Three Stages of Disbelief Julian Savulescu I used to be a believer, a ...

an afterlife. Such things seemed metaphysically inconsistent with what I knew of the
world and any scientific understanding of it. The whole thing seemed like a fairy tale
that had served a socially and psychologically useful function in the past, but had just
run out of gas. This was the stage of metaphysical implausibility. It was not profound,
or novel, but it was my experience.
I continued to hold a quasi-God concept. My father, who was a kind, generous
and good man, said he always believed in his own version of God. God came to
represent not a story about the world or the afterlife, but spirituality and the mystical.
I started reading a lot of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and was affected by it. They
seemed to blend religion with philosophy and wisdom.
Dostoyevsky wrote in Crime and Punishment: “Accept suffering and achieve
atonement through it—that is what you must do.” “For broad understanding and deep
feeling, you need pain and suffering. I believe really great men must experience great
sadness in the world.”
And Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace: “To love life is to love God. Harder and
more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved
sufferings.”
These were great writers and students of human psychology. I absorbed their
ideas like a sponge.
But then I finished my time as a medical student and began work as a doctor. I
remember vividly the first death I had to certify as an intern. I went into the room and
the undertaker was waiting to take the body away. I did the necessary tests but then
lingered. The undertaker could see me staring at the gaping, toothless mouth and the
open, glazed eyes.