The one reason...

ohenry78

...that I can understand why a person would choose religion, is death.

Sure, there are the "spiritual" aspects and the social ones and the inner peace and blah blah blah. You can get all that elsewhere.

But death is scary as hell for us atheists.

For a person of religious persuasion (most religions...I suppose not all of them have specific death myths) death is not something to fear. When they die, it is not an end, but a beginning. A beginning of an eternity finally being in the presence of the being that they admired so much that they dedicated many aspects of their life to them.

For us, there is...nothing. Our heart stops beating. Our brain shuts off. Electric impulses stop, and all the years that we lived, all the memories we have, all the things we've experienced, all come to an instant stop. They cease to exist. The electrons holding this memory data scatter, to never be put together again. Maybe it's like taking a nap and not waking up. But the fact is that all the things we get so caught up in doing every day end up stopping, suddenly, and really we'll never know it.

That's scarier than hell. If there were a hell at least you would be "there" to experience it; that is, you wouldn't lose yourself.

For this reason I've always maintained that it takes a lot more bravery to be an atheist than it does to hold to any religion that includes an afterlife.

I don't like to think about this too much because I honestly feel my heart tensing at the thought, and get nervous at the idea. On the other hand though, it makes an extremely good motivator to do what we're all trying to do on this site -- get healthy. Us godless ones don't get a second chance in heaven, so we need to make this one last as long as we can, and for me personally, being as overweight as I am is going in just the opposite direction. I want to get healthy for many reasons -- my daughter, my lovely wife, my knees, and more...but when it comes down to it, it's about doing everything you can to make this life the longest and most enjoyable experience you can make it, because no invisible sky man is in our corner promising anything will be there when we die.

Ascolti_la_musica

I'm not afraid to die. I don't want my husband to die, because I am selfish. Neither of us fears death beyond the momentary pain that will precede it. I have expressed myself very clearly about not wanting anyone to waste time, effort, or medication saving me when my number's up.

I don't need anywhere to go, and abhor the idea of going to some place where I can fart glitter and worship some *kitten* all day for eternity. I certainly do not understand the logic behind basing an eternity of paradise or torture on one's behavior during one insignificant moment in the vastness of time.

The joy of not believing in such superstitious claptrap is knowing that I COULD die tonight. It's the best reason I can think of to enjoy being alive today.

soldier4242

This is how Pascal's Wager got so popular.

The truth is none of us know what happens after we die. What we do know is that the energy that is currently within each of us will dissipate and the physical body that housed it will decay. The matter and energy that we are made of will do what all matter and energy does. It will ultimately become the fuel for something else until it dies.

It makes no sense that we would be exempt from this cycle. Some people do not like the idea that they will actually end but that does not make their fantasies true. We are all subject to this and I prefer to accept reality as it is rather than search for comfort from trying to delude myself in to believing that a fantasy is reality. I'll believe in God once he meets the same burden of proof everything else I believe has.

mfpcopine

I'm more afraid of dying than death, especially the awareness of dying, or a long, miserable, final illness.

Some people grow up in religious communities that make them dependent financially and emotionally. They can't simply walk away, even if they have the education and opportunity, which often they don't.

Ascolti_la_musica

I'm more afraid of dying than death, especially the awareness of dying, or a long, miserable, final illness.

Some people grow up in religious communities that make them dependent financially and emotionally. They can't simply walk away, even if they have the education and opportunity, which often they don't.

That's why my sister is in the mormon cult. They basically paid her bills for her while she spent their actual income on fertility treatments. Now she has a son, and has divorced his father, but still feels obligated to her cult.

mfpcopine

I'm more afraid of dying than death, especially the awareness of dying, or a long, miserable, final illness.

Some people grow up in religious communities that make them dependent financially and emotionally. They can't simply walk away, even if they have the education and opportunity, which often they don't.

That's why my sister is in the mormon cult. They basically paid her bills for her while she spent their actual income on fertility treatments. Now she has a son, and has divorced his father, but still feels obligated to her cult.

As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that some people are trapped. I am acquainted with a very young Orthodox Jewish man who doesn’t believe in evolution. *sigh* But he's totally dependent on his family, and almost certainly he'll marry someone with the same beliefs. At one point he said it was hard to believe things different than what you were raised with.

ohenry78

There are definitely some great responses in this thread

The biggest problem for me is just what others are saying; we don't know. Sure, our brain activity could end up being dispersed elsewhere we we could still experience things, or any of those other thoughts. But we don't know. And the desire to know things is such a big part of my belief system (and why I don't follow major religions) that I find this unknown concept of death terrifying.

TMLPatrick

On an individual level, probably just fade to black. Who knows?

I struggle more with the idea that "time" doesn't really make sense. Especially considering that as you go back toward the big bang to a point at which space-time didn't really exist, therefore if you go far enough back in time, there ends up being no concept of "time", and likely if you go forward enough, the something equally bizarre happens. Worse yet, we are all traveling through "time" at different paces, not to mention that we are all living ~50ms in the past due to our mind's processing speed.... argh, my brain hurts, time to stop thinking. How any of these mindf*** questions point to any meaningful diety is beyond me, but I can absolutely conclude that there is absolutely no way the bronze age judeo-christian-islamic diety would be competent enough to come up with something so incredibly awesome.

soldier4242

There are definitely some great responses in this thread

The biggest problem for me is just what others are saying; we don't know. Sure, our brain activity could end up being dispersed elsewhere we we could still experience things, or any of those other thoughts. But we don't know. And the desire to know things is such a big part of my belief system (and why I don't follow major religions) that I find this unknown concept of death terrifying.

Well I don't see any evidence of a conscience mind in the absence of a brain. This would indicate that you are in fact simply gone when the brain dies the energy just dissipates and for all intents and purposes you are just gone. There is nothing that we can do about this. Adopting some other belief about what happens to us when we die does not change what actually happens.

In other words there is no advantage to taking on a belief system that obligates your beliefs to be backwards compatible to a bunch of old racist, sexist middle eastern men that thought slavery was acceptable. The same thing happens to us all when we die. What matters is what we can do to improve the world that we are in right now. In a metaphoric sense we can obtain a sense of immortality by leaving behind a legacy of doing what we can to improve life for those that are around us and those that are to follow after.