James Lindsay - Life in Light of Death

What is the purpose of life? It isnt Jesus, Muhammad, Yahweh, or any other religious figure, self-help guru, or grand cosmic scheme to be found in the next life. As James Lindsay explains in his remarkably cogent and highly readable exposition on life and death, the meaning of life is to live, and the way to know how to live is vouchsafed to you by virtue of living. How? Read this insightful book to arrive at your own answer.

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People

James Lindsay and I are united by a deep commitment to live well right now. Love is a chief concern in that endeavor. We are divided over the answers to the big questions of life and our understandings of ultimately reality. Where there is no dispute is that Lindsay is one of the best writers Ive read, bar none.

Rick Henderson, Draper Campus Pastor for South Mountain Community Church in Utah

Life in Light of Death is a magnificent little book about the inevitable end to our sojourns on spaceship Earth. James is a nimble writer who does a marvelous job tackling a subject thats inherently difficult to discuss. The book is eloquent, thoughtful, and a genuine pleasure to readI highly recommend it!

Phil Torres, author of The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse and founding director of the X-Risks Institute

Everyone we love will die and be forgotten forever, including us. In this compelling booklet Lindsay argues we can love deeper and live better once we accept this fact. Christians often say their faith leads them to love and life, but Lindsay shows another way: by accepting the truth about death. This is a very important message that should be heeded by everyone!

John W. Loftus, author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity

This book challenged me, a person who thought he was on good terms with death. Life in Light of Death confronts with unflinching honesty lifes most irrefutable truth: we all die. James shows the way our instinctual fear of death affects our daily life for the worse and shows a surprising way forwardto live a good life, we must accept that we will die.

Mike McHargue, author of Finding God in the Waves and host of Ask Science Mike and cohost of The Liturgists Podcast

Pitchstone Publishing

Durham, North Carolina 27705

Copyright 2016 by James A. Lindsay

All rights reserved.

To contact the publisher,

please email

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lindsay, James A., author.

Title: Life in light of death / James A. Lindsay.

Description: Durham, North Carolina : Pitchstone Publishing, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016035354 (print) | LCCN 2016035647 (ebook) | ISBN 9781634310864 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781634310871 (mobi) | ISBN 9781634310888 (epub) | ISBN 9781634310895 ( epdf )

Subjects: LCSH: Death. | Life.

Classification: LCC BD444 .L494 2016 (print) | LCC BD444 (ebook) | DDC 128/.5dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035354

To my parents, who will die,

and

To my children, who will die as well,

and

To Emma McCarter, who never dreamed

shed

be remembered this way

and

never will.

The flight of years began, have laid them down

In their last sleepthe dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw

In silence from the living, and no friend

Take note of thy departure? All that breathe

Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh

When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care

Plod on, and each one as before will chase

His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave

Their mirth and their employments, and shall come

And make their bed with thee. As the long train

Of ages glide away, the sons of men,

The youth in lifes green spring, and he who goes

In the full strength of years, matron and maid,

The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man

Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,

By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, which moves

To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

From Thanatopsis, William Cullen Bryant (17941878)

This book could start dramatically. It could, from the first paragraph, shake you to your existential core, and be fore youre done with it, it may. It should not begin that way, though, because if it did, it would work against its goal.

Hundreds of studies have confirmed that human psychology possesses at least one vulnerability so delicate that even hearing about it will inadvertently produce its effects, changing how you think and, more importantly, what you will believe. It has the power to make you more religious, more set in your thinking and judgmental, crueler to those you perceive to be wrongdoers, more eager for fame, more likely to objectify other people and yourself, more narrow-minded and intolerant, or, on the other hand, more charitable, more interested in having children (and naming them after yourself), and more helpful. It can also make you more gullible.

Only one subject could have such power over human thought and behavior that its mere mention could change your demeanor in such dramatic ways. That subject is death, and being reminded that we will die biases us toward accepting almost any idea that lets us believe otherwise. Many psychologists are devoted to understanding this bias, which arises from what they call mortality salience, and their approaches include terror management theory and emotional priority theory.

Most of us live in terror of death, but we can think about death in a completely different way. Our innate fear of our own mortality misleads us. The subconscious drive to manage terror creates a bias that makes us more open to certain kinds of beliefs and more closed to others. We can use this bias to our advantage, however, so that we can use death as a way to think meaningfully about life and what matters most in it. Death shouldnt horrify us; it should remind us