If ever we take the trouble to put together a proper Atheist Bible, it will likely be packed with the sort of non-fictional essays that Christopher Hitchens collected to great effect in The Portable Atheist, but it should leave some room for a section of atheistic parables: short and memorable and impactful fictional pieces such as The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov.
The first time I read this short story, more than twenty years ago, I was appalled by the implications, but this is as one might well expect, as I was still a devout Christian at the time. I’m not going to spoil the story here, but I will excerpt the beginning just to get you started:
Murray Templeton was forty-five years old, in the prime of life, and with all parts of his body in perfect working order except for certain key portions of his coronary arteries, but that was enough.
The pain had come suddenly, had mounted to an unbearable peak, and had then ebbed steadily. He could feel his breath slowing and a kind of gathering peace washing over him.
There is no pleasure like the absence of pain – immediately after pain. Murray felt an almost giddy lightness as though he were lifting in the air and hovering.
He opened his eyes and noted with distant amusement that the others in the room were still agitated. He had been in the laboratory when the pain had struck, quite without warning, and when he had staggered, he had heard surprised outcries from the others before everything vanished into overwhelming agony.
Now, with the pain gone, the others were still hovering, still anxious, still gathered about his fallen body –– Which, he suddenly realised, he was looking down on.
He was down there, sprawled, face contorted. He was up here, at peace and watching.
He thought: Miracle of miracles! The life-after-life nuts were right.
And although that was a humiliating way for an atheistic physicist to die, he felt only the mildest surprise, and no alteration of the peace in which he was immersed.
He thought: There should be some angel – or something – coming for me.
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