The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1893-02-12
Atheism and Immortality.

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A correspondent wishes THE HERALD
to answer the question: "Does an athe-
ist believe in an existence after death
if he does, in what form?"
1t is possible for an atheist to believe in
an existence after death, but. as we I'M
derstand it, atheists generally think that
'sdeath ends all. An atheist is one who
denies the existence of Diety. 1t does not
necessarily follow that he denies man s
existence after death, although it might
seem to some people that one disbelief
implies the other. There are some So
called spiritualists who acknowledge no
personal God, but yet maintain that the
intelligent being which inhabits the body
lives as an individual after the body is
dead
The form in which men exist after
death is pretty generally believed to be
the form they had in physical life. That
is to say, the mortal coil being shuffied
off, the internal spiritual personality
abides in the same shape, but without the
material covering.
There are differences of opinion among
believers in existence after death as to the
form and nature and place of that exist
ence. Some, who think that mind has a
substantial existence distinct from mat
ter, imagine that after death that mind
exists but not in Individual form. Others,
as we have said. affirm that the mind or
spirit of man is personality and main
tains its individuality and form after the
death of the body. There are persons who
claim that the spirit of man is immortal
and that it is immaterial. This is dis
puted by other persons who, while adj
hitting the immortality of mans spirit,
argue that immateriality is the same as
nothingness and that an immaterial sub
stance is an impossibility, contradiction
of terms.
Believers in the immortality of the soul,
meaning the existence of the individual
spirit when the body is defunct, have
usually but vague ideas concerning it. If
it is immaterial, as most religious theo-
rists claim, it can have no form. 1t can
occupy no space. 1t can have no relation
TO time or eternity. 1t can have neither
extension, limits, weight, size, color,
parts. length, breadth or thickness. For
that which is immaterial has nothing
whatever in common with matter.
Probably many people who use the term
immaterial as applied to the spirit of
man, do not mean exactly what they
say. They think of spiritual essence as
something so vastly different from what
is termed matter that they unthinkingly
call it immaterial. But the subtlest gas,
while vastly different in many of its
properties from grosser things, as iron,
wood or earth, is yet material Spirit
may be still more refined than that gas
eous and invisible ether, and yet be a
material substance, tangible and per-
ceptible to that which is similar to itself
or with which it has affinity.
An atheist may believe either OF these
theories while denying Deity. There are
however but very few avowed atheists
and it is matter of doubt whether there
are any at all. The more modern form of
unbelief is that which neither denies nor
affirms but which stands in an attitude of
doubt. 1t says in regard to theological
problems, such as the being of God, of
the soul of man, of existence or
OF consciousness after death, and
Of other religious ideas and ques-
tons 81 do not know" There
are more people in this condition
than have the hardihood to affirm it.
That is a very unsatisfactory and de-
plorable state of mind. 1t is true that
positive knowledge. in the full sense of
the term, may not be very extensive as to
these abstruse matters. But there is a
living, unshaken and abiding faith in
God, in Immortality, in rewards and pun
ishments based on eternal justice, in the
triumph of truth and the overthrow of
error, in the exaltation of goodness and
the abasement of evil, in the eternal asso-
citation of the best and brightest and
noblest beings OF all the ages in a perfect
state of happiness and intelligence.
which is akin to knowledge and forms a
solace in life, support in death and a
herald of glorious future that is beyond
all price: that puts doubt to fight aud
fills the soul with an assurance and a
certainty of divine things that is a con-
tinual satisfaction and q perennial iov.