Thoughts of 9/11 naturally lead to thoughts of how to deal with death and grief.

The religious have a specific way to deal with death and grief. Non-believers cope in different ways.

Have any non-believers here had to deal with this issue? If so, how did you do so?

Also, how do you deal with the death of a loved one who is also religious?

I do not believe in "souls." Sometimes I like to think, without any basis in known facts, that everything that has ever occurred is somehow remembered in the fabric of the universe, but I cannot reasonably expect to meet up with the dead again. This is how life goes, however: we are born, we live, we die. Our lives overlap with others, some who started before, and some who will end after. We leave things: artifacts, ideas, memories.

Among the good things we leave, many of us also leave a great deal of pain, lodged in the lives of others, where it will linger for many, many years. It does not trouble me that people die, or that I will die someday, and that our personalities will slip away forever. Eventually, when all the last of us are gone, no one will be left to experience the pain we've made for others. But until then, the pain we leave is carried forward by others.

Even without everlasting souls or eternity, we leave wounds. Most of them fade away within a generation, but every generation makes new ones. Religious beliefs that turn people away from real life and real people, that prevent them from healing those wounds, are vicious and terrible. As nonreligious people, we should be the first to deal with death--our own deaths--by living well, and healing the wounds we make before we go.

With the recent passing of Calladus' wife, I feel compelled to share my views on death.

To me, death seems to be a gift. For what is the opposite of death? Immortality? I think that living forever would be a fate worse than death.

To quote from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion (although I can't remember exactly what page this comes from), "Most of the Elves called death 'The Curse of Men', but some of them called death 'The Gift of Men'". It was something like that, if I'm wrong.

In the world of Tolkien, the Elves were immortal, whereas humans were mortal. Some Elves however, willingly chose mortality, for they wished not to see "The passing away of the world".

So, perhaps death is the way in which we become 'one with the universe'. Perhaps death is a state of existence that transcends or is greater than being alive, because it is the end of all consciousness, and thus also the end of all selfishness.

Below is the lyrics for a song by Cynic, called "Uroboric Forms" which I feel relates to this topic.

Self is the universe, not separate
The state before the fall into self consciousness

Nothing is himself, everything is world

[CHORUS]
Primordial egg retains
Consciousness unborn
Pre-personal perfection
When Bliss's screen is yet untorn
Uroboric forms

Find itself as a separate entity
An ego germ is just beginning to be

Wherever there is other, there is fear

Birth, primal paradise
No gap distance or separation
Between self and environment
Unconditional omnipotence

Nothing is himself, everything is world

[CHORUS]

Consciousness unborn
Uroboric forms

Correction: I should have wrote that immortality is the alternative to death, not its opposite. Life would be the opposite of death.