Atheists are prepared to go only till
their scientific tools (which are dependent on your senses) can go. That means
if an atheist is happened to be around a man whose senses do not work, then the
existence of this very atheist will be in question!
As the writer points out, atheists will cherish their own beliefs in privacy. For many of them,
this life is all there is. There is nothing before, after or any time else, and
following death, its a return to nothingness. Some atheists offer themselves
whimsical comfort by saying that before this slice of life happened, there was
an infinite period when we didn’t exist and after we die, there is going to be
another infinity when we won’t either. Nevertheless since there is no evidence
to the contrary we may find ourselves continuing in some kind of post-mortem
existence, with no overtones of paradise, retribution or any kind of divine
paraphernalia. Of course, this is an area that only fringe researchers explore,
yet even some prestigious scientists, notably the impeccably credentialed Ian
Stevenson, who was director of the Division of Personality Studies at the
University of Virginia, have endorsed it. Among other things, he devoted the
last 40 years of his life to the scientific documentation of past-life memories
of children from all over the world. In the end, he had over 3, 000 cases on
record in his files and many people, including sceptics and scholars, agree
today that these offer the best evidence yet for life after death. But here is
the twist: almost all non-spiritual atheists regard his work or the evidence he
may have garnered over a lifetime as nonsense, while conveniently forgetting
that Dr Stevenson was as much an atheist as any of them, if not more. Its just
that some people believe in a far richer non-theistic experience than one that
has only an arid landscape on the horizon with little other than chance and
nothingness calling the shots.
