Un-Hitched Forever?

Christopher Hitchens, the brilliant analytical columnist and abrasive atheist who once famously trashed Mother Teresa , died recently. So, the question naturally arises as to what happens to unbelievers when they die? Their bodies , of course, meet the same fate as those of believers — up in flames or eaten by worms — but what about their souls; what happens to those? ‘Hitch’ , as he was popularly known, didn’t believe he had a soul to start or end with, and would have argued that, obviously , nothing could happen to nothing.

Yet, now a more interesting question looms: namely, which part of Hitch believed he didn’t have another putative part of himself that most people — if not the majority of them — believe exists as a wholly-integral component of their being human ? Was it his brain? His mind? Or was it something else altogether? So passionately committed was Hitch in his conviction that if asked the same question , he would probably have replied that it welled from the deepest part of his mental make-up ; the spirit and essence that formed his total personality, consciousness and psyche.

And if that sounds suspiciously like a soul, so be it; in that case, his soul didn’t believe it existed. Because if it did, should it not have influenced his belief ? And right there is the darkest night of the soul that has confounded thinkers and theologians alike for centuries. Is it a soul’s only function to shed bodies like we do clothes and seek newer ones whose intellect may or may not embrace the idea of an internalised indestructible element residing inside?