whether as an inspiration or a rebuke.
Near the end of
Surviving Death, Johnston observes:
It would be confused to mourn the bottle of Chateau Margaux 1982 (which is something of a work of art) one has just put away, as opposed to wishing that one had another and another and another. That last wish, as it were for the perpetual return of Chateau Margaux 1982, will not remain very stable in the face of all other wines one might try. Rather than wish for the perpetual return of Chateau Margaux, one might reasonably prefer to sample a wider selection. One might be led to the same view about individual personalities.
Personalities are indeed works of art more complex and valuable than any book or bottle of wine could ever be. But it is in their contextualization within the larger universe that we can see the value of death as a necessary part of the renewal of life. To me the idea of life after death is narcissistic -- it assumes that our conscious selves are too important to stop existing. But it is the experiences that are important, not the consciousness itself, and that will be saved in others in a partial way, as much as the survivors wish to save it. That should be enough.
