Life & Mortality Quote by Paul Kurtz

Kurtz is swinging a hammer at the old payoff structure: suffer now, get meaning later. The line is built as a deliberate reversal of religious suspense, where life is a waiting room and death is the real reveal. By rejecting “after death” and the “hidden, mysterious realm,” he isn’t just arguing metaphysics; he’s accusing that framework of moral blackmail. If meaning is always deferred, then authority belongs to whoever claims the map to the beyond.

The biblical imagery is a sly appropriation. The “Tree of Life” is traditionally fenced off by divine decree; Kurtz reopens the garden and tells you to eat. That choice matters. He could have said “seek truth” or “practice virtue,” but “succulent fruit” makes meaning bodily, pleasurable, unembarrassed about enjoyment. It’s humanism with its sleeves rolled up: life isn’t a puzzle to solve, it’s a capacity to exercise.

“Here and now” is more than mindfulness-lite. It’s a political and cultural insistence on agency. Kurtz, a major figure in secular humanism and organized skepticism, wrote in an America where mid-century religiosity still framed public morality and Cold War anxieties made apocalypse feel plausible. His subtext: if this is the only life we can responsibly count on, then creativity and fullness aren’t indulgences; they’re obligations. Meaning is not a cosmic verdict. It’s a practice, made in real time, under real constraints, without the comforting loophole of eternity.