In the history of mankind, has a theist ever converted to atheism on his or her deathbed?

If so, I've never heard of it. The closest I've seen is a die-hard atheist like Christopher Hitchens refusing to reconsider his rebellion against the creator as death's door opens.

Anthony Flew was an articulate and celebrated atheist until he encountered the empirical facts that falsify atheism--the Big Bang at the beginning of time and space, the fine tuning of the constants on which life depends, the impossibility of getting information from chemicals to organize a living cell.

When a man is at the end of life and has the leisure to reflect on life, it would certainly bring no closure or resolve to embrace absurdity and meaningless.

Cheers,

Bruce

There is no way that anyone can give a true yes or no answer to this question unless someone around has been present for the death of every theist that has ever lived. The most honest answer one can give is "I don't know".

And by the way, there is absolutely zero faith involved in being an atheist. It does not require any faith for an individual to acknowledge that he or she possesses no belief in any kind of god or deity. You might as well say that it takes more faith not to believe in any unicorns than it does to believe in unicorns.

ADDENDUM: There are huge flaws in your conclusion. First, the properties of quarks are demonstrative. Ever since the scattering experiments were introduced, the existence of quarks has been repeatedly demonstrated, even to the point where classifications-or flavors, as they are called-were necessary to introduce. Quarks were clearly observed in the Fermilab experiments and continue to remain so today. there is NO DIRECT PHYSICAL DEMONSTRATIVE EVIDENCE for the existence of ANY god or deity. There is absolutely no test, there is no demonstration, there is no experiment, nothing observable, testable or empirical that absolutely reveals of a thing that could only be called a god or a deity...and please...don't insult our intelligence by claiming that simply looking at the "wondrous and miraculous" natural processes around us 'reveal' some kind of god or deity. All you are doing is looking at a process, deciding that it's much too 'amazing' to be natural and inferring that some divine intelligence must be responsible. I challenge to actually to demonstrate the existence of some god or deity. That's why religion is absolutely fueled by faith...if any god or deity was a clearly visible, observable, rationally objective construct, then faith would never be necessary.

The second major problem you have is this ridiculous assumption that having no belief in something requires a level of faith. My unicorn analogy, despite your protest, fits the bill quite well. You obviously don't believe in them...but then again, why should you? Like gods and deities, there is absolutely no good evidence that they exist. If someone looks about them and decides the so-called evidence for a god or deity is not convincing, then it isn't. There is no faith involved in that. When someone examines arguments in favor of the existence of some god or deity and sees where the arguments are weak or lack logical consistency or are just plain wrong, then this is nothing more than an exercise of intelligence, not faith. As I've said more than once before, if a person earnestly has no belief in something because they find the evidence lacking, then faith does not enter into the equation. Atheism is a completely non-faith equation.

Third, if we're gonna talk about like there is some god or deity that exists, then which one is it? Is it Jehovah? Is it Allah? Is it Gaia? Is it The Tao? Is it the Universal Kami? What makes one more 'right' than the other? If you believe in one supreme god and discount all others, that makes you an atheist of sorts as well, so that does mean you have double faith?

Conversion to atheism usually occurs prior to the last hours of life, however in the entire history of mankind as you put it, it is statistically probable that a deathbed conversion to atheism has occurred numerous times

I fail to see the importance of death bed conversions of any sort.

EDIT--I have never heard of death bed deconversions. It is important to note that as opposed to what the mass-market apologetics books claim, atheism is not a religion. You do not convert to atheism. The process of leaving ANY religion for atheism is better called "deconversion." While I don't know of any cases of this myself, it does not mean that it did not happen.

EDIT--Actually, no it isn't true. Atheism is a position of lack of faith--as in, one has no reason to believe the claims of the Bible, Koran, etc. without evidence for the metaphysical claims associated with them. The claim that it takes more faith to be an atheist is based on the faulty premise that one would have to have total knowledge of all things in the universe in order to know that there is no God, which is false in any case, but also misrepresents the position of atheism. Atheism is the position of non-believing your claim that there is a god in general and that god is your god in particular. All one needs in order to reasonably maintain that position is insufficient evidence from you. Because of this, it takes zero faith to be an atheist--that is until you can show that the probability that your claim for god is true given available evidence is greater than the probability of the negation of your claim given the same evidence, which reduces to a disagreement over the interpretation of the evidence.

Now you have to show why your interpretation of the evidence is the most likely interpretation of the evidence, and even if you assume statistical independence of the probabilities of rival interpretations to give you a maximal value, you still have not precluded the validity of other claims based on other evidence.

Essentially you are left with two choices: either lump all the evidence for all rival claims together as a single pool of evidence then find the likeliest interpretation, which reduces the chance that your own is true, or you can separate the pools of evidence and evaluate them in terms of the claims that they purport to support, which means you can have multiple claims (from the Bible, the Pali Canon, Taoism, Koran, Mabinogion, etc.) with their own pools of evidence which yield probabilies comparable to that of your own, which means that OTHER claims can be true in light of that evidence.

There is no conversion to atheism. Atheism is simply not being religious. There is no program to it.

I'm sure that at some point, somewhere, someone has damned God on their death bed. I wouldn't call that being an atheist, but in most theist's viewpoints that would not be the best thing to do just before meeting your maker.

Jesus himself asked why his God had forsaken him as he hung on the cross.

in no way heard of a Christian giving up faith that has been shown with the aid of close to death reviews to be genuine. I rather have, although seen the two ends of death, so which you're able to desire to chat. I watched my maternal grandmother, a woman who enjoyed God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit with all her heart, die in peace. She could dream approximately heaven. She could let us know what she observed whilst she grow to be going out and in of information on her deathbed. I firmly have faith that she is in heaven. I additionally observed my paternal grandmother in her death. She did no longer have faith that there grow to be a hell and subsequently observed no reason to settle for Jesus's forgiveness, death and resurrection. She thought that heaven could have been an computerized for her. whilst she grow to be death, it grow to be the different of the different grandmother. She could awaken shaking, and begging my dad to no longer permit her flow back to sleep. She could grab his hand and tell him that they have got been hurting her. She could scream and cry with each and all of the potential that she had left. i rather have faith she grow to be experiencing hell, yet do no longer opt to have faith that's the place she is. Like they say, you in no way comprehend what someone says or prays or clings to in those final seconds.

I think I see where you're going with this, but if we are truthful, I have to say YES< it's quite possible that many have cursed God on their deathbeds for their sorrows and pains and suffering...Don't you?

Probably not. Your brain is starting to fail as you die.

A failing brain is more a symptom of gaining religion than losing it.

Probley happened sometime in history...

Has a paratrooper ever thrown away his parachute when the plane is about to go down?