It makes absolutely no sense to wish to remembered after one dies unless one believes in the communication of the diseased with the living. This is the simple, raw truth. Yet, we see many intellectuals that often aspire towards atheism to lead lives that aim towards that path while scorning the religious folk that long for paradise.
The majority of philosophers, scientists and thinkers that do not embrace any religious belief choose to reject money and common earthly pleasures and rather dedicate their lives to put their name on the spine of a book or become famous. I had this debate with quite a few philosophers and writers plenty of times. They would mention me famous people that became famous after their death while they lead poor and miserable lives when they were alive.
Being wrong and not being on time are the exact same thing. One can be too soon or too late and they will still be wrong. Whether that is an investment, idea or novel it makes little difference. Many philosophers, thinkers and scientists appear to have been "ahead of their time" but this only makes sense in hindsight. The matter of fact is that in their time they failed to address the problems they saw around them. Only after the world evolved into an unknown entropic sequence we come as judges to evaluate the whole situation. That's similar to asking for advice about winning numbers from someone who just won the lottery.
Many people fail to grasp this line of reason. The now. There is no definite past, there is no clear future there is not even a coherent now. Things change on a constant rate from our viewpoint. The past is riddled with noise, mashed up dreams and broken memories. The future is unknown and full of speculation that only makes sense once we choose to see only the "hits" and forget the "misses". Such is the tragedy of the human condition .
The religious individual and the intellectual atheist are much the same when it comes to perceiving what life is all about yet they might frown upon one another. They will both often fail to live this life, the now, and rather engage in their own way of rituals and belief about the a specific version of after life.
Both believe in the pleasure received after their biological death. The intellectual atheist will be remembered and take pleasure from this thought in the present time. The afterwards pleasure will be a demonstration of intellectual dishonesty from their part. The religious person might do the same when they believe about heaven but at least they are intellectually honest about the version of the world they believe to be true.
Nonetheless, they both invest in the hope of pleasure after they are dead. They are more alike than they think yet they will often debate with one another about the "existence" and validity of reality. Existence, obviously, does not matter for either of them. What matters is a promise that they made to themselves about the future when they will both perish.
All humans carry religiosity. Being an atheist or religious is rather irrelevant when one starts breaking down the intricacies and motivations humans have. Our brains are constantly constructing worlds that do not exist. Whether that is a memory of the past, a potential future, paradise or a longing of someone reading our things after we die of little importance. Deep down we all know the harsh truth yet we are afraid to explore it. How many of us worship the inventor of the transistor or the first developer of the led screen even if both of these inventions dominate almost everything we do daily. We are all going to be forgotten very soon and for this reason we all create our own heresies, our own religions. Such is the human condition.
