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To a proselytizer who followed me, hoping the faint resemblance of my
dogs to the cartoon wolves on the cover of a tract would interest me in his
literature: Have you ever seen somebody survive a stroke or other brain injury? Depending on where in the brain they are hurt, and how badly, they lose some of their abilities--ability to sense certain things, move certain parts of their bodies, or accomplish certain kinds of thinking. If the injury is bad enough, the loss is permanent. Spend some time in the stroke ward of a hospital, and see all the different things that can happen when different parts of the brain are suddenly killed. The more you observe, the more obvious it will become that death is the situation in which all parts of the brain stop functioning, and there's no more thinking, feeling, fearing, enjoying, seeing, or doing anything after death. Death is final. Real life is all we've got. Once you realize this, you can no longer spin your wheels on myths, on fear of post-mortem retribution or hope for post-mortem reward or appeasing the imaginary tyrant of an imaginary never-never land. The world is here, and you're here now. That feeling of wanting to do good for others is a natural human feeling, arising from the fact that humans who band together for common good tend to outlive loners and reproduce more. The desire to do good doesn't come from a spiteful father-of-all-fathers, not from a magical snake and magical bird, and not from a nebulous "spirit of perfection." Shake the superstitious dust from your eyes, wake up, and live! If you want to do good, do it--not the mindless, painless, undignified busywork of proselytizing, but the hard work of empowering those who can function for themselves, including yourself, and alleviating the suffering of the rest.
Matthew H. Fields, composer |