Religion=Fear Of Dying- Why Atheism Terrifies People

[Conradine]

I'll try to explain it as best as I can.

I am not ( extremely ) afraid of the pain because in northern Italy we have good public sanity and laws that force doctors to administrate all the painkillers necessary to erase the suffering ( just a couple of decades ago I would have been much more worried ). There are also recent structures called "hospices" which are specifically made for pain therapy.
I'm also not afraid of dying in the short time. I'm healty and cautious.

I fear my inability to "figure" how do you feel when you are no more alive. I know that you feel nothing, but that is an abstract concept. Consciousness is felt as a more-or-less continuous state of being. Even when you sleep there is some kind of dream activity. 

I know it's not a really clear explanation.

[SGOS]

Consciousness is felt as a more-or-less continuous state of being. Even when you sleep there is some kind of dream activity. 

Which makes it worrisome for some people.  They have experienced nothing but a continuous state of being their entire lives, and anything else is foreign to them.  Apparently, they don't bother comprehending total oblivion.  Possibly they are too ego involved with their own consciousness to contemplate non-existence.

[Givemeareason]

I'll try to explain it as best as I can.

I am not ( extremely ) afraid of the pain because in northern Italy we have good public sanity and laws that force doctors to administrate all the painkillers necessary to erase the suffering ( jusjustt a couple of decades ago I would have been much more worried ). There are also recent structures called "hospices" which are specifically made for pain therapy.
I'm also not afraid of dying in the short time. I'm healty and cautious.

I fear my inability to "figure" how do you feel when you are no more alive. I know that you feel nothing, but that is an abstract concept. Consciousness is felt as a more-or-less continuous state of being. Even when you sleep there is some kind of dream activity. 

I know it's not a really clear explanation.

It is very good explanation and I can remember feeling that way.  So visualize this.  You are like a singularity within your own mind.  That is your point of awareness. That is you and is the point where all things are experienced by you.  You are surrounded by your mind which is like a universe.  You are observing all the interaction going on in your mind.  All that exists is within your mind.  You now know what you are.  Dying is like an implosion of a universe. The universe of your mind begins to contract and all things begin to converge back into you.  You as the singularity are observing this happen and you remain very aware.  As the convergence completes you absorb everything back into a state of your universe before existence began.  Now nobody can say you simply cease to exist because nobody knows.  The universe we live in had to come from something.  Does that feel better?

[stromboli]

I've faced the death question many times both as a religious person and as an atheist. From meeting the loved ones up yonder in the afterlife to so sorry, just a dirt covered corpse. With me the concept of death no longer bothers me, because with watching my wife's slow deterioration there are times when both of us can see death as welcoming. But we live and work at living because the alternative is non experience. I would rather experience life in both the joy and sorrow aspect because it means I'm LIVING.

  My day is about monitoring my wife's health including drug intake, getting her to water aerobics 3 days a week and what we do in between for joy. Barbecuing, trying new recipes, piecemeal efforts at living life pretty much hour by hour. My attitude is that the best we can attain in life is to have lived it as fully and as capably as we can, doing as much for not just ourselves but for whatever legacy we leave. Mankind may be ultimately nothing but a failed exercise in evolution, but that doesn't stop us from at least in our own way experiencing and living as best we know how. If my grand children carry on a memory of me and some aspect of my life enriches theirs, then I have done the best I can.

[Hydra009]

The thought of death is something that traveled with me for all my life. In the last year has become a bit obsessive.
I fear death a lot. And I don't trust wholeheartedly those who says they do not fear it at least a little.

You know what's worse than dying?  Living in constant fear of death and then dying.

[SGOS]

You know what's worse than dying?  Living in constant fear of death and then dying.

Yeah, total bummer.

[ahplshutup]

I don't think atheists should fear death. Death is really nothing to be feared about. Fear of death is a sickening religious induction.

[ahplshutup]

I don't think atheists should fear death. Death is really nothing to be feared about. Fear of death is a sickening religious induction.

[stromboli]

As an atheist I've buried a few religious siblings. Way easier now, because there is no guilt attached, thinking I didn't do right by someone and I need to atone before I got to heaven.

[1liesalot]

  Why would I be afraid of being dead. I will perish, vanish...etc. I won't exist anymore. What is so scary about that? 

And you won't even know you're dead. Which is a bit frustrating, because the people who fly planes into buildings will never find out the error of their ways. If only there could be one final, crystal clear minute at the hour of their death when they realized it was all bullshit.

[Odoital778412]

http://www.vice.com/read/atheism-terrifies-people-because-it-makes-us-think-about-death-511

As always, read the article. Many people on the forum, myself included, have noted this in the past. We have had threads on death and how we feel about it. It is the single biggest reason we have religion in the first place. The cornerstones of religion:

fear (of death)
guilt
condemnation
judgment

and you have religion.

Every evangelical preacher ever threatened his congregation and world at large with just that, and in every case I can think of targeted some aspect of modern society- currently gay rights- as the thing that will drag us all to hell.

Used to be the rights of minorities.
Used to be rock and roll.
Used to be miniskirts.

And every time a tornado touches down in the bible belt the blame falls on whichever is the current culprit.

Sad.

This has always struck me as odd.  I think it would be comforting to know that it was all going to be over and you'd simply wink out of existence at death, with no fear or expectation of anything after.  I've always thought that the reason there is an instinctive fear of death is the idea that there is something waiting on the other side...another continuing existence, which remains unknown and mysterious to us.  If you also have the idea that you'll be standing before God and being judged, I would guess that might provide another level of fear, but I'm not sure how many people are really thinking about that at the moment of death.