# For those who subscribe to there being no afterlife, does it trouble you? Are you content with it?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [November 23, 2014, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415 "2014-11-23T17:57:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/1 "2014-11-23T17:57:26Z")
Personally, I’m afraid of dying and the moments leading to my death, (if I see it coming). I don’t believe in an afterlife, and though it would be nice to believe that I would see deceased loved ones once again, I’m really content with nothing. I personally don’t care about ‘karmic justice’, so I have no problem with there not being a ‘final judgment’.
How do you feel about there being no afterlife, if it’s not something you believe in?
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### Author:  [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/2 "2014-11-23T18:13:09Z")
It doesn’t really bother me. I’m not afraid of dying, though I am afraid of suffering a painful death.
Therefore, I plan to shoot myself out of a cannon upon being diagnosed with a terminal disease.
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### Author:  [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/3 "2014-11-23T18:13:15Z")
Completely content.
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/4 "2014-11-23T18:23:30Z")
Does not thinking about it count as “not believing”?
I was much more troubled by death when I believed in heaven/hell. I am not a bad person, but am I really worthy of eternal life? I’m in my 30s. Say I die right now. Do I really deserve eternal bliss for simply avoiding the title “worse person ever”? If I am admitted into heaven, I’ll be wanting some answers. And the same if I end up in hell. The game of life is really stupid if both punishment and reward are so disproportionate.
I wouldn’t say I’m content with death or completely unafraid of it. It’s just that when I think about death, I think of the aftermath on the living. Like, if a close family member were to die, I would grieve not over where their soul is, but over the state of _my_ soul and how it’s going to survive without them (I don’t believe in souls, but you know what I mean). When I think about me dying, I think about all the things I will not get to see and experience. I want to think the moment I first realize I’m about to die, I’ll think to myself, “Aw man, things were just starting to get GOOD in this damn story!!!” Maybe I’ll be afraid at that moment, but I’m not in that mindset now.
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### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/5 "2014-11-23T18:26:07Z")
It troubles me so much that I allow myself the crutch of fantasizing super-tech aliens (or us far far in the future) will revive us all one day.
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### Author:  [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/6 "2014-11-23T18:52:05Z")
As a life-long non-believer, I struggled with this a lot when I was younger. I just had a really hard time with the whole idea of no-me. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned there are lots worse things than dying, so it doesn’t bother me much anymore. It’s a natural process, and I expect our bodies have evolved to take us through that process as much as anything else – like say, shock, for when we are badly hurt.
I don’t know if you’ve ever gone under anesthesia. I have, twice, with the awareness of an adult. You just sort of… lose that time. When you awaken, it’s as if no time has passed at all, and you recall nothing of it. I think death is like that – only you never wake up again.
I’ve always figured that fear of dying is at the heart of the control religion exerts. I have this notion that our need to attribute explanations to everything, even when based upon no evidence whatsoever, is an evolutionary response to our self-awareness of mortality. A rather comical and dangerous one, but it makes more sense to me than anything religion ever promulgated.
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### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/7 "2014-11-23T19:02:26Z")
It doesn’t bother me at all.
I am afraid of the possible pain of death, and of becoming old and incapable, but not of being dead as such, as I don’t anticipate it as being any sort of experience at all.
If someone somehow persuaded me that there is an afterlife, _then_ I would be worried (and I do not mean that I would be afraid of hell, which is a whole 'nother set of beliefs that I would find difficult to take on).
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/8 "2014-11-23T19:03:43Z")
Nope. I like the idea. I don’t want to go to place after death where everything I did as a living person would be known. 🙂
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### Author:  [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/9 "2014-11-23T19:05:32Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#):
>
> Nope. I like the idea. I don’t want to go to place after death where everything I did as a living person would be known. 🙂
+1
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### Author:  [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/10 "2014-11-23T19:28:00Z")
I find the overall meaninglessness of existence, including the absence of life after death, incredibly troubling. I used to obsess about it a lot. Now I just do my best not to think about it.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/11 "2014-11-23T19:47:09Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> I find the overall meaninglessness of existence, including the absence of life after death, incredibly troubling. I used to obsess about it a lot. Now I just do my best not to think about it.
That’s how the belief in god/gods came to be, of course. It’s easier to cling to the notion of a supreme being and an afterlife than to contemplate the alternative nothingness.
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### Author:  [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/12 "2014-11-23T19:48:03Z")
I get occasional Pangs Of Existential Terror. These are usually rare and fleeting, and I’m happy to move on and make the best of my life.
Meaningless, I’ve got no problem with. I’m a biologist; \*meaning \*in biology, both for the academic field and the organisms we study, is _more biology_. A “higher plan” seems so boring in comparison.
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### Author:  [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/13 "2014-11-23T19:48:46Z")
Well, it’s not like I can do anything about it, either way. 🙂
I describe myself as atheist, but that’s the tl:dr version. I don’t see any evidence for any kind of god/s as described by religion, and I tend to doubt that there’s an afterlife. I certainly hope that some notions of “an afterlife” are totally false (it would suck for the afterlife to be like how “spirits” are shown on idiot ghost-hunting shows, for example; can you imagine being bothered through eternity by those dumbasses?).
Yeah, I’d like to see some loved ones again. But on the plus side, if there’s no afterlife, I won’t have to see some people who I loathed in life and would hate to spend eternity anywhere near.
I realized years ago that life is awfully random and often totally unfair. I’ve also faced my own mortality (thanks, status asthmaticus). Since then, the notion of nothingness doesn’t bother me. I slipped into nothing during that episode. It was _nothing_. No fear, no pain, _nothing_. I wasn’t aware of it being nothing until I woke up and realized that I’d lost several days.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/14 "2014-11-23T19:56:48Z")
I’ve been alive for less than 50 of the 13.8 billion years or so this universe has existed, death is just a return to that default state. I must admit, if I have foreknowledge of my own imminent death, I just know I’m going to be hacked off that there’s loads of stuff going on in the world and I’ll not know how it turns out.
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/15 "2014-11-23T20:00:19Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#):
>
> I find the overall meaninglessness of existence, including the absence of life after death, incredibly troubling. I used to obsess about it a lot. Now I just do my best not to think about it.
It’s the big question: why is there stuff? I doubt we’ll get a better answer than “There just _is_”
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/16 "2014-11-23T20:26:35Z")
Intellectually I don’t fear death. But I’ve been in danger of death (or great harm) a few times, and I absolutely felt great fear.
I’m comforted by the fact that, on the off chance that something happens after death (like, say, we’re in a giant simulation, and upon “death” the 0s and 1s that make up our consciousness gets rebooted/reborn/upgraded), we’ll all find out eventually.
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### Author:  [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/17 "2014-11-23T20:31:47Z")
> [@njtt](#):
>
> It doesn’t bother me at all.
>
> I am afraid of the possible pain of death, and of becoming old and incapable, but not of being dead as such, as I don’t anticipate it as being any sort of experience at all . . .
Complete agreement. I find the idea of non-existence relatively comforting, and the typical proposed models of the afterlife disturbing, ugly, and frightening.
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### Author:  [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/18 "2014-11-23T20:43:14Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#):
>
> I get occasional Pangs Of Existential Terror.
Me too.
I’ve been chalking them up to symptoms of peri-menopause. (Free-floating anxiety is a BIG symptom, my DR tells me.) 😃
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/19 "2014-11-23T20:45:01Z")
I’d prefer to think there is some form of existence after death. But I can’t make the leap of faith necessary to believe in it when there is no evidence of it.
I figure one of two things will happen to me when I die. If I’m wrong and there is an existence after death despite the lack of evidence, then I’ll still exist. And if I’m right and there is no existence after death, then I won’t exist to worry about my non-existence. Either way, non-existence can’t hurt me.
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### Author:  [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)
#### Post date: [November 23, 2014, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-those-who-subscribe-to-there-being-no-afterlife-does-it-trouble-you-are-you-content-with-it/705415/20 "2014-11-23T20:51:00Z")
God no. It sucks. I don’t want to disappear. I wish that wasn’t the most likely fact according to the information I have at my disposal.
But of course, wishes mean nothing to reality.
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