i am partially familiar with why poeple become athiets,though you may want to explain is if you feel the need to, but then what? dont they belive that death is just a perpetual non-existence and oblivion for all eternity or what do they belive anyway?
We are just like animals, we die and theres nothing more. It’s like going to sleep.
I don’t believe in god, at least the way Bible describes god. Neither any other religions. One of the reasons for that is the fact, that most famous religions state that they are the only “true” religions.
So, the only thing I know, is that I don’t know anything about god. I can not prove that god does not exist. Can you prove that he does? I can’t state what death is, because I’m not sure what is life…
I consider religion to be just a simle way out for people. But I don’t mind “mild”, or non-radical religion. Fundamentalism, however, is a disease that should be eliminated (in my opinion). No offence.
Drift,
One does not choose to be an athiest in my personal experience, one simply becomes an athiest.
I was raised Catholic and I tried to hold on to my faith yet I can no longer believe in God.
Whether to you that means I’m confused makes no difference, but the way I see it I just understand the way things are.
You ask how an atheist copes with death.
Well I assume that I cope with it the same way that you do.
Drift, to be honest, you know that you do not really know what happens when you die.
You are still confused about that yourself, I assume.
I don’t have to believe in God to think that it is possible for there to be something after death. Yet I do not know…
I have a hard time understanding the concept that after I die, there will be nothing…the fact that I have experienced consciousness makes it hard for me to believe that I can simply slip into nothing.
I think about this rarely though, as it really makes no difference.
I have to live now and worry about death when I get there.
I’m a procrastinator by nature 
then you follow the words: “move on”
i don’t throw death and eternity together , that would be like an endless well of lost souls that eats any organic thing given by fate.
i recall a memory of an unfamiliar family and the corpse of my possible last body i watched over it , given some time i slowly faded as a spirit ,
then before i knew it i had regained a new body , i actually fully had my memory and all senses working at age 4 or 5 , i can’t really say this is a phenomena because i mean i’m honest but i’m also not to sure about the events even though i still can’t escape those moments or feelings that seemed like “death”, i know this sounds very fiction-like but it’s not.
Drift,
I often wonder how thiest deal with death.
According to you, I’m going to hell FOREVER. Doesn’t that bum you out? I mean… I’m a pretty decent guy right?
As Elaine Beniss would say, “You could care that I’m going to hell, even though I’m not!”
That’s so true (and also for the theists). This is something that should feature more prominently in religious discussions.
Re death, I am a bit gutted that I’ll eventually die, but I’m not scared of it, as it will be a non-existence, rather than a bad or emtpy one.
Drift is Jehovah’s Witness, as I said before.
He does not believe that “hell” exists, or that souls are immortal.
He believes that “the eternal fire” represents eternal destruction, and he also believes that “God/Jehovah/YHWH” will eventually ressurect all of the dead people who “deserve” to live in an eventual paradise on earth, when “God” is “ruling earth” “again”. The factor of/for ressurection is whether or not a person would fit into “God’s” plans for the future, and this would mean you would have to be a person that is willing to or able to stop being “evil”/“sinful”. People that are good morally, or potentially good morally, will get this eventual, theoretical “ressurection on a paradise earth”.
The idea was that originally in the “Garden of Eden” the earth was “like it was meant to be”, and humans were also “like they were meant to be”. No predators, not human death, etc. It was a different eco-system, in which people were like Christ, peaceful and “perfect”. Then, a percentage of “God’s” creations defected, and “chose” to become “evil”. Instead of destroying them, “God” allowed them to do things on their own, and prove whether or not their way of doing things was “right”, thus he allows a Godless and immoral earth to exist without much intervention.
Basically, human evil his the fault of humans & not the fault of God in this ideology. Human suffering exists because “God’s” “perfection” and “rule” is not manifested upon earth at this time.
Jehovah’s Witnesses feel the same way about death as naturalist atheists do, but they also believe the “Creator” can “recreate” and remember what was–perfectly.
We die, I guess. Just like people who believe in one of the currently popular gods/goddesses. I don’t suppose we’re any happier about it than they are, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Dear Drift:
As engaging as the discusion could be about what does happen after we die, I believe that more empirical would be to discuss what happens before we are born and even conceived.
For example, do you have a memory of being in your mom’s womb? Do you remember what it was like going through the birth canal? Or, before you were conceived, where oh where were you, in the egg or in the sperm that fertilized the egg?
Chances are you will have no memory of any of this stuff, and perhaps had no thoughts whatsoever. What this demonstrates is that the thing that matters is related to your body. Before you had a brain, there was no “you”, and so, consequently, when your brain snaps it’s last synapses, there will be no “you” after as well.
Sorry!
Does that bring me fuzzy feelings? No. But does it all rest on what I feel good about?
That my friend, is a generalization. It depends on what theism. I’m assuming you’re refering to Christianity. I guess it would bum some people out, a great guy like you not chosing redemption. They might even call it a waste. But there’s only so much a Christian can do to care about someone going to Hell. They can try to convince them there’s a way out, but it your case, you’ve made your choice, which can be made void if you so chose. I don’t know anybody from any religion who’s bumed out about how they know a good guy but he hasn’t chosen the path that they think will get them into heaven. But like I said before, people can only care about another person’s soul’s wellbeing to a certain extent.
Eternal estrangement from God is how someone once put it, no lake of fire, no crazy tortures, just you, alone, with no one to keep you company, for all eternity.
Then there’s that one guy who said that hell is just this desert where everything is illuminated by this dark, blood red color. The sand is the same color and it’s all flat. Off in the distance you see a mountain with clouds above it and light shining down on it’s peak. No matter how long you walk towards it, you never get close, it stays exactly the same size.
I like that better than any other “firey lake” description.
It really looks like i got some attention with this one.But i must set the record straight.
if you think i think your going to hell,then perhaps you should read this.
omar, i belive life can only come from life,with the execption of god.it is very hard to comprehend my own existance,and i have to bail out many times. the best i got is comeing from other humans for generations without hereditary memory. which sucks because we’d be hypher experienced with it but… so each new one born is overcome with the mystery of:why.
notice how he says:judgment not damnation. i’d like to point that out.
i put his quote of jesus in here because i thought someone asked me how i deal with death but now i cant find who asked me this,so maybe no one did.i was reviewing the lower column of the post reply page.
also someone may say “prove it!” i cant do that the way you’d like. those arguements tend to go no were,just look at other threads in ILP. the way i feel about proving god to people who wont listen is on my sig somewere.
also ~dan said again alot of accurate things about my beliefs on his last post.i dont know why, i thought he didnt like my beliefs?
i cant say dan’s description is 100%, but you can read about my beliefs here
http://www.watchtower.org/beliefs_and_activities.htm.
I thought resuurection of the dead went against 'God" , what in his right mind thinks he can just pick up a/the necromonicon and just summon people as intended , isn’t that more of a self-contradiction then empowerment?.
i mean now that’s like saying “God” is the one and only necromancy “God” like there all pulling the strings secretly behind freemason work and stuff like that , i mean , right?.
if i’m wrong , go ahead and say so , nothing like a little critizism in the morning.
Hello Drift:
I read this response to what I wrote in a post you made: “omar, i belive life can only come from life,with the execption of god.”
Yet how does that relate to what I said? I do not deny that life seems to come only from life, but in the end Drift, Is water alive? We’re, were fat-free, made of 72% water, so when we say that we are alive does that mean that everything within us is alive?
This words “Life” and “Alive” denote very obscure concepts. Some have given the adjective to computers and to the Earth as a whole. My point was not to debate from where life comes, but from where the “Self” comes, which is what is important, because in our selves we find our “Souls”.
I do not care about hereditary memory, but your own memory. If the Self, that which you feel to be “I”, is eternal, and therefore immune to death, then you should be able to easily wrestle from your memory the memories I asked about. The fact that one cannot reflects that the self has a direct relation to it’s supporting organic system. When the body ends, therefore, the mind, the self, the game-show you can call "I’, ends as well.
Perhaps you might say that like the universe, our selves are created, have a beginning, but do not have an end. Fine, but then how could you explain that life starts without it’s soul, without “you”? Again the body brings the soul into existence. Can a mind exist without a brain? Experience shows that it cannot. Can the brain exist without the mind? Surely, this is evident.
You may still continue to believe whatever you please to believe, but understand that all these scenarios of what happens after death come from within your imagination and may not matter at all when you die, as you share the same destiny with the atheist.
You have perhaps felt that this is an injustice, while the atheist simply saw it as “Life”…
Ok, so you are trying to make hell seem less “hell” like. Here is the news as I see it. We just don’t know what death is like, or what happens after this conciousness. We only can reduce what we think is logical, and then what we need to keep us happy. People come up with different ideas here, depending on where they are born and their experiences.
I am not an athiest, theist or any other label, though many people think I am kind of agnostic. But this is how I deal with death,
I think, if there is a god, that god would not be an “asshole.” Therefore I doubt god would play, “which religous club and order did you belong too?” (Like some elite entrance to an ivy league school.) No, I think god would care more about who you are as a person, and how you treat others etc?
Many fundamentalists say, “well you can’t change god. He is still just, and your going to hell buddy.” The problem with this fundamentalist idea is that they can’t describe god realistically or logically anyway, nor do they have substancial proof that “their” god is the right god (unless they have biased sources) so, they obvioulsy can’t tell you about gods attributes.
So, I hope that god is not an asshole, and if he is, I don’t want anything to do with him/her/it anyway. (I try to surround myself with non-assholes)
But, I do hope that if there is a god, he/she/it is probably not an asshole. (if we are his/her/its creations, it is likely that he/she/it cares about us, like a parent. However, this all just my probability.)
so therefore, I don’t worry much about death and god issues. I try to live my life the most moral way I can, and be happy. If there is a god, I’ll find out, if not, I will just go to sleep, (hopefully after a good, happy and fullfilling life.)
To be free of anxiety, it is important not to worry about things which are not in our control, and take control of the things we can control.
this is how I deal with this issue. But I am young, 26 years old, and I assume that as I age, I might change perspectives etc.
I am an Atheist. I view, accept and welcome death as a final end. I think of it as simply going back to non-existence - just as before I was born. It is nothing to fear. The only remarkable thing is that while we are alive, we have evolved into beings that can actually contemplate our own existence.
Angie
People who are a bit too accepting of their own death will be removed from the genetic pool when dangers roll around.
Fear of death is a virtue because it causes us to not want ourselves and others to be destroyed by problems in the future of humanity. Enough fear of death & concern about death will save our species’s future.
Yes.
And?
People who are a bit too accepting of their own death will be removed from the genetic pool when dangers roll around.
***I think you mistook a lack of fear of death and a realization that death can be something to welcome (when there is no quality of life left) for suicidal tendencies. Let me assure you, an Atheist has every reason to want to survive as long as possible since we believe THIS is all we get! As for my own survival mentality - I have a law enforcement background - if it has to be you or me…it’s going to be you.
Angie
For me, it’s kinda like it doesn’t matter if I don’t exist anymore, because someone else still will. Everyone, everything, to me seems to be the same at it’s very core, and only different because of its environment. You’re pretty much a me who grew up in a different situation. So I guess you could say I believe in a form of reincarnation, almost pantheistically.