About a year ago, I was involved in my first ever “crash-call”. A crash-call in a hospital setting basically means that a patient who you are not expecting to die has a cardiac arrest, and every medical professional within the sound of an emergency alarm goes into action to try to save their life. To a layperson it probably seems like all hell has broken loose, but when you know what’s going on it’s actually very impressive to see it done well (in hindsight, anyway: at the time your adrenaline is so ramped that you physically shake and it’s the fact that you are trained and drilled in this stuff until it’s second nature that keeps you doing the right things). One person runs the whole thing; contrary to what Scrubs teaches you, that is not usually a doctor (because there often isn’t a doctor around at that point) – it’s usually whichever qualified nurse gets there first or the most senior nurse present; the whole thing gets taken over by the crash team when they arrive, but that can be up to fifteen minutes, or even longer if it’s the middle of the night and there’s another crash going on, or if you’re in a small hospital with no permanent doctor cover and have to wait for paramedics (fun fact: You’re more likely to survive a heart attack if you’re in a shopping mall than if you’re in a hospital – this is absolutely true).

I’ll take time at this point to big-up the crash-teams; those dudes are some seriously under-appreciated folks, and odds on one day they’ll save the life of you or somebody you know. Remember that next time you see a sleep-deprived looking junior doctor sprinting down a hospital corridor, and get the hell out of their way!

Anyway, on the day in question I walked past a patient’s room in time to see my ward manager pull the emergency alarm for a patient who I’d been nursing for about six weeks. We collapsed his bed back and I dialled the number for the crash team. Even this is a standardised, drilled, rehearsed procedure: The number is the same for every UK hospital that has a crash team (I’m not going to tell you what it is – the world is full of sick people who think prank calls are funny). You dial the number, it gets answered immediately and you say:

“Hello. Cardiac arrest, Ward [insert name of ward]”

Then the infuriatingly calm lady on the other end of the phone says:

“Cardiac arrest, Ward [insert name of ward], thank you.”

Then you thank her back and you both hang up. I can absolutely promise you that that is the shortest, most frightening ‘phone call you will make in your entire life.

By this point, there will be two or three other staff in the room, one doing chest compressions, another with a bag and mask, ventilating the patient (though I understand that in non-hospital emergency life support in the US they don’t do rescue breaths anymore, just chest compressions). A third nurse will be preparing the crash trolley or sticking defibrillator pads on the patient (they’re not like the ones you see on ER; the new ones are all singing, all dancing – and they tell you what to do. You just stick the pads in the right place and do what you’re told). The rest of the staff will be staying the hell out of the way. There might be a fourth ready to take over chest-compressions (which are bloody hard work after twenty minutes or so, let me tell you) when the first gets tired, but that’s it.

We didn’t save the patient that day.

My abiding memory of the experience is this: Watching my patient’s body and face go from taught and alert to slack and dead in under half a second. I watched the moment of his death, and I’m sure I will remember his name and his face for the rest of my life.

I didn’t know how to react after it was all over; I just worked non-stop until the end of the shift and then went and ‘phoned my mother to talk about it. Mums are awesome like that. The hard part for me was grasping that sudden transition from something to nothing happening right there in front of me.

Recently, this was brought home to me even harder by the sudden death of one of my best friends; he took an accidental overdose of insulin and fell asleep before the symptoms of hypoglycaemia set in. He subsequently fell into a coma and died, to be found by his partner the following morning. I cannot even imagine her pain at having to do CPR on his cold, dead body until the ambulance crew arrived.

What struck me from that experience was the incredible sense of disbelief that I felt; last time I saw my friend, we were sitting in the sunshine watching cricket and drinking beer. He had a very secular funeral, where we listened to his favourite rock music at the crematorium and said our goodbyes.

I find myself wanting to talk to him a couple of times a week, to the point where I drunkenly texted his ‘phone one evening to berate him for dying. Me. A staunch atheist. Weird.

And then I thought about it:

I have no framework for grieving. Different religions and cultures provide for different routines in grieving – ways to dress, rituals to follow, time-scales to adhere to. African Caribbean people in the UK sometimes still have open-casket funerals (something I maintain would have helped me to say my last goodbye to my friend properly), Muslims and Christians have their various traditions, Hindu people wash and dress their dead relatives as a final farewell.

I genuinely understand why people find comfort in religion. I would love to think that I’ll get to see my friend again one day and to finish all those silly conversations that we had while drunk and philosophising (well, drunk anyway) and to be able to tell him how much he meant to me as a friend. Problem is, I don’t believe that. Neither did he.

As an essentially culture-less, Caucasian, middle-class atheist, how should I grieve? I honestly do not know. The lesson I learned in my first crash-call was that one second you’re alive and the next you’re dead, so you’d best make the most of the first part – because the second part lasts a long time and you don’t get a do-over. Applying that to a close friend (who wasn’t yet thirty, by the way) is a very difficult thing to do. I miss him tremendously and I know that it’s going to be a long time before the pain of his absence is lessened. In the meantime, if I figure out a secular grieving regimen, I’ll let you know.

I was listening to Muse the other day—specifically the song “Thoughts of a Dying Atheist.” Here’s a highlight from the lyrics:

and I know the moment’s near
and there’s nothing you can do
look through a faithless eye
are you afraid to die?

it scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see
and it scares the hell out of me
and the end is all I can see

Of course, it got me thinking about my own mortality, and the natural fear of nonexistence. For me, the knowledge that I will end just makes my brief existence all the more meaningful and precious. What kind of response do these kinds of thoughts elicit for you?

In Heaven, Newsweek’s religion correspondent, Lisa Miller, has written a fascinating millenniums-long history of the idea of heaven, spliced with some surprisingly mediocre reporting on present-day believers. At its core is a (very politely administered) slap to the American consensus. The heaven you think you’re headed to—a reunion with your lost relatives in the light—is a very recent invention, only a little older than Goldman Sachs. Most of the believers in heaven across most of history would find it unrecognizable.

Heaven is constantly shifting shape because it is a history of subconscious human longings. Show me your heaven, and I’ll show you what’s lacking in your life. The desert-dwellers who wrote the Bible and the Quran lived in thirst—so their heavens were forever running with rivers and fountains and springs. African-American slaves believed they were headed for a heaven where “the first would be last, and the last would be first”—so they would be the free men dominating white slaves. Today’s Islamist suicide-bombers live in a society starved of sex, so their heaven is a 72-virgin gang-bang. Emily Dickinson wrote: ” ‘Heaven’—is what I cannot Reach!/ The Apple on the Tree—/ Provided it do hopeless—hang—/ That—”Heaven” is—to Me!”

You can read the whole review on Slate.

Jennifer is my daughter. She’s three.

Puss-puss was my mother-in-law’s cat. It was hit by a car several weeks ago and, yes, its name really was Puss-puss.

Last week Jennifer and I went for a walk. Just out of the driveway, she asked me to hold her hand because, “I don’t want to get runned over.”

I explained her grammar error and obliged.

Without any regard for my explanation she went on, “If I get runned over, I will be dead and gone like Puss-puss and you won’t see me anymore.”

That’s a pretty good summary of being dead, isn’t it—gone and seen no more? I hadn’t really thought about it until she said that, but when the cat died, I explained that it was simply gone and not coming back. Apparently, she understood it.

It certainly gives lie to the silly idea that death is something children can’t understand, doesn’t it?

Death isn’t confusing at all: We’re gone and won’t be seen anymore. What makes death confusing and confuses children is pretending that dead people (or cats) are really somehow still alive. Or anything other than what they are: dead and gone.

Reality is seldom as confusing as lying about it.

As atheists we should never deny reality. In fact, if you think of the things commonly categorized as “too hard to understand”, “too confusing”, or “too mature” for children, you’ll find things like death, sexuality, and procreation—things Christians are afraid of and lie about.

As relevant atheists, we should never deny reality by not recognizing and rejecting the Cultic American Culture’s taboos that lie about it.

1. Crushing Debt
   Two bankrobbers attempting to make a sizeable withdrawal from an ATM died when they overestimated the quantity of dynamite needed for the explosion. The blast demolished the building the bank was housed in and killed both criminals.
2. Double Dip (2009 runner up)
   For the first time ever, a woman–yes, a member of the safer sex–made it into the year’s Top Darwin Awards Contenders! 2009 Antepenultimate Winner is the North Carolina woman who jumped into a swollen creek to rescue her drowning…moped.
3. Dying to Go (2009 runner up)
   We’ve all been in his shoes, taking that fateful whiz at the side of the road. After all, “You don’t buy beer, you just rent it.” Traffic was deadlocked, so the waterlogged man climbed out, put his hand on the divider, and jumped over the low concrete wall… only to fall 65 feet to his death. “He probably thought there was a road, but there wasn’t,” said a Fort Lauderdale police spokesman. The car was idling on an overpass above the railroad lines.

Click here to view the embedded video.

His proof is near death experiences. He says atheists are “very worried” about that evidence.

Anyone here worried about that “evidence”? Anyone? Anyone?

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The 9-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

This is an instance where Christianity is destructive. If they could be convinced witches and demons didn’t exist — which are beliefs that stem from a supernatural/religious worldview — I think this sort of behavior would drop substantially, if not completely.

For instance, recently a man was trapped in an elevator lift in Vienna, Austria. Gunther Link prayed out to God to save him, and someone came and rescued him. Praise God!

He rushed to a Catholic church to thank his magnificent God for saving his life.

And as he was praying, he apparently embraced a stone pillar, which toppled over on him, crushing and killing him. His body was found the next day when parishioners attended Mass.

If a god existed who performed such practical jokes, would he deserve our praise and worship? Christians and Catholics would have been happy to give god “all the praise” for saving that man’s life. But on his death, they are silent. They might point to the devil, or be willing to leave it to “chance.” But they should know better. If god is responsible for saving people, he is also responsible for killing them — either directly by performing the deed, or indirectly by non-interference.

What kind of god would do such a thing? And even if such a god did exist, would he deserve our worship?

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Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter.

Common evangelical beliefs, right? Many Christians would say “Amen!” to that if it was said by a preacher.

It’s actually taken from the online journal of George Sodini, the man who killed 3 women and hurt 15 by opening fire in a LA Fitness gym a few days ago.

It was his justification for killing people. God forgives sin, salvation is not based on works but on faith. You can kill people — like biblical heroes did — and still have the favor of God.

He knew he had some problems, and he blamed a church he attended for 13 years for them:

“Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!”, as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy shit, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven…. guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage.” [December 31, 2008]

I know virtually all pastors would say killing people like this was a sin, and they’d probably be happy to say he went to hell. And I’m thankful they don’t follow what the Bible says about who should be killed, because the God of the Bible certainly didn’t have a problem with mass murder in certain contexts, seeing he did it and commanded it numerous times.

Would this man have killed those people if he wasn’t brainwashed? He was obviously mentally unstable, so perhaps he would have. I don’t know. But what I do know is he killed people with religion as his justification and comfort, like so many others do. Is there any different between him and a brainwashed Muslim who will kill himself for paradise with his God? It seems like you have to be mentally unstable to believe that, too.

George didn’t need prayer. He didn’t need Jesus. What he needed was someone to help him through his problems, and if he couldn’t be helped, to be locked up in order to protect others.

Perhaps some people need religion to be moral, but does that really make up for all the evil people do in the name of religion?

See also: Before Aerobics Massacre, Sodini Read Sexist Christian Author’s Book; Gym shooter posted video monologues online

Will humanity conquer death, either organically or digitally?

I think either have a possibility. We might be able to regrow our bodies/organs and if necessary transfer our memories or our brain.

Or we could build some kind of matrix where our memories could be stored digitally. Of the two, I certainly prefer the organic option!

What do you think? Is it possible?