[Peter666]

Let us suppose we have an incredibly strong instinct to live as an evolutionary advantage.

The quandary is that at the same time we are rational creatures. We know that some pain like going to the dentist is good for us in the long run, but other pain is so great that we just want it to end and nothing more. We actually WILL to die, which is our rational nature at work. But why don't we pull the gun out of the drawer and end it right there? We cannot be acting on emotions as those are telling us to kill ourselves now because of the pain. We are not acting through reason, as we know it is better to stop the suffering now because death takes it away (if you are an atheist).

Is there a natural instinct so strong that causes us to fight on? Maybe, but then why do some people still manage to commit suicide on a purely rational basis. For instance I am talking about rich people who do not have physical suffering, or the Swedes who have the best social safety net in the world yet the highest rate of suicide too. And of course there are some people who manage to kill themselves on an emotional level such as when they are spurned by a lover or a loved one dies and they go crazy for a bit.

This suggests that our instinct is not developed to the point of being stronger than our reasoning or our emotions, but there is still no mass suicide amongst atheists. Why? Where are their convictions?

Now religious people who are often derided for their beliefs by many atheists seem to have a much better tolerance for pain. There are instances of them going through what we would deem as unbearable suffering, but able to bear it through their religious convictions, such as the early Christian martyrs.

So from a scientific viewpoint we must conclude that either:

1) When an atheist has suffered great pain and stays alive despite the ability to easily kill himself, he is lying to himself and everybody else if he thinks there is nothing beyond death.

Or

2) Religious people are higher on the evolutionary scale because they have found a way to preserve and perpetuate the human race to a much greater degree due to their ability to suffer, and are thus superior. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]