At the suggestion of one of the moderators of the atheist discussion which, as you may recall, I attend once a month, I recently finished reading a book titled A Manual for Creating Atheists.  It's written by Peter Boghossian a professor of philosophy at Portland State University in Oregon.  Its objective is a rather unusual one.  In contrast to the countless books which Christians write offering advice and encouragement to those who wish to tell others about Jesus, A Manual aims to do the opposite.  It intends to provide helps to unbelievers to talk people of faith out of their faith.  We must eliminate, Boghossian says, the "virus" of faith.
     What thing that struck me about the book was a chapter in which the author writes very honestly about the lack of comfort, as he sees it, that unbelief provides in the face of death.  Although he asserts that ending one's faith opens one to what he calls the "wonder" of existence, what he terms, "the disposition of being comfortable with not knowing, uncertainty, a skeptical and scientific-minded attitude, and the genuine desire to know what's true," he acknowledges that such wonder often isn't enough when a person stands at the door of death.  Faith's greatest appeal, he says, may be "solace--comfort and peace of mind in impossibly difficult times," for as he puts it, "I don't know" what comfort "reality-based reasoning" offers to the ones on the brink of extinction.
     Indeed.  Those who insist that they live by "reality-based reasoning" and this only will indeed face the end of their existence looking at a very dark abyss, an unyielding maw of utter and permanent extinction.  Life may have been thoroughly rational, life may have been fun, but it has failed to answer for the one who has lived it why it even existed.  Why has anyone ever lived and why does anyone who has ever lived one day die?
     Is faith entirely delusional, a hollow but fully felt comfort?  Is the longing for immortality a psychological myth, a mere offshoot of finitude?  Or do we experience and pursue such things because there really is something else besides this material reality, because there really is something more than us in this universe?
     Put another way, do we want to critically think about our lives without really knowing what they mean, or do we want to critically think about our lives knowing that they do indeed have meaning, a meaning that, if it is to be viable, extends beyond the grave?