Well put.
As a middle-aged atheist, I don’t have any conscious fear of death itself, but I worry about the things I won’t experience because of death. Family-related stuff, mostly. And I hope my death isn’t especially painful.
a lot of different outlooks on this. i think i fear life more than death, but i still have a desire to live, for now. that covers the survival end. i fear a slow painful death, because i fear most slow painful things. and i fear for the side effects of death on my family, or the pleasure some people might take in seeing a ‘smart-ass’ get whats coming to him. if you’re talking about the persona of death, a study of this subject shows the guy to to be pretty ineffective at doing his job. you can avoid him for a while by being a good chess player, prankster, or logician. unfortunately he wins in the end every time, so far.
Well, apart from that guy Jesus, but apparently, he was a bit of a one-off.
ps. And his timing sucked. 2,000 years later and he’d have been bigger than Derren Brown, David Blaine and David Copperfield put together.
if you’re talking about jesus escaping the grim reaper, i thought a big part of the story was that he did die.
No, the biggest part of the story was that he was up and about without nary a scratch, 3 days after departing his mortal coil — I’m fairly sure of it.
Fairly sure of what the big deal is, and not that it actually happened, that is.
I fear death but that’s just because I like being me and I feel I have more to do. However, I try to look at it as if our spirit never really dies. Everything I do, every impression I make lives on in other people and things. In this way, we are all eternal. Or I could be way off here…
Then why do people tell me that Jesus died on the cross to save my soul?
It’s a mystery, and that should be enough for this thread, which is about fearing death.
This. Typically “death” is the last stage in a series of extremely unpleasent events.
Phyllis Diller in her late 80’s now was on Larry King not too long ago and said she clinically died for a few minutes on an operating table (well, she came back, so it didn’t take) and I forgot exactly how she put it, but she said it wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t scary, she had/has no fear of death. Sorry, that’s all I got. But I oddly took comfort from that!..The things that worry me are 1) a long and painful death, alone in a nursing home or somewhere, with no one to see me to the end. 2) the thought that no matter how well I’ve tried to live, I’ve screwed up somewhere along the line (or will in the future), thinking, saying, or doing something that will make me go to hell. 
I’m not religious any more, but there’s always that fear - will I have time to “pray”? “Repent”? I already do!
Phyllis Diller looked Death in the eye and SHE scared IT.
Dude! High Five!
The thing about death is that when it happens to you as it did to Phyllis Diller you no longer fear it. Millions of people have had this experience. There is no reason to fear death because you find out there is no death, only another form of life. This life is void of religion, there is no final judgement, no final anything. There is no hell as preached by religion and no heaven. But it is beneficial for you to be kind to others. It really makes me sad to know so many people are afraid of death, so afraid they have trouble talking about it and visiting those that are close to death. It is normal to be born into the physical and normal to “die” out of it.
I am curious about the other great mystery-the drive for personal oblivion (through drugs or alcohol). Apparently, Freud was right-many people find life syressful, and long for the peace of death…though with drugs, oblivion is a temporary state (hopefully).:eek:
“Personal oblivion” and escapism are different animals. Why do you think people drink excessively, bury themselves in books, become Star Wars geeks?
Fear of the unknown. Fear to most people is “F* everything and run from it”. Fear is the cancer of the masses. Fear is good in some situations but it doesn’t help us at all to deal with the unknowns.
Some smart man said once, “The only thing to fear, is fear, itself”. To look it in the eye. Live not in fear but embrace the truth. Choose the high road in your daily life and focus on what good you can do today.
It isn’t death that scares me it’s the living part I have to face daily. It’s like my daily test from God. Like last night. I went to my volunteer job at the food pantry which brings me closer to God. I am really enjoying my two hours of spending time filling up bags for people that really need the food. So I get an order for a family of one? Me and the other volunteer start to fill it and in walks Satan himself! Here is a young, 20ish , good looking man with nothing obviously wrong with him. He has a grin on his face as he tells me what kind of cereal he likes and what kind of canned vegetable. I dropped the canned vegetables on the floor and said, JC. Catching myself I said, God Forgive me. All of a sudden the young man says loudly, “There is no God and only an idiot would say that”.
I stand up and look at this man and he is on a roll now. "If it wasn’t for God we would never have a war going on and religion has killed more people, bla, bla, bla…"The old Satan lines.
I look directly at Satan and say very loudly, Enough! You are in a church getting free food from Christian people that donated it and bagged by volunteers and you should show some respect. Satan, not one to be duped says, “God is for the losers of the world”.
So I am stunned because Satan is alive and well in this world but seeing him always stuns me. I put the vegetables back on the shelf and say, “Get out of here Judas and learn some humility, don’t bite the hand that feeds you and I will pray for you”. This kind of shocks him and he takes a step back and then leaves quickly. The other volunteer says, All we can do is pray for him. She doesn’t see what he is so she is not ruffled by him. She is a good Christian woman but she doesn’t sense what this man was. He was hate in human form. He was out having fun stealing food from the poor. He was well dressed and healthy and only wanted a few items so he was not in need. He put down God in a church. There are so many Judases out there! All I can do is pray for them and let them know that I know what they are. I don’t hate Satan but I have a healthy fear of him. When I see him I can’t hide, I must face him.
So death is coming for me just as the sun rises and sets but it does not scare me as much as seeing Satan face to face does. I am ready to meet my maker but I am never prepared to meet Satan. He is everywhere lurking, looking to snatch up people in his many disguises. I have to always be on guard and even in the least likely of places he shows up like a wolf in sheep’s clothing or in my case like a thief in the night. A loud,“Get out of here Satan” will usually scare him into leaving quickly.
Let us pray,
“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”.
~ From, The Lords Prayer. ~
Perciful, we need to talk. I believe what you saw in that young man was not Satan, but your own fear of Satan. It is not good to have that much fear, carrying it around can be a real burden. When you die you will not face Satan, do you believe that? The idea is to keep love to the forefront at all times, then these kinds of encounters will not bother you. Satan is not a real entity, Satan is a concept we humans have chosen to represent evil. There is no real Satan, even those that belong to the Church of Satan do not believe Satan is a real person. Somewhere along the way you have been misinformed, there is nothing to fear here. Write me and we can talk, or start another thread, although death is a good subject to discuss this Satan concept.
They are similar, we all need to escape the reality of the world and create our own at times, nothing wrong with that. Personal oblivion is a misnomer, it will never happen, it is possible to kill the body, but your “I am” consciousness will live on after the death of the body. That is why it is so important to understand yourself and who you really are.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
The reason why this scares people, including that rude zealous dude with the extremely bad timing*, is that it makes them worry that you’re insane and dangerous. Heck, I’m a little scared of you now, despite being well out of range of any weapons you may or may not be carrying.
It should go without saying that not all athests are incarnations of satan. I’ll say it anyway. Not all atheists are incarnations of satan. In fact, none of them are.
- I’m rude and zealous, but my timing is much better. Biting the hand that feeds you indeed!
Why would death avoidance have to be instinct OR something else? Evolution (as a process) doesn’t care about causes and mechanisms. Regardless whether the aversion to death is dumb, instinctual and genetic or intellectual and socially-programmed, if it works, it tends to persist.
The reasons that humans fear death don’t have to be the same as the reasons our ancestors avoided it, but they don’t have to be magical and inexplicable either.