DEATH AND CONSOLATION

Death, of course, has been a major theme of the Bush administration, so immediately after announcing he would spit in the eye of the electorate and escalate the war in Iraq, George presented the Medal of Honor to the grieving parents of 23 year-old fallen hero, Cpl. Jason Dunham at a White House ceremony. Consolation is one of the services provided by God and His spokespeople, so it only seemed natural that our Born Again knight be seen as the Chief Consoler. Tearing up, the president offered the Dunham's his condolences, did the solemn thing with his lips, exchanged hugs and kisses, and chivalrously showed them the door.

Consolation has religious underpinnings, and warring leaders must use it to maintain morale. A soldier who fears death is a bad soldier. Parents who fear death make bad parents of dead soldiers. Religion offers military commanders a way through this logistical quagmire.

The Roman Catholic Church, to single out one, has always sold consolation and prayers. After scaring us half to death with the notion of sin, hell, and purgatory, religion offers the antidote to it's own malady, in the form of consolation.

Back in the middle ages, the Church sold "indulgences" for money, issuing signed certificates specifying the number of days you were in remission in purgatory -- that hellish half-way house where dead souls go for remedial tweaking before entering the "sin-free" zone of heaven. In the Church's own version of the Nigerian Internet scam, the rich could afford to buy parole from purgatory. Prayers could also be bought, and for the right price, you could provide for your soul in perpetuity.

Since 95 percent of Americans believe they will survive death, it is a wonder they even need consolation to get over it. Why not celebrate and throw parties? Congratulations should be offered the dying: after all, they'll be in the loving hands of God. The Muslim idea of martyrdom is a perfect example, and certainly one that George Bush experienced as he sat reading "The Pet Goat" while the world was falling apart around him.

Strangely, religion seems not to be the great comfort it's made out to be. Indeed, the opposite turns out to be the case. Surveys show that religious folk fear death far more than non-believers. And this manifests itself on the political scene. It is always the religious nuts who condemn the peaceful, painless transition offered by euthanasia, or assisted suicide, when there is no hope of a cure. You would think the religious folks would be the last people to cling unbecomingly to earthly life.

Atheists approach death very differently. They have nothing to fear, because fear was not front-loaded into their operating systems. Instead, they appreciate the gift of life, realizing that every day must be lived to the utmost precisely because it is finite. Squandering life through belief in dogma, or war, is the only sin in their belief system. And death is nothing to worry about. As Mark Twain so aptly put it:

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."