Do you live your life without fear?

[panache45]

@Burton

I saw an article recently about a study that found religious people feared/fought death more than the non believers. That seems somewhat contradictory.

Since I don’t believe in an afterlife, why should I fear death the same as someone who believes he might fry in hell forever?

[begbert2]

@Der_Trihs

Aversion to anything that isn’t immediate or aesthetic ( like a bad taste, pain, or ugliness ) is fear.

I disagree.

[groo]

I live with so much fear of just about everything that my fear gauge has been pinned for years. Oddly, this has the effect of making me seem fearless in some situations, because past a certain point, it’s just a big pile of fear, and I enter a kind of fugue state where I just move ahead, pretty much just hoping to retain some dignity as I meet my almost-certain doom. The task could be buying groceries or public speaking, but the fear feels the same either way, and I’m only going to die the one time.

[Chief_Pedant]

@Magiver

I think karma will usually catch up to people who are consistent with their actions. You rob a bunch of banks, eventually you get caught for robbing banks. Basic law of probability.

I find no evidence for karma in general or divine retribution in particular for the way an individual’s life is lived. I see suffering of innocents and successes for the devious. Meningitis of the newborn and performance bonuses for those whose behaviour ran their company into the ground.

The law of probability for poor outcomes based on behaviour is more closely tied to IQ than karmic justice. An individual with a low IQ turns to mugging one-on-one; the next tier up robs banks; the highest tier might rob a corporation. The probability of them getting caught is not related to karma. It’s related to whether or not they are smart enough to get by with it.

To the OP: I live my life without fear of divine or karmic retribution because I see no evidence that such concepts are anything but human inventions. However that is not to say that I do not fear a practical consequence of something I do or say and that does modify my behaviour. I might express an opinion in private that one population is genetically inferior to another; in a public corporate setting such an opinion might cost me my employment. That’s not karma; it’s simply the result of established societal norms. Whether to label such a proscription on my part “fear” is a matter of semantics.

[Jackmannii]

I fear too many things in life to be concerned about what may be visited on my non-corporeal being in the future.

For instance, there’s the perpetual fear of not knowing where my classes are, having courses I’ve never attended or stopped going to after the first few lectures, with papers due and final exams coming up, and I’m going to flunk. Or worse, have to go back to med school (or college, or even high school) and go through that trauma all over again. Well OK, those are dream fears, but they still have an impact. Who need fear the Omnipotent Presence when your own brain is fully capable of sabotaging your peace of mind?

[Clothahump]

@BACI

I’ve never given myself over to religious practice, but my casual observation of many people’s relationship with their various faiths is that their behavior is often based on the belief that if they do something wrong, then Og will “get ‘em”. Divine retribution, if you subscribe to it, must be a powerful motivator.

This is how religions work. If you join them and pony up the bucks, they’ll let you believe their stories and attend their dog-and-pony shows. But if you don’t, they’ll try to scare you into submission by detailing the horrors that will happen after you die.