Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, wryly comments that no one has ever met a dead guy who came back to report on the afterlife. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.' In The End of Faith, Sam Harris writes, 'Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. That settles it.'Įvidence of this sort makes atheists apoplectic.

When I raised this issue with a member of my church, he pointed to a sticker in the parking lot, 'The Bible says it. When you demand sources for such a thorough account, you find that they are the familiar ones: The Old Testament, the gospels, the Book of Revelation. Ask a Christian if there is survival beyond the grave and he or she will answer, 'Of course there is.' Pretty soon you are getting the full details about what such a life will be like in the good place and the bad place. The atheist confidence that there is no afterlife is, of course, matched by the religious believer's confidence that there is. So what do they know that we don't, and how did they come to know it? And this is the 'knowledge' that Dawkins and Dennett are disseminating in their books and articles. In other words, they act as if they know that there is no such life. Reviewing these episodes, I am intrigued that these two leading atheists seem willing to go to their deaths without taking seriously the possibility of life after death. In an essay published after his recovery, Dennett wrote his atheism emerged quite intact and in some ways strengthened. It was, Dennett admits, a 'harrowing experience' which tested his atheism.

A few years ago, Daniel Dennett went in for a serious nine-hour heart operation that could well have been fatal. Asked why he might contemplate such a strange thing, Dawkins replied that he was sure religious believers would spread rumors that he had converted on his deathbed, and he wanted to make sure there was a record to show he did not.Įqually insistent about maintaining his unbelief in the face of death is philosopher Daniel Dennett. Recently I saw atheist Richard Dawkins being interviewed on Bill Maher's television show, and Dawkins declared that he wanted to have his own death videotaped. He takes on Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and more to say their arguments lack evidence. In this provocative essay, Dinesh D'Souza argues that the atheist critique of life after death is actually irrational. Dinesh D'Souza on Life After Death: The Atheist Delusion

Life After Death by Dinesh D'Souza