Death of an Atheist

In case you prefer to listen or watch.

This is the story of Kiran, a University of California philosophy professor and atheist who made fun of the word “spiritual” and all it implied. He is flying over India on his way home to California when a small bomb explodes in the cockpit. 

Voice over the intercom: “This is the co-pilot. There has been a small explosion in the cockpit and we are—experiencing—technical difficulties with the wing elevators.” There is muttering and a few gasps. “You must stay calm,” orders the voice. “Keep your seatbelts fastened. Obey all instructions from the assistants. We are doing everything we can to regain control. We have time. 

Still—you—should prepare yourselves.”

The nose of the plane tilts downward.

Kiran is a hard-core realist. He prides himself on steering clear of fantasy. Could this be the end? he thinks. Could it really? He thinks of little Sonya and wonders how she would take it when—it’s too horrible a thought! She needs him. And Ravi. The thought of his children being raised by Lisa alone—no, it can’t happen! It mustn’t!

God, forgive me, Kiran hears an alien voice inside him say. Quiet, you coward! another voice answers. Die by your convictions! Die as you have lived! He repeats the words, Die as you have lived, again and again, like a mantra. God, forgive me, repeats the ancient, alien voice inside him.

For an instant he despises himself, then he takes the matter in hand. He exhumes the long, complicated train of thought that killed God twenty years ago. Piece by piece, argument by argument, plank by plank he reviews it.

He sees the inescapable conclusion—Therefore God does not exist—blazing like a laser beam into an endless Void. He hears the voice of Lucretius: Nothing to fear. The actual moment all there is to fear, then it’s over, over. Just peaceful sleep, everlasting sleep of nothingness. Nothing to fear, nothing to fear. 

Kiran looks around one last time. All these Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs united in one simple thought. A stupendous superstition guaranteed to deliver them safely into the presence of their God or a better next life. He thinks of his life in California, the values and dreams of the gifted set he runs with. He wonders if he has made some—some terrible miscalculation.

“This is the pilot speaking!” Kiran jumps in his seat. “Prepare for a possible crash landing. Lower your head behind the seat in front of you. And God be with you.” In three languages the pilot speaks these appalling words. Two-hundred fifty bodies crouch down. There is some weeping but mostly an astonishing quiet. 

Then Kiran sees himself from a new angle. Systematically he has pumped all spiritual convictions out of himself. His soul is like the vacuum inside a TV tube, and the materialism and worldliness that has vitrified around him are like the shell, the glass of the tube. He knows there is no turning back.

The steeply tilted plane hits the clouds and vibrates as if it will disintegrate before it hits the ground. People whimper, pray, groan, but mostly there is just quiet. Suddenly, as the plane lurches, Kiran glimpses a gray landscape out the window. He unbuckles his seat belt, rears up, and leans over the man sitting next to him: a perverse commitment to realism, a lifelong habit, compels him to see what death looks like as it zooms toward him.

It looks like a millet field. He whips himself back against his seat and tries to dissolve in it. He can’t find one end of his seat belt. What does it matter? He makes his body rigid, as if bracing himself against impact, and squeezes his eyes shut. He waits for that precise moment, that millisecond between consciousness and oblivion. The words Oh God! rush at him pleading and begging and screaming, but he cuts them off.

In their place he substitutes a memory of Ravi as he kicks the winning goal in the last seconds of a child’s soccer game in California. On Ravi’s face there was a smile that lit up the universe. It was the happiest moment that father and son had ever known together. Now he clings to that smile, clings to that smile. With a violent, flashing, pulverizing crash, the Void closes round.

Ther is a jolt, a shock, followed by a sense that something very strange has happened to him. He looks upon a fiery, smoky scene. He runs his hands over his chest. He feels his shirt, feels that it’s open at the collar. It’s amazing. He is intact, he’s not even hurt! He must have been thrown free because his seat belt wasn’t fastened. He studies the fuselage of the burning plane in the millet field, the charred bodies, most still strapped in their seats.

Suddenly he hears the shrieks of women. Now rescuers are milling around, and he tries to tell them he is the only survivor. But they take no notice of him; it’s as if he isn’t even there. Then one of them—one of them seems to walk right through him. Even then he doesn’t understand. Not at first. But when it happens a third time, the truth dawns on him in its full blast.

He realizes in a burst of insight that all the fools of the world have been right all along and that he, the philosopher – how can it be? No, it can’t. But it is! There couldn’t have been any survivors, so he must be among the dead. Yet here he is. He marvels that he is still a conscious, living being. He can even smell the burned bodies. With what? A nose? How absurd! Back on earth he hadn’t the slightest doubt that all that is happening to him was impossible.

But here he is, surprised, humbled, and a bit frightened. But glad, after all, that he was wrong.

This is the way research suggests a man like Kiran might greet his death. The full account, and what follows, is described in my book The Imprisoned Splendor. 

My most recent book, Guardians of the Afterworld, puts all this on display. An upcoming novel, The Hell Dwellers, will showcase life in the Shadowlands. Meanwhile, let us be a force for good in this world. 

Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying?, Heaven and Hell Unveiled and his novel, Guardians of the Afterworld. His latest book, The Hell Dwellers: A Novel about the Dark Side of the Afterlife is coming in 2026. Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.