My answer (edited):
I cope with the grief from the death of loved ones by contemplating the Cosmist possibility, described by many thinkers including Nikolai Fedorov, Hans Moravec and Frank Tipler, that future generations (or alien civilizations, or whatever) may develop technologies to resurrect the dead. A related idea is that our reality may be a “simulation” computed by entities in a higher-level reality, who may choose to copy those who die in our reality to another reality.
Contemplating these possibilities is my way to cope with grief, I hope you will find your own way.
I realize that these ideas may be rejected without consideration by both believers and atheists. Many believers may reject them because they are based on science and possible future technologies, without any concept of “supernatural” (whatever that means). On the other hand, those fully invested in their atheism may reject them because they sound too much like religion.
Cosmism is one of those “third ways” that are often passionately rejected by those who believe in the old ways, but in my opinion it is a Hegelian synthesis of what is good in the old ways: it is firmly based on science, and at the same time it offers all the important mental devices of religion, including hope in resurrection. It is evident that hoping in an afterlife has survival value for both individuals and societies, because it gives people the strength to continue to live instead of withdrawing (or worse) in despair. Cosmism permits hoping in resurrection without giving up the scientific worldview.
The Cosmist ‘Third Way’, in a nutshell
Long version: See my essay Transcendent Engineering published in the Terasem Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness.
Shorter version: See my Ten Cosmist Convictions, co-authored with Ben Goertzel, originally appeared in Ben's A Cosmist Manifestoblog, published in Ben’s book A Cosmist Manifesto.
Very short version: The Manifest Destiny of our species is colonizing the universe and developing spacetime engineering and scientific “future magic” much beyond our current understanding and imagination. Gods will exist in the future, and they may be able to affect their past — our present — by means of spacetime engineering. Probably other civilizations out there already attained God-like powers. Future magic will permit achieving, by scientific means, most of the promises of religions — and many amazing things that no human religion ever dreamed. Future Gods will be able to resurrect the dead by “copying them to the future.” Perhaps we will be resurrected in virtual reality, and perhaps we are already there. See also Transhumanist religion 2.0.
I have written a lot about these convictions, without calling them “beliefs.” But, following William James, since I am persuaded that these convictions are scientifically plausible, and they give me happiness and drive, I choose to hold them as beliefs. As I say in a note to the Ten Cosmist Convictions, I am not using “will” in the sense of inevitability, but in the sense of intention: we want to do this, we are confident that we can do it, and we will do our f**king best to do it. You know that, if you really want to achieve a goal, you must firmly believe that you will achieve it.
Daring to Hope in Resurrection
Bart Centre gives another answer in the excellent article “Dealing with death: How does an atheist cope?” His answer is “It’s enough for me to know the deceased person loved me and I loved them. Enough to know the pain of illness has subsided. Enough to know their contributions to the world will live behind them and their progeny will carry on. Enough to know that the cycle of life is unstoppable, inevitable, and is shared by all living things. It’s enough to know that the oblivion of death is no more fearful than the oblivion that was pre-life. I take comfort in that, we all should.”
Bart’s answer is very good and his considerations are beautiful, soothing and inspiring in their own way, but for me they are not “enough,” because I prefer my own answers. If I were persuaded that death is final and science will never be able to do anything about it, I would certainly take refuge in seeing our lives as small cogs in the wonderful and endless cycle of life, shared by all living things. But I think science will be able to do something about death, and I hope to be copied to the future by means of “future magic” (in the sense of Sir Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law) and to find my loved ones there.
Bart Centre writes: “How easy and comforting it must be to imagine ones dead loved one running in a sunlit field in the afterlife — eternally young, physically perfect, ecstatic, and being chased by their equally ecstatic childhood cocker spaniel. Or surrounded by a few generations of previously deceased relatives who embrace them and welcome them to eternal life and introduce them to their angel friends…”
It is easy and comforting indeed! How about making it true?
To me, these are not supernatural beliefs, but engineering projects: we will have to engineer resurrection, and build Heaven. These are very ambitious engineering projects for the very far future, so the only things that we can do, here and now, is to try to ensure that our specie has a future out there, to avoid extinction, to develop emerging technologies, and to begin our expansion into space. The Cosmist Third Way offers not only relief from the painful grief of death, but also motivation and drive to make the world a better place, here and now.
In “The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead: Dispatches from the Front Line of Science,” Marcus Chown paints a scene very similar to Centre’s:
“As your eyelids begin to fall, coming down like metal shutters on your life, the hubbub of the world fades to a distant murmur. You draw one last breath…”
“… and it is summer and you are young again. Your favorite dog — the one you loved so much as a child and thought you would never see again — has knocked you to the ground and is licking your face furiously. Through tears of joy, you see your father and mother — long dead — standing over you. They are young — just as they were when you were ten years old — and they are laughing and stretching out their hands to you.”
“What is happening? Have you died and gone to Heaven? Not exactly. You’ve been resurrected as a simulation on a computer at the end of time!”
This is the beginning of the last chapter of the book, dedicated to Tipler’s theories. Also the other chapters inspire beautiful and comforting visions, and show that space-time is a strange and wonderful place, so strange and wonderful that, perhaps, our loved ones who left us can be found somewhere out there. The first chapter is titled “Elvis Lives.”
Continuing the Facebook discussion, my friend said “I don’t think I can suspend disbelief about the Omega Point idea of Tipler.” Well, other “simpler” resurrection mechanisms have been proposed, that don’t require waiting until the Big Crunch.
In “The Light of Other Days”, Sir Arthur C. Clarke (who else?) and Stephen Baxter imagine a near future world profoundly transformed by the invention of a “Wormcam”: a remote viewing device that permits scanning any location at any time, including in the past, by using micro wormholes naturally embedded with high density in the fabric of space-time (every space-time pixel is connected with every other space-time pixel). Soon engineers are able to resurrect the dead: “It was possible now to look back into time and read off a complete DNA sequence from any moment in an individual’s life. And it was possible to download a copy of that person’s mind and, by putting the two together, regenerated body and downloaded mind, to restore her…”
But I am afraid atheists will continue to find suspension of disbelief in possible resurrection technologies very difficult… because the concept of resurrection itself (even if based on science) will continue to sound too much like religion to them.
Just a few minutes ago on the KurzweilAI Forums, another friend said “A friend of mine just died… it’s not enough for me to settle for never laughing with her again. Will we EVER be able to correct the travesty that is Death? And how soon til then?”
My answer:
I am very sorry for your loss. Your grief is my grief, and your hope is my hope.
No, it won’t be soon. I think future scientists will be eventually able to “fish” dead people from the past via Quantum Archaeology (whatever that turns out to be) or other time scanning technologies, and copy them to their present — our future — via mind uploading, but it won’t be soon. The scientific and engineering challenges involved are so huge that I believe it will take thousands of years. Or, as Frank Tipler thinks, billions of years.
But the subjective time that we have to wait is simple to estimate, and much shorter: it is the remaining time that we have to live, plus a few seconds to wake up in the future. From her subjective perspective, your friend may be already there, and waiting for you to join and laugh with her again.
Can I offer this as a certainty? No, I can’t. But I can offer it as a scientifically plausible hope. Make the best of your life as your friend would have wished, and, perhaps, you will be reunited with her when the time is right.
Image #1: by Lori Rhodes.