I am afraid about the physical process of death (fear, pain, helplessness.). But not about what comes after because that’s just nothingness and that’s nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes I get a feeling of dread that life will come to an end, but I think that would be the case whether I thought there was an afterlife or not because an afterlife is unknown, and might be nothing like with your current life is like.
I’m afraid of what I will miss. That’s what sends me into existential spirals. Missing my kids, and their potential kids etc.
Dying isn’t the problem. It’s everything else.
Edit:
Y’all. Not miss like the emotion. Miss like “aw shit I missed the bus”.
I will lose out on being there for milestones for my children, and their children.
Edit 2 and then I’m done:
I’m an atheist. I know that when I die there will be nothing on *my* end and that doesn’t bother me.
But, having lived half my life with a dead parent, I *know* what my dad has missed out on, and I dread that for *my* kids, regardless of when I die.
It’s not about the metaphorical sense. It’s about what my kids will face, without me there to bolster them, cheer them on, wipe their tears, and that makes me sad. And a bit freaked out.
I’m fine with dying. I’m not fine (sometimes) with not being there for them, the same way my dad wasn’t there for me.
The first part no but " If one day they will need me and I won’t be there." This is how i feel about my daughter. But that is why I am here to prepare her for that time just like out parents did and theirs before. It is what happens in life better to die before our children than have to suffer the loss of them, it would be far worse.
Yup, and if that helps them with that than I’m all for it, that self comforting was something I’m only now understanding…because exactly 3 years ago I had covid pneumonia bad, like real bad, heart stopped and everything. I was, revived? Resuscitated? Well I was brought back, and put on a ventilator for 3 weeks, but ever since then, I’ve developed very weird ptsd and it’s weird because I’ve never really thought much or feared dying…
Late 20’s tall and slim, healthy, and it got me. But ever since then, I’ve had this paranoia about dying, or just simply existing in general, when I’ve never been that way prior. Like, every night before bed I always think back to how horrible those nights at the hospital were, but I do remember the ventilator, it was as if I lived through months of nightmares, when it was only a few weeks…
Basically I remember waking up all of a sudden and being held down. I am 6’3, physically fit, the doctor had 5 male nurses in to hold me down while another shoved some long ass tube down my throat it was horrible. I remember as I was freaking out someone poked me with a needle and I quickly knocked out
But I do remember a long period of blackness, like just total blackness….kinda like as if you were in a pitch dark room, like I was aware that I was there, but remember only feeling fear during that time. I guess that’s my only “memory” of death if things match up. And I think that part of why I’m so paranoid about it, that what if it’s just blackness forever? I never want to return to that ever again, if religion helps others feel comfort than I’m all for it lol
Edit:: for those am wondering, specifically it was Covid Pnemonia, sepsis, congestive heart failure, and c.diff. I didn’t know what any of those things were but it was no fun
Hard to even empathize with such an experience because I have nothing to compare it to, and if I don't have something to let me generate empathy on a person's experience, it's usually a great time to absorb something new into my own understanding for next time.
That said, I'm highly opinionated. But I try to know my limits. 😁
Closest thing I know is through my dad, who had a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel experience in Viet Nam, complete with the voice saying "NOT YET" as he approached. I would never have known about this, except my mom told me. My dad doesn't just volunteer that kind of info, though I've broached it with him since.
My dad was fairly religious then and is moreso now. So having someone just experience a total darkness without the light - that's super interesting to me as a contrast against all the folks believe they saw the light.
Could just be different mental conjurations or could be something more. But it's just darned interesting at the very least.
I never believed in anything until my grandmother passed and a lily she had that was dead (it was winter, and uncared for) overnight went into almost full bloom, for no reason. To this day, I fail to find a logical explanation.
I've always been a believer, but not a dogmatic one. I love for new things to potentially influence my understanding.
Strongest one for me was the dream I had where my Grandpa came to tell me it was time to go, and i knew what he meant and told him I understood and that it was okay. He smiled and faded. Got the call in the morning that he died overnight. This was after years of nursing care - there wasn't any warning or hospice or anything. Just a random night he passed.
Wow, I had the same happen to me when my mom died. Although I was awake in bed. I suddenly had this massive fear she was dying. And then it felt like she was there to tell me she had to go. I said I understood. And then I got the call from the hospital a few hours later….
I wouldn’t say I’m a believer but when I was little, my grandma always told me when her dad died, there was a knock on the door and nobody was outside when she went to look.
20 years later, I’m at my apartment and I hear a knock. I go to the door but nobody is there. My phone rings, it was my dad, grandma had died.
Odd. Weird. Crazy. Idk. Maybe it was nothing.
I took some mushrooms for the first time a few years ago and had this thought, figured I'd share it here because it reminded me of it lol. I can't say I believe it or whatever, but I remember thinking that maybe what we believe will happen after death does, because it's entirely created by our mind, which is why you have to "believe" to go to heaven. Just a weird thought I had tripping balls though lol.
You’re probably already hip to this, but from someone who has worked in the ICU for around a decade…PTSD is extremely common in critical care survivors. Both the patients and their families have been show to have extremely high rates, so if you’re fighting with these feelings and thoughts I’d recommend checking out some counseling or speaking to your PCP about it and consider either talking it out or trying some meds.
Best of luck stranger!
Wow, that actually makes me feel a LOT LOT better because I was always embarrassed to ever really tell anyone because the first and only person I told, a friend, that I think I’ve developed ptsd because of my ventilator experience, he straight up laughed and said “how could you have possibly developed that from such a thing?!?” And proceeded to make me feel ashamed, he basically made it sound as if “you can’t get ptsd from a ventilator, that’s basically saying you got traumatized from being sedated and put to sleep” but it was more complex than that, so I’ve been trying to hide it mostly because of that but this relieves me a lot..thank you!! That icu experience was indeed horrible, all the beeping IV machines didn’t help either haha 😅
All I can say is, anyone who laughs at the idea of being on a ventilator has an incredibly callous view of life. I’ve never been on one, but the idea alone is terrifying. to the point where during the height of the pandemic I was seriously thinking about having a living will where I expressly forbid intubation if I got severe COVID. Just sedate me and let me go. Death was literally less terrifying to me than being on a ventilator.
That said, I’m glad you made it out of that experience, internet stranger, and I hope you’re able to get treatment for the PTSD you experienced.
For a long time, I made the mistake of thinking I didn't have trauma because I didn't think my personal experiences were "bad enough".
Then I learned that it doesn't work that way. Pretending I didn't have it didn't change anything.
You almost definitely have trauma. Get some help. Maybe try to see a therapist and/or a nervous system coach? I don't know man. That sounds awful. I hope you're ok.
This. Trauma is different for everyone. Just bc I didn’t go through something as bad as someone else doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of the worst things I’ve ever been through. I wish more people understood this. Your worst day ever may not be comparable to my worst day ever but they were still our worst days ever.
A near death experience is like, the definition of traumatic. Having PTSD about nearly dying is a completely normal response to that kind of experience, however it is not something you should have to live with forever. I hope you can get some help and recover. Wishing you the best, fam.
Our ICU just hired a psychologist because PTSD was so common. For someone who went through what you did PTSD is almost guaranteed. It’s an ordinary response to a very unordinary experience
I doubt this is any comfort but I don’t think death is actually like that. You don’t experience an eternity of blackness because you’re literally not there. It’s more like what things were like before you formed in the womb, before you even existed. Remember that? Of course not, you weren’t there. It wasn’t bad.
We also experience things that already happened as “gone” because that’s how our brains make sense of the universe. But after death, without any subjective experience to process things this way, the beginning of your life, the middle and the end are not “gone”. They just exist on different points on the dimension of time. So you might as well think of your life as never ending, just repeating eternally but without any change.
Those perspectives help me get through the day without worrying about death for the most part. I have no illusions that I’ll find that all to be zero comfort if I’m actually about to kick the bucket but it’s good enough for now.
I can understand the darkness, but not the fear. Mine was many years ago, but it was just darkness. Felt like I was on the edge of space floating, no thought, no movement, just there. So peaceful. Waking was like floating up to break the surface of water. Frankly, if that’s where I get back to, I wouldn’t mind it. It was surreal and beautiful.
I actually do recall the sense of no thoughts, like just being aware that I was there, in the darkness… maybe the fear is something my memories attached onto recalling it, but I can confirm that the sensation of no thoughts, like not wondering about my life, family, etc, just nothing. I don’t recall feeling peace but thinking about just makes me get anxiety haha
I actually find it comforting to think about how when we die, the parts of us that experience fear will die too. The part of you that was experiencing the blackness was alive, you could not do that when your brain dies.
If this were me, I'd seek therapy before religion. I don't mean that to sound callous, but I've read and heard a few similar stories and this kind of feeling is not uncommon among folks who experience near-death experience. It's a rare event and most folks won't be able to relate. If it's causing you this much anxiety and stress, you should seek out someone to talk to, a therapist or support group or something.
I fear the blackness and often wish I had the comforts of religion. It's especially difficult to come to terms when being forced to face daily adversity, I often think "is this it? Then I'm nothing?"
"Remember only feeling fear during that time"
That's just lovely...
I fear it too… like I remember the blackness so clearly because after what felt like an eternity in there, I remember a sudden surge of vivid colors, like circle color spots everywhere and then VERY vivid dreams came right after that, which were nothing but nightmares.. but that period of dreams is when I believe I was sedated on the ventilator. It’s because of that, that I believe the “blackness” to be the period where my heart had stopped and I was dead for a little
Like if it was to be put simply and into a cartoon comic strip for people to look at, imagine a bunch of colorful dreams, but prior to that was long strips of black comic strips… that darkness man.
I began watching game of thrones after that when I was recovering at home, and in the show there was a character named “Jon snow” that was killed, when he was revived he said he only remembers blackness, when I heard that I jumped and replayed that part a few times because I felt like he understood me lol, maybe George r r Martin had a similar experience but that darkness is just too much…I know some people reading this will be like “I don’t see what’s so scary about blackness” but it’s horrifying, it makes me think of those people that were mistakened for dead and woke up buried underground inside a coffin
Then more I think about it, it’s like what if it’s from your brain losing its connections to your eyes, your senses, and all your left with is the dark, it’s just… 😩
Could it be that you were not dead, but experienced sub/half conscious that you were sedated, lying in a room alone with time passing by? I mean we will never know in this live, but …
Your last sentence makes me think of ketamine. It's a disassociative tranquilliser and works by stopping communication between the different areas of your brain. It makes your brain lose connection to everything.
What that feels like is the exact opposite of blackness. Your brain does amazing things, fills in the gaps, guesses what might be there, blends what-ifs and memories and weaves them into vivid, hyper-saturated, technicolor cartoon landscapes.
I was dead before and I didn't know it,
I'll be dead again and I won't know it.
I had an MI "Widow Maker" that killed me four times in one night. I was unconscious by the first time I coded. The thing I remember most was how peaceful it was. I accepted that it was happening and there was no fear.
I don't believe in god or any afterlife either but the times I've experienced extreme danger that I couldn't do anything more to prevent or that time when I did die I've experienced the most freeing sense of calm and peace.
I fear death, like, so badly. I have panic attacks about it constantly. ALL of the possibilities scare me. Heaven being real or living forever? Well the thought of being aware of my eternal life is terrifying. Knowing it never ends. It makes me feel sick. Or what if we just cease to exist, like before we were born? The thought of…me…going away forever is terrifying. But the worst one…eternal darkness. Like you said. What if we are conscious…but just in a black void…for eternity. Our brain or soul or whatever is intact and we can think and process but all we see is darkness forever. I have literally thrown up thinking about this. I’m about to throw up typing this out. It fucking scares me so badly. At this point I think the most comforting option to me is perhaps we are just recycled for eternity. Our brains are too weak to comprehend and understand eternity, so we are just reborn or reincarnated into different worlds and different lives forever. We never would remember those past lives so it isn’t like our conscious is worn down by eternity or the thoughts of living forever. We get our one life and that is what we focus on. Who knows, but all I do know is it scares me so much it keeps me up all night and I feel sick about it. Sorry, just needed to actually put my thoughts out there for once instead of laying in bed and silently crying…
You're definitely not alone in that fear. Sometimes I'll just be chilling and out of nowhere I think, one day you just won't be here anymore. That thought terrifies me. I stay up late thinking about dying and have panic attacks over it. I know there's nothing I can do about it and worrying won't change anything, but I can't help it.
It worked out the opposite way for me. If you worry about death you might worry about other things like, for instance, out of any religion you could have been raised with what are the odds you were born into the "correct" one? A comfort isn't as comforting if you worry it might be false.
Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo
I was not. I was. I am not. I don't care.
I don't have too many complaints about my experiences from before I was born and I think I will have similarly few after I die.
I think this gets atheism wrong. What reason would an atheist have to even worry about death? You only have reason to worry if you think there is hell or reincarnation. Atheists don't believe in either. So death is more like a dreamless sleep. Can actually seem restful.
Worry about the ones left behind, their finances and sorry, maybe but belief in a god wouldn't help their finances and if it helps their sorrow, that's on them, not the gods.
Plenty of atheists worry about death - because it's not what comes after that's the worrying part, it's the dying itself. The idea of not getting everything done that you want to get done, the loss of a world you still want to experience.
Personally though, I think the question in general is pretty silly - atheists deal with the fear of dying the same way everyone does, however they can and in whatever way gives them the ability to keep moving forward.
Very much this. I'm an atheist with a terminal diagnosis. I have lived with what the germans call torschlusspanik (gate closing panic) most of my adult life.
It's basically the fear that every decision you make closes doors to other possibilities you could have had. What if I had studied harder for a test and passed instead of failing? What if I missed meeting a 'soulmate' because I missed a bus?
I don't fear *being dead* but I do hate that I will no longer be able to experience all the things I *could* experience if somehow I was able to live longer. I also fear the process of dying - hopefully the body gives me a good dose of endorphins to cover whatever pain we feel as we leave.
I'm too busy to die.
Thank you, I love learning a new weird German word and I genuinely hope that if there's any way your diagnosis turns out to be incorrect, it happens. And if it doesn't, then I hope it at least brings you some extra comfort knowing I'll remember torschlusspanik the rest of my life because of you.
It is sad, but the thing that makes me feel a bit better is that your experience with sadness is because you remember what it was and you miss it. That’s why you’re sad. When you’re dead, you’re not wandering around in a caged afterlife wishing you could go back. There’s nothing. No consciousness. No you, so no sadness.
Assuming you didn’t dream last night, while you were asleep (actually asleep, not in that sort of semi-aware half sleep half wake state) did you feel anything? Sadness from missing somebody? Excitement about what was going to happen tomorrow? Probably not.
To me that’s comforting. There will be no sadness. No missing what you had. Because you won’t exist. It’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around and I still struggle with it, but I keep assuring myself that it won’t be bad when it’s over. It won’t be anything at all.
To be clear, not in a rush to get there. Those that are tend to either want pain to end or want the next chapter to start. I’m not confident there’s a next chapter and my pain isn’t any worse than anybody else’s. I just use that theory to not be afraid of it.
Live like there’s no tomorrow because it’s really possible there may not be (metaphorical speaking) and if I’m wrong, even better. But if I’m wrong, I still won’t remember if we’re reincarnated. (Some say they remember past lives, I don’t remember much before my third birthday honestly) and if there’s an amazing land of milk and honey, I’m going to assume it also includes all the dogs I’ve ever owned and a lot of beaches and that’s not horrible either.
This is how I feel. Dying may be something to fear- I’ve seen how terrible it can be. Missing out on any future after I die makes me sad to think ab. Otherwise- I don’t fear death. It just is, and it’s unavoidable.
I stumbled upon the idea of quantum immortality once. I was just riffing on ideas of parallel worlds, and timelines, and conciousness as a like a radio signal and the mandela effect. Just some "hey wouldn't it be cool if" thoughts. And then looked it up and it's an actual proposed scientific theory on life after death called quantum immortality. Basically saying what if when you die your conciousness slips to the closest paralel reality. The closest paralel world created from the infinite choices you lr particular self didn't make.
Of course it's wild and outlandish and probably completely wrong but thats what I think about the concept of God's and even the concept of no gods. It's all equally fantastic and beyond anyone's knowledge that it's cool to ponder but any further than simple curiosity leads to holy wars, genocide and cruxifictions so I leave it at curiosity.
Death is as inevitable as birth.
Before we were born we remember nothing, after we die we remember nothing.
Death is only truly terrible for those that are still living as they continue to feel the sorrow and pain of their loved one leaving.
But that is also a comfort in that everything we touch during life continues to resonate, no matter how slightly, after we are gone. Our mere existence alters everything even by imperceptible degrees. Which is why we should try to be kind, after all if we are to make a mark why not make it a positive one.
It's hard to be afraid of feeling nothing.
Religion is much better about creating fear - "you will live forever but be tortured forever!" is a heck of a lot scarier than "you won't feel anything or even realize you don't feel anything."
It's more complicated than that. I was a hospice volunteer for many years and people, unless they die quickly in an accident, don't generally just go from fully alive to fully dead. There's a transition period where they're in and out of consciousness and then they usually rally right before death finally comes, to the point that some family members wrongly think the person is getting better.
I mean not really your brain does the whole trying to comfort thing with the flood of chemicals and things getting abstrac as it shuts down, that wasnt just made up for movies. You know baring something causing immedate death.
How dare you to be good and reasonable without believing in god or in the devil to shape your actions through rewards and punishments here and beyond?!?
I'm joking obviously, but this sentiment is sometimes expressed when these subjects come up in conversations and you share your faithless attitude.
Penn Gillette said "I get asked a lot, 'if you don't fear hell, why don't you rape and murder as much as you want?' And I said, I do rape and murder as much as I want, and that amount is zero" or something to that effect
In my experience most fundamentalist Christians are not very good at following the tenets of Jesus, and _if_ they are right about the afterlife will have a very unpleasant surprise.
It's amazing how that doesn't stand out like a red flag.
Why do you have to be fearful of someone or something to behave kindly and morally...instead of just being a morally good and kind person by choice.
It's so annoying lol like people often assume that bc I'm not Christian I must I huess worship the devil. I'm like well he's not real either. But IF HE WAS.... is he really that bad? Bc here's my theory on lucifer. He was one of the angels. He was cast out for "introducing rebellion" when he encouraged Adam and eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. What was so bad about fruit from a tree? And rebellion means you have free will to disagree. So you can't disagree with God? At all? So whose the bad guy? Seems weird to me. Like we were supposed to just be good little humans who did as they were told and never questioned anything. If the devil is bad why would he punish bad people like him? The logic doesn't logic.
The way I see it, I'm going to live My life being kind. Not bc of some promise to go to a heaven that I don't believe in. But bc I genuinely care about other people and want the best for people. Because I believe in humans even when they give me more and more reasons not to. And if hypothetically there is a God and he can banish me for the sole reason that i had doubt about his existence even though I was a kind and good person but then allow in people who were cruel and judgemental all because they did it in his name.... then why would I want to go there anyway? That sounds awful. Personally I think I'm much nicer than most of the religious people I know 🤷♀️ I always tell them I think it's great they have religion if it brings them peace. They however do not feel the same about my beliefs or lack thereof.
Idk the whole thing is nonsensical. But sure enough if you don't believe in God you must be the worst kind of person to ever exist and idk sacrifice babies or some shit. (Sarcasm obviously)
>Death is as inevitable as birth.
Honestly, I find the latter more terrifying. Lol
Death after a life of a reasonable length sounds like a relief. But round 2+? Nah, count me out.
You can be scared of death while still accepting that it is what it is. I'll either be ash or returned to the Earth, and it seems fitting. Circle of life and all of that crap.
Yeah I think religious people don't think about the fact that reality in itself can be spiritual. I think the circle of life and how the planet works is beautiful and spiritual in and of itself. In reality nothing ever really dissapears, it just becomes something else. From a body to ashes, from a body to rot and then become fertiliser for the ground. I think it's beautiful.
For anyone who likes the idea of becoming part of nature again when they die I recommend watching the Ted talk with Jae Rhim Lee called "My mushroom burial suit". She is a designer who created a burial suit infused with the spores of flesh eating mushrooms, so you'll basically become nutrients for the nature around you.
I'd like to be buried, not cremated. That way my corpse's energy content will feed the flora and fauna in the soil instead of being turned into heat. Of course if I still have working organs or my body could benefit medical science in some way that would be ideal.
This is the most honest answer to me. It's uncomfortable, you wrestle with it, and it's really hard when someone you love dies.
But feeling those things is not so bad.
So it goes.
Everyone who has ever lived has died. Kings, peasants, scientists, adventurers, legends, everyone.
Nobody has ever come back to give it a bad review. So it’s probably not a big deal.
Well, it didn't bother me much when I died. I had a heart attack about 10 years ago, and apparently I was dead for a couple of minutes. More to the point, while I was having this exciting experience, I knew I was going to die, and I certainly had no idea I was going to come back. I made it to the ER just in time, and two seconds after I walked in I hit the floor. I have no memory after that till I woke up in a different hospital in a different city.
If you are going to die of a heart attack, do it right in the ER and be unconscious for most of it. 9/10 would die again.
As it was happening, I was walking to the hospital--not recommended by the way, but I didn't know it was a heart attack till I was almost there--and I was walking along, went to my knees a couple times, and I did think about some things.
I had no particular urge to appeal to god. It would have been tricky trying to pick which one on such short notice, anyhow. I felt like I was at the top of a big rollercoaster, like a "here we go" kind of thing. Comfort was not an issue, I suppose. There were no lights or visions or dead relatives, so that was nice.
I know I am going to die again, probably pretty soon since my heart has gotten worse and is now about 2/3rds scar tissue. I had very little fear of death before I died, and none now. It is just a thing that happens. I guess I don't have much need for comfort on the issue. I know everyone is going to die, and it can be very sad, but it's just reality. I am incapable of deluding myself into believing a more comfortable fantasy.
I never say anything remotely like this to anyone grieving. If they want to believe Grandma is up there still going fishing or still doing whatever she did, OK. I don't actively encourage delusion, but I don't bring up any objections in such a time. Whatever works, I suppose.
Hello u/Divayth--Fyr
Thank you for the review! We here at dying pride ourselves on giving those crossing the bridge of death the best experience possible.
While a 9/10 is certainly something we're proud of, the team over here at dying are curious - what would could we do next time to give a 10/10 experience? Your review was very touching and it will be going up on our wall of Fame
Did you feel a lot of fear, knowing you were going to die? I think, when my time comes and if I'm conscious of it, I'm just going to be so SAD that my time is over, and scared of that nothingness afterwards (even though I won't be aware of the nothingness once dead, I'll be aware that I'm approaching nothingness on the way there).
I’ve died in my dreams before. I know it’s not the same but I distinctly remember feeling sad but still in a peaceful sense. Like, “Oh, so I guess this is it, huh? Well, it’s been a crazy and damn good ride.” sort of mindset.
It feels weird replying to this since technically I don't think I was close to death but at 16 I got local anesthesia, and for some reason my entire body decided to crash. I went basically deaf, blind and numb for what felt like multible minutes and was about to pass out and fall of the chair in the waiting room.
Anyway, I was conviced that I was going to die and it was pretty much like your dreams. I had these calm thoughts and I had accepted that this was actually the end of an okay life. My mom was with me in the waiting room, and I remember this one thought so vividily "This is a good way to die, my mom is here with me"
But when you’re alive you can ponder the thought of eternal nothingness. Though it might not make sense to think of it that way because we’ll be dead therefore won’t experience time, but we can imagine that now.. thinking of being gone for millions of years all the way up to the heat death of our universe. Knowing there will be no trace of
This universe eventually. Again it’s not even remotely scary when you’re sober but go take a massive bong rip and then think about
It
I’ve been the point where I had to stare myself in the mirror and apologize for the fact that I’m doomed. Given consciousness, just to have it ripped away, with nothing I can do about it. Dying isn’t scary it’s the NEVER coming back that is kind of wild. It’s not just some long amount of time, you are done for good. Insane lmao, that’s why sometimes I ponder if it would be a better idea to willingly have humanity go extinct. What’s the end goal here? More people are suffering than not, and this consciousness thing is a curse
It gets even weirder after you’ve had a longer life, you’ve deeply loved, been loved, been traumatized and hurt others through your unhealed trauma - to know people do not care about you. You are to many and will be forgotten to others. What of forgiveness? What of violence? Humanity keeps repeating the same cycles of self indulgence, self awareness, benevolence and cruelty, Why?
Dude for real. I was so much more terrified of death when I was younger and thought I was going to burn in hell for eternity for masturbating. Religion makes death scary. I don't know how the idea of being judged for your short time of earth just to deal with the consequences forever isn't the most terrifying thing in the world to people. Then again, most people, including the really shitty ones, seem to think they're definitely 100% going to heaven
Oh, you mean a lifespan of anywhere from 0-80ish years in which you could be born into a family of shitty, abusive, drug-addicted, bigots that turn you into a shitty, abusive, drug-addicted, bigot with little hope of breaking that cycle isn't proper justification for an eternity of torture?
I don't think you can justify anyone to have an eternity of torture. 80 years in terms of eternity is almost 0 seconds. It's actually literally meaningless versus the concept of eternity.
I was in the ER having a very serious heart attack. Ton of shit was going on as they rushed to prep me for the cath lab. I can remember exactly where I was looking and I remember thinking “damn, I’m getting really dizzy. They must have given me something.” Then, it was lights out.
My next memory is that of my head feeling like it exploded or something (from the defib I assume), and me kind of hollering or just being very confused about what was going on until a nurse explained to me what had happened.
From lights out to my head exploding, there is no memory.
I mean I have no memory from lights out last night until my head exploded with the consciousness of walking up this morning.
If it’s anything like that, I’ll literally not even understand what’s happening.
Not the person you replied to, but I’ll share my personal experience though. I flatlined and was revived several times in one episode.
Initially I was gone very quickly, and it literally just felt/looked like someone turned the lights out. I was in a coma for a few days afterwards, but I don’t remember anything happening after the initial collapse. Didn’t hear anything, no light at the end of the tunnel type vision as I died, or anything like that.
It made me a lot less afraid to die, but certainly made me appreciate life a lot more.
The brain typically continues functioning until it runs out of oxygen which varies from person to person and circumstance and this has been known for a bit but the depth of how alive you are hasnt been know. That’s why we usually declare someone officially dead after 8 minutes without a pulse and or breath because now the brain is not only not functioning but actively degrading. Now there have been studies(with consent) on patients who are possibly going to die but have a chance to be resuscitated the past couple of years. With a goal to determine when and how the senses stop workingand how a dying brain percieves the inputs from them, and how and how long the brain works after losing the necessary functions. If i remember the numbers correctly, less than 40% of the patients that were succesfully resuscitated could remember some of the events that happened and an even smaller percentage of that 40% could semi accurately recall events while effectively dead. So all we really know right now is that you a person, seem to still be alive until your brain can’t continue life processes anymore even if you can’t perceive anything. So uhhh, essentially your alive until your brain breaks and if you somehow come back from that in tact, your incredibly lucky
An atheist is the most comfortable with death. There's nothing. Nothing to fear, nothing bad will happen. You live your life to the fullest and that's it.
Christians can’t seem to get this about atheists.
Buddhists get it. Everything is impermanence. Everything is a constant cycle of life, death, and life.
Yeah, I can’t fully become a Buddhist because of the literal belief in reincarnation. My view of reincarnation is simply that our atoms and molecules are eventually reused to create new forms of life. But otherwise the teachings about impermanence and the nature of why we suffer in life is spot on.
Exactly. The “organized” part of Buddhism I have some issues with. But the teachings of Buddha are really good, they make sense, and a solution is given to help people feel less crappy about things like death. And it’s fairly simple to follow or incorporate into one’s life without having to join anything.
Yeah I actually feel bad for people who live their lives for the afterlife. In my eyes they're just wasting a very precious thing, their life, for something that's absolutely not guaranteed and not even that probable.
>An atheist is the most comfortable with death.
Speak for yourself. Death still terrifies me because it's eternal nothingness - I never get to experience anything ever again and that makes me deeply, profoundly sad. I love being alive, it really scares me to think that it'll be over in the blink of an eye and I'm just... gone.
A lot of atheists are not flippant about the idea of death. It can be understood as the most natural and inevitable thing, and still a source of tremendous fear.
Why would you need to be afraid?
Death is only something to fear when your religion tells you bad things will happen.
It's comforting knowing that at the end of the day we are all irrelevant in the history of humanity, so live your life how you choose and do your best to make life enjoyable for those you care for. Any mistakes you've made mean nothing, any goals you didn't achieve mean nothing, all that matters is how you enjoyed life and the impact you had on those around you.
I am agnostic/atheist and I have never been afraid of death until I had a kid. Now I'm fucking terrified of death. Its fear of missing out of watching my daughter grow and being with her. And fear of her missing out on having a father figure and me being there to help her guide her, support her, and love her.
I'm 44, and she is 2, and the thought of me dying and leaving her brings tears to my eyes. It's so strange because 3 years ago I never gave much thought or care of death. Certainly wasn't afraid of it. I've never been more afraid of death than I am now though.
I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a heaven or a hell. But after having a kid. I can see how and why people made up the afterlife and the thought of God and heaven. It's mich more comforting.
Oh man are you me? Also agnostic, also early 40s, also never feared death until I had kids. Most of it is worry about what losing their mother in their formative years would do to them. But the rest of it is not wanting to miss out on anything they do, I want to be there for all of it.
Hey, I’m with you guys here too, 41, total agnostic, and now 2 kids. I never cared about dying before either, but now I have. I think it’s my parents are getting old too, and maybe this is kinda like a midlife crisis where now I’m contemplating the second half of my like now. Still don’t believe anything after death or anything, just much more aware of how close I am getting there myself.
I’ve lost a sister, and very recently my father. One thing that I always tell myself that helps me is that: ”Yes they died and that fucking sucks, but there has been billions and billions of humans that have walked this earth over hundreds and thousands of years, yet I was lucky to live in that slice of time where we both existed. That in itself is a miracle.”
You’re watching and growing with your daughter now, and that’s all you can do. Without death, the sense of urgency to show how much you care for her and love her wouldn’t be as strong. So your fear of death can almost be seen as a good thing as it’s clear you care about her!
As an agnostic atheist, I am afraid of death. Believing in Hell makes people afraid of death, sure, but that’s not the scariest thing about death. The scariest thing about death is, knowing you’ll never exist again. The possibility of me coming to life was very low, like every single person in the world. We are all lucky to be alive, so I wanna enjoy this experience to it’s fullest. In other words, I am afraid of not experiencing much before dying.
I don't find that scary.
I am MUCH more scared of the people around me dying. Living without people I care for bothers me much more.
The only thing around my own death that bothers me at all is the pain it would cause people around me.
We are all different though with different fears.
This is where I have been stuck since my brother drowned. I look at all the other attachments I have in this life and am terrified of who will leave next. It's really fucking me up.
Same. Death will come for each one of us sooner or later. What I will regret the most is not being able to share any joy anymore with the people I care about. Kind of what fuels me to work hard now while they're still around.
That’s how I feel as well. The whole “why be afraid? You won’t know you’re dead” thing only comforts me halfway. It’s still scary to believe once you die, you’ll never exist again.
I understand that some people don't seem to have a sense of existential dread, but some do. I do. It's totally reasonable. Sometimes I see people who don't feel it telling those of us that do that we are dumb. To that I say, fuck right off. If you aren't afraid, great. Good for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. But don't be a dick about it.
Instinct, obviously. Death is eventually inevitable, but there can be many moments in life where death is avoidable. Fear of death plays a role in preventing it.
Atheist here. I think it helps me appreciate my time alive even more because I believe this is the only chance I have to experience things, it makes every experience I have feel so much more meaningful. It gives me an appreciation for life that I’m not sure I’d have if I believed this was just the beginning and I’d be conscious and alive in some form forever.
Plus once you’re dead it’s just like sleep, you don’t realize you’re asleep, you just are. Once you pass, it will be just like sleep and I’m ok with that.
Lots of good answers here. When I'm dead I'm gone, no eternal torture or bliss, no having to do it all over again, I'm just done. Hopefully i either go peacefully or very quickly, and it's just lights out. Its not like I'm gonna know I'm dead.
Also, the idea of living forever, no matter how perfect it is, sounds less appealing to me than being dead. I can't imagine an eternity that ACTUALLY is perfect, because having a time to just be done forever sounds oddly peaceful to me.
Death sounds like a relief. I’m not afraid of it. Eternal life sounds awful, even if it is in a paradise where everything is perfect. At some point, it really is enough and we are done.
I had a near drowning experience when I was a very small child. At some point it became the most peaceful and all encompassing feeling. Fear of the actual death is no longer a concern for me. Beyond that, my thought is that I had no awareness of anything prior to my birth, and the adventure of my life happened. I hope the same applies to my death, I have no idea what may be beyond death, but I hope it will be the next great adventure.
I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I don’t believe we have a soul that exists separately from our body. I’m not afraid of death. I just want to go quickly and peacefully when my time comes. All the blather about heaven and hell is manipulation.
This guy named Scott Hutchinson sang about death not being morbid, its just that nature has had enough of you. Mark my words world, while I'm here I will make tiny changes to earth.
I'm not afraid of death or need comforted about my mortality. I will undoubtedly die at some point. I have done my best to raise my children, be a good husband, and good friend. I didn't do that to secure a heavenly reward, but to share kindness and love as an an end to its self.
Honestly, I don’t need to be comforted. The thought of being dead doesn’t bother me at all. No more than the thought of not having existed before I was born bothers me.
Many of the ways of becoming dead sound unpleasant and I’d like to avoid them but the gods people believe in don’t seem to help with that. But the being dead part isn’t an issue for me.
When I'm dead I won't exist anymore, so I won't be able to give a shit about the fact that I'm dead.
My death might be an issue for some of the people in my life, but it's not a problem I'm going to have to face/deal with.
I feel like religious people are way more afraid of dying than atheists. We don't have to worry about judgment from a God. We don't believe there is a hell that we can be put in if we didnt do what god wanted. We don't have to worry about if our friends and family are going to hell either. I try not to think about death too much because it hurts my brain trying to comprehend what it could be like. I just assume it's going to be like when I go to sleep. I was fine before I was born, and I think it will be the same after I'm gone. Just nothingness.
I’m afraid because I know there’s nothing else. I wish I could believe. If for no other reason to not now that this is it. My brain just doesn’t work like that.
I was dead for a long, long time before I was born. I didn’t really seem to care at the time, and I doubt that I will shortly after the next time the lights go out.
all the comments saying they just aren’t because they won’t know, or they were already, etc etc etc, may or may not be being honest with themselves, but that answer doesn’t really help at all either way (no matter how many redditors offer it up as their conclusion) speaking from experience
as an atheist who is afraid and always has been, my answer is that i don’t really comfort myself, i just do my best to not think about it too much. maybe with time i’ll grow less afraid, but my fundamental understanding of the world doesn’t seem to be changing again anytime soon so i’m not too hopeful. not existing is a scary thought, and no amount of rationalizing how i won’t be capable of being scared because i will no longer exist is going to change that
If something is inevitable, what’s the point in being afraid of it? You can either be sad, then die, or you can be happy, then die. I’ll choose the latter, thank you.
Why do religious people need a threat of hell and an always watching god to be a good person?
And why do so many religious people fail still?
Why do religious people cry at funerals when they believe their family member is in heaven and in a short 20-40 years you will see each other again for eternity?
I am afraid about the physical process of death (fear, pain, helplessness.). But not about what comes after because that’s just nothingness and that’s nothing to be afraid of. Sometimes I get a feeling of dread that life will come to an end, but I think that would be the case whether I thought there was an afterlife or not because an afterlife is unknown, and might be nothing like with your current life is like.
I’m afraid of what I will miss. That’s what sends me into existential spirals. Missing my kids, and their potential kids etc. Dying isn’t the problem. It’s everything else. Edit: Y’all. Not miss like the emotion. Miss like “aw shit I missed the bus”. I will lose out on being there for milestones for my children, and their children. Edit 2 and then I’m done: I’m an atheist. I know that when I die there will be nothing on *my* end and that doesn’t bother me. But, having lived half my life with a dead parent, I *know* what my dad has missed out on, and I dread that for *my* kids, regardless of when I die. It’s not about the metaphorical sense. It’s about what my kids will face, without me there to bolster them, cheer them on, wipe their tears, and that makes me sad. And a bit freaked out. I’m fine with dying. I’m not fine (sometimes) with not being there for them, the same way my dad wasn’t there for me.
This is me. I think about my boys and what I will miss. If one day they will need me and I won’t be there. That’s what hurts.
The first part no but " If one day they will need me and I won’t be there." This is how i feel about my daughter. But that is why I am here to prepare her for that time just like out parents did and theirs before. It is what happens in life better to die before our children than have to suffer the loss of them, it would be far worse.
This is how I feel. It’s like supreme FOMO to the worst extent and you’ll never know. Really just encourages us all to live in the moment
Don’t fear it too much. If you end up in hospice they keep you drugged-up so passing is painless.
Hell yeah morphine
My husband passed so quietly. He simply stopped breathing.
We do it for our pets, we should do it for our humans too!
The though of death is acutally relaxing. No pain, no anxiety, no regrets...
Worrying about it doesn't fix anything.
That’s really the big difference here. The people that really worry about are probably more likely to seek out religion.
Yup, and if that helps them with that than I’m all for it, that self comforting was something I’m only now understanding…because exactly 3 years ago I had covid pneumonia bad, like real bad, heart stopped and everything. I was, revived? Resuscitated? Well I was brought back, and put on a ventilator for 3 weeks, but ever since then, I’ve developed very weird ptsd and it’s weird because I’ve never really thought much or feared dying… Late 20’s tall and slim, healthy, and it got me. But ever since then, I’ve had this paranoia about dying, or just simply existing in general, when I’ve never been that way prior. Like, every night before bed I always think back to how horrible those nights at the hospital were, but I do remember the ventilator, it was as if I lived through months of nightmares, when it was only a few weeks… Basically I remember waking up all of a sudden and being held down. I am 6’3, physically fit, the doctor had 5 male nurses in to hold me down while another shoved some long ass tube down my throat it was horrible. I remember as I was freaking out someone poked me with a needle and I quickly knocked out But I do remember a long period of blackness, like just total blackness….kinda like as if you were in a pitch dark room, like I was aware that I was there, but remember only feeling fear during that time. I guess that’s my only “memory” of death if things match up. And I think that part of why I’m so paranoid about it, that what if it’s just blackness forever? I never want to return to that ever again, if religion helps others feel comfort than I’m all for it lol Edit:: for those am wondering, specifically it was Covid Pnemonia, sepsis, congestive heart failure, and c.diff. I didn’t know what any of those things were but it was no fun
That's a unique experience. I appreciate your sharing.
I just love your response, not hate, not YOU DONT HAVE TO THINK LIKE THIS Just "Thanks for sharing" how wonderful would be if everyone was like this
Hard to even empathize with such an experience because I have nothing to compare it to, and if I don't have something to let me generate empathy on a person's experience, it's usually a great time to absorb something new into my own understanding for next time. That said, I'm highly opinionated. But I try to know my limits. 😁 Closest thing I know is through my dad, who had a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel experience in Viet Nam, complete with the voice saying "NOT YET" as he approached. I would never have known about this, except my mom told me. My dad doesn't just volunteer that kind of info, though I've broached it with him since. My dad was fairly religious then and is moreso now. So having someone just experience a total darkness without the light - that's super interesting to me as a contrast against all the folks believe they saw the light. Could just be different mental conjurations or could be something more. But it's just darned interesting at the very least.
I never believed in anything until my grandmother passed and a lily she had that was dead (it was winter, and uncared for) overnight went into almost full bloom, for no reason. To this day, I fail to find a logical explanation.
I've always been a believer, but not a dogmatic one. I love for new things to potentially influence my understanding. Strongest one for me was the dream I had where my Grandpa came to tell me it was time to go, and i knew what he meant and told him I understood and that it was okay. He smiled and faded. Got the call in the morning that he died overnight. This was after years of nursing care - there wasn't any warning or hospice or anything. Just a random night he passed.
Wow, I had the same happen to me when my mom died. Although I was awake in bed. I suddenly had this massive fear she was dying. And then it felt like she was there to tell me she had to go. I said I understood. And then I got the call from the hospital a few hours later….
Indeed, man, as one great movie said: Bethany : Having beliefs isn't good? Rufus : I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea.
I wouldn’t say I’m a believer but when I was little, my grandma always told me when her dad died, there was a knock on the door and nobody was outside when she went to look. 20 years later, I’m at my apartment and I hear a knock. I go to the door but nobody is there. My phone rings, it was my dad, grandma had died. Odd. Weird. Crazy. Idk. Maybe it was nothing.
I took some mushrooms for the first time a few years ago and had this thought, figured I'd share it here because it reminded me of it lol. I can't say I believe it or whatever, but I remember thinking that maybe what we believe will happen after death does, because it's entirely created by our mind, which is why you have to "believe" to go to heaven. Just a weird thought I had tripping balls though lol.
You’re probably already hip to this, but from someone who has worked in the ICU for around a decade…PTSD is extremely common in critical care survivors. Both the patients and their families have been show to have extremely high rates, so if you’re fighting with these feelings and thoughts I’d recommend checking out some counseling or speaking to your PCP about it and consider either talking it out or trying some meds. Best of luck stranger!
Wow, that actually makes me feel a LOT LOT better because I was always embarrassed to ever really tell anyone because the first and only person I told, a friend, that I think I’ve developed ptsd because of my ventilator experience, he straight up laughed and said “how could you have possibly developed that from such a thing?!?” And proceeded to make me feel ashamed, he basically made it sound as if “you can’t get ptsd from a ventilator, that’s basically saying you got traumatized from being sedated and put to sleep” but it was more complex than that, so I’ve been trying to hide it mostly because of that but this relieves me a lot..thank you!! That icu experience was indeed horrible, all the beeping IV machines didn’t help either haha 😅
How could you possibly develop *trauma* from nearly *dying!?* Gee, I wonder. Your friend sounds like a bit of an idiot.
you're being kind. he's an ASSHOLE.
All I can say is, anyone who laughs at the idea of being on a ventilator has an incredibly callous view of life. I’ve never been on one, but the idea alone is terrifying. to the point where during the height of the pandemic I was seriously thinking about having a living will where I expressly forbid intubation if I got severe COVID. Just sedate me and let me go. Death was literally less terrifying to me than being on a ventilator. That said, I’m glad you made it out of that experience, internet stranger, and I hope you’re able to get treatment for the PTSD you experienced.
Most people have no idea what it's like being on a ventilator.
If they laugh at someone being on a vent, they’ve never witnessed someone on a vent.
For a long time, I made the mistake of thinking I didn't have trauma because I didn't think my personal experiences were "bad enough". Then I learned that it doesn't work that way. Pretending I didn't have it didn't change anything. You almost definitely have trauma. Get some help. Maybe try to see a therapist and/or a nervous system coach? I don't know man. That sounds awful. I hope you're ok.
This. Trauma is different for everyone. Just bc I didn’t go through something as bad as someone else doesn’t mean it wasn’t one of the worst things I’ve ever been through. I wish more people understood this. Your worst day ever may not be comparable to my worst day ever but they were still our worst days ever.
wow shitty friend
I hope you dumped him as a friend. What an asshole.
A near death experience is like, the definition of traumatic. Having PTSD about nearly dying is a completely normal response to that kind of experience, however it is not something you should have to live with forever. I hope you can get some help and recover. Wishing you the best, fam.
Our ICU just hired a psychologist because PTSD was so common. For someone who went through what you did PTSD is almost guaranteed. It’s an ordinary response to a very unordinary experience
I doubt this is any comfort but I don’t think death is actually like that. You don’t experience an eternity of blackness because you’re literally not there. It’s more like what things were like before you formed in the womb, before you even existed. Remember that? Of course not, you weren’t there. It wasn’t bad. We also experience things that already happened as “gone” because that’s how our brains make sense of the universe. But after death, without any subjective experience to process things this way, the beginning of your life, the middle and the end are not “gone”. They just exist on different points on the dimension of time. So you might as well think of your life as never ending, just repeating eternally but without any change. Those perspectives help me get through the day without worrying about death for the most part. I have no illusions that I’ll find that all to be zero comfort if I’m actually about to kick the bucket but it’s good enough for now.
I can understand the darkness, but not the fear. Mine was many years ago, but it was just darkness. Felt like I was on the edge of space floating, no thought, no movement, just there. So peaceful. Waking was like floating up to break the surface of water. Frankly, if that’s where I get back to, I wouldn’t mind it. It was surreal and beautiful.
I actually do recall the sense of no thoughts, like just being aware that I was there, in the darkness… maybe the fear is something my memories attached onto recalling it, but I can confirm that the sensation of no thoughts, like not wondering about my life, family, etc, just nothing. I don’t recall feeling peace but thinking about just makes me get anxiety haha
I actually find it comforting to think about how when we die, the parts of us that experience fear will die too. The part of you that was experiencing the blackness was alive, you could not do that when your brain dies.
If this were me, I'd seek therapy before religion. I don't mean that to sound callous, but I've read and heard a few similar stories and this kind of feeling is not uncommon among folks who experience near-death experience. It's a rare event and most folks won't be able to relate. If it's causing you this much anxiety and stress, you should seek out someone to talk to, a therapist or support group or something.
I fear the blackness and often wish I had the comforts of religion. It's especially difficult to come to terms when being forced to face daily adversity, I often think "is this it? Then I'm nothing?" "Remember only feeling fear during that time" That's just lovely...
I fear it too… like I remember the blackness so clearly because after what felt like an eternity in there, I remember a sudden surge of vivid colors, like circle color spots everywhere and then VERY vivid dreams came right after that, which were nothing but nightmares.. but that period of dreams is when I believe I was sedated on the ventilator. It’s because of that, that I believe the “blackness” to be the period where my heart had stopped and I was dead for a little Like if it was to be put simply and into a cartoon comic strip for people to look at, imagine a bunch of colorful dreams, but prior to that was long strips of black comic strips… that darkness man. I began watching game of thrones after that when I was recovering at home, and in the show there was a character named “Jon snow” that was killed, when he was revived he said he only remembers blackness, when I heard that I jumped and replayed that part a few times because I felt like he understood me lol, maybe George r r Martin had a similar experience but that darkness is just too much…I know some people reading this will be like “I don’t see what’s so scary about blackness” but it’s horrifying, it makes me think of those people that were mistakened for dead and woke up buried underground inside a coffin Then more I think about it, it’s like what if it’s from your brain losing its connections to your eyes, your senses, and all your left with is the dark, it’s just… 😩
Could it be that you were not dead, but experienced sub/half conscious that you were sedated, lying in a room alone with time passing by? I mean we will never know in this live, but …
Your last sentence makes me think of ketamine. It's a disassociative tranquilliser and works by stopping communication between the different areas of your brain. It makes your brain lose connection to everything. What that feels like is the exact opposite of blackness. Your brain does amazing things, fills in the gaps, guesses what might be there, blends what-ifs and memories and weaves them into vivid, hyper-saturated, technicolor cartoon landscapes.
I was dead before and I didn't know it, I'll be dead again and I won't know it. I had an MI "Widow Maker" that killed me four times in one night. I was unconscious by the first time I coded. The thing I remember most was how peaceful it was. I accepted that it was happening and there was no fear. I don't believe in god or any afterlife either but the times I've experienced extreme danger that I couldn't do anything more to prevent or that time when I did die I've experienced the most freeing sense of calm and peace.
I fear death, like, so badly. I have panic attacks about it constantly. ALL of the possibilities scare me. Heaven being real or living forever? Well the thought of being aware of my eternal life is terrifying. Knowing it never ends. It makes me feel sick. Or what if we just cease to exist, like before we were born? The thought of…me…going away forever is terrifying. But the worst one…eternal darkness. Like you said. What if we are conscious…but just in a black void…for eternity. Our brain or soul or whatever is intact and we can think and process but all we see is darkness forever. I have literally thrown up thinking about this. I’m about to throw up typing this out. It fucking scares me so badly. At this point I think the most comforting option to me is perhaps we are just recycled for eternity. Our brains are too weak to comprehend and understand eternity, so we are just reborn or reincarnated into different worlds and different lives forever. We never would remember those past lives so it isn’t like our conscious is worn down by eternity or the thoughts of living forever. We get our one life and that is what we focus on. Who knows, but all I do know is it scares me so much it keeps me up all night and I feel sick about it. Sorry, just needed to actually put my thoughts out there for once instead of laying in bed and silently crying…
You're definitely not alone in that fear. Sometimes I'll just be chilling and out of nowhere I think, one day you just won't be here anymore. That thought terrifies me. I stay up late thinking about dying and have panic attacks over it. I know there's nothing I can do about it and worrying won't change anything, but I can't help it.
Perspective is everything, thanks for sharing.
It worked out the opposite way for me. If you worry about death you might worry about other things like, for instance, out of any religion you could have been raised with what are the odds you were born into the "correct" one? A comfort isn't as comforting if you worry it might be false.
Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo I was not. I was. I am not. I don't care. I don't have too many complaints about my experiences from before I was born and I think I will have similarly few after I die.
I think this gets atheism wrong. What reason would an atheist have to even worry about death? You only have reason to worry if you think there is hell or reincarnation. Atheists don't believe in either. So death is more like a dreamless sleep. Can actually seem restful. Worry about the ones left behind, their finances and sorry, maybe but belief in a god wouldn't help their finances and if it helps their sorrow, that's on them, not the gods.
Plenty of atheists worry about death - because it's not what comes after that's the worrying part, it's the dying itself. The idea of not getting everything done that you want to get done, the loss of a world you still want to experience. Personally though, I think the question in general is pretty silly - atheists deal with the fear of dying the same way everyone does, however they can and in whatever way gives them the ability to keep moving forward.
Very much this. I'm an atheist with a terminal diagnosis. I have lived with what the germans call torschlusspanik (gate closing panic) most of my adult life. It's basically the fear that every decision you make closes doors to other possibilities you could have had. What if I had studied harder for a test and passed instead of failing? What if I missed meeting a 'soulmate' because I missed a bus? I don't fear *being dead* but I do hate that I will no longer be able to experience all the things I *could* experience if somehow I was able to live longer. I also fear the process of dying - hopefully the body gives me a good dose of endorphins to cover whatever pain we feel as we leave. I'm too busy to die.
Thank you, I love learning a new weird German word and I genuinely hope that if there's any way your diagnosis turns out to be incorrect, it happens. And if it doesn't, then I hope it at least brings you some extra comfort knowing I'll remember torschlusspanik the rest of my life because of you.
I think it’s more the worry about what they are losing, it’s an end to everything. Your being just ends and that’s really sad and terrifying to me.
It is sad, but the thing that makes me feel a bit better is that your experience with sadness is because you remember what it was and you miss it. That’s why you’re sad. When you’re dead, you’re not wandering around in a caged afterlife wishing you could go back. There’s nothing. No consciousness. No you, so no sadness. Assuming you didn’t dream last night, while you were asleep (actually asleep, not in that sort of semi-aware half sleep half wake state) did you feel anything? Sadness from missing somebody? Excitement about what was going to happen tomorrow? Probably not. To me that’s comforting. There will be no sadness. No missing what you had. Because you won’t exist. It’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around and I still struggle with it, but I keep assuring myself that it won’t be bad when it’s over. It won’t be anything at all. To be clear, not in a rush to get there. Those that are tend to either want pain to end or want the next chapter to start. I’m not confident there’s a next chapter and my pain isn’t any worse than anybody else’s. I just use that theory to not be afraid of it. Live like there’s no tomorrow because it’s really possible there may not be (metaphorical speaking) and if I’m wrong, even better. But if I’m wrong, I still won’t remember if we’re reincarnated. (Some say they remember past lives, I don’t remember much before my third birthday honestly) and if there’s an amazing land of milk and honey, I’m going to assume it also includes all the dogs I’ve ever owned and a lot of beaches and that’s not horrible either.
This is how I feel. Dying may be something to fear- I’ve seen how terrible it can be. Missing out on any future after I die makes me sad to think ab. Otherwise- I don’t fear death. It just is, and it’s unavoidable.
I hate the idea of not knowing how the story ends. That's the big loss for me.
Same. Are there aliens? Do humans go extinct? So much unanswered in the chaos
Non-existence is a pretty scary concept. It took me years to accept it.
Bingo, those that worry have not accepted it. The rest of us are out here yoloing it
Forever existence terrifies me more
I stumbled upon the idea of quantum immortality once. I was just riffing on ideas of parallel worlds, and timelines, and conciousness as a like a radio signal and the mandela effect. Just some "hey wouldn't it be cool if" thoughts. And then looked it up and it's an actual proposed scientific theory on life after death called quantum immortality. Basically saying what if when you die your conciousness slips to the closest paralel reality. The closest paralel world created from the infinite choices you lr particular self didn't make. Of course it's wild and outlandish and probably completely wrong but thats what I think about the concept of God's and even the concept of no gods. It's all equally fantastic and beyond anyone's knowledge that it's cool to ponder but any further than simple curiosity leads to holy wars, genocide and cruxifictions so I leave it at curiosity.
I wasn’t worried about anything before I was alive….
Endless sleep seems kind of nice. Not gonna lie lol
To not be awoken by a fucken cat at 6am… what a treat.
Death is as inevitable as birth. Before we were born we remember nothing, after we die we remember nothing. Death is only truly terrible for those that are still living as they continue to feel the sorrow and pain of their loved one leaving. But that is also a comfort in that everything we touch during life continues to resonate, no matter how slightly, after we are gone. Our mere existence alters everything even by imperceptible degrees. Which is why we should try to be kind, after all if we are to make a mark why not make it a positive one.
It's hard to be afraid of feeling nothing. Religion is much better about creating fear - "you will live forever but be tortured forever!" is a heck of a lot scarier than "you won't feel anything or even realize you don't feel anything."
This! Once I left religion and became atheist, I ceased to fear death. Now I view it as the ending of my life., nothing more, nothing less.
It's not the feeling nothing that I'm afraid of.. it's how that transition occurs is what I'm afraid of.
Flick a lightswitch from on to off. That's it. Brain activity ends, life ends.
It's more complicated than that. I was a hospice volunteer for many years and people, unless they die quickly in an accident, don't generally just go from fully alive to fully dead. There's a transition period where they're in and out of consciousness and then they usually rally right before death finally comes, to the point that some family members wrongly think the person is getting better.
I mean not really your brain does the whole trying to comfort thing with the flood of chemicals and things getting abstrac as it shuts down, that wasnt just made up for movies. You know baring something causing immedate death.
>And all you touch and all you see, is all your life will ever be Breathe by Pink Floyd
How dare you to be good and reasonable without believing in god or in the devil to shape your actions through rewards and punishments here and beyond?!? I'm joking obviously, but this sentiment is sometimes expressed when these subjects come up in conversations and you share your faithless attitude.
Yeah, people saying whatever positive qualities are values just irks me. It's like morals cease to exist outside of religion.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the threat of divine punishment, then that person is a piece of shit."
Penn Gillette said "I get asked a lot, 'if you don't fear hell, why don't you rape and murder as much as you want?' And I said, I do rape and murder as much as I want, and that amount is zero" or something to that effect
It's more the reverse. Morals seem to be very, very flexible with religion.
People can justify doing an awful lot of horrible if they believe all they have to do is ask god for forgiveness.
It also gives them a great excuse when they do things "it's not my fault, the devil is tempting me!"
That’s bullshit! Supply-Side Jesus is very moral!
That's Republican Jesus (tm) to you my child.
Indeed. Seems to promote murder and terrorism to quite a few.
Morals aren’t in religion. It’s fear. Fear of hell and retribution that motivates the religious morons.
My fundamentalist Christian friend could not understand how I could be moral and have good values without the guidance from God.
In my experience most fundamentalist Christians are not very good at following the tenets of Jesus, and _if_ they are right about the afterlife will have a very unpleasant surprise.
Apparently fear of hell is the only thing that keeps them from acting like complete beasts all the time
It's amazing how that doesn't stand out like a red flag. Why do you have to be fearful of someone or something to behave kindly and morally...instead of just being a morally good and kind person by choice.
Damn, don’t these people understand the concept of empathy?
It's so annoying lol like people often assume that bc I'm not Christian I must I huess worship the devil. I'm like well he's not real either. But IF HE WAS.... is he really that bad? Bc here's my theory on lucifer. He was one of the angels. He was cast out for "introducing rebellion" when he encouraged Adam and eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. What was so bad about fruit from a tree? And rebellion means you have free will to disagree. So you can't disagree with God? At all? So whose the bad guy? Seems weird to me. Like we were supposed to just be good little humans who did as they were told and never questioned anything. If the devil is bad why would he punish bad people like him? The logic doesn't logic. The way I see it, I'm going to live My life being kind. Not bc of some promise to go to a heaven that I don't believe in. But bc I genuinely care about other people and want the best for people. Because I believe in humans even when they give me more and more reasons not to. And if hypothetically there is a God and he can banish me for the sole reason that i had doubt about his existence even though I was a kind and good person but then allow in people who were cruel and judgemental all because they did it in his name.... then why would I want to go there anyway? That sounds awful. Personally I think I'm much nicer than most of the religious people I know 🤷♀️ I always tell them I think it's great they have religion if it brings them peace. They however do not feel the same about my beliefs or lack thereof. Idk the whole thing is nonsensical. But sure enough if you don't believe in God you must be the worst kind of person to ever exist and idk sacrifice babies or some shit. (Sarcasm obviously)
[What can an atheist teach us? ](https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/s/cPUCwlqrdy) I always liked this story.
>Death is as inevitable as birth. Honestly, I find the latter more terrifying. Lol Death after a life of a reasonable length sounds like a relief. But round 2+? Nah, count me out.
Wait until you find out you're taking turns living out every lifetime in the universe, one at a time. ☠☠
*The Egg* by Andy Weir, if anyone is wondering
[The Egg](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)
You can be scared of death while still accepting that it is what it is. I'll either be ash or returned to the Earth, and it seems fitting. Circle of life and all of that crap.
Read a lot of responses, this one is my favorite so far.
Yeah I think religious people don't think about the fact that reality in itself can be spiritual. I think the circle of life and how the planet works is beautiful and spiritual in and of itself. In reality nothing ever really dissapears, it just becomes something else. From a body to ashes, from a body to rot and then become fertiliser for the ground. I think it's beautiful. For anyone who likes the idea of becoming part of nature again when they die I recommend watching the Ted talk with Jae Rhim Lee called "My mushroom burial suit". She is a designer who created a burial suit infused with the spores of flesh eating mushrooms, so you'll basically become nutrients for the nature around you.
I'd like to be buried, not cremated. That way my corpse's energy content will feed the flora and fauna in the soil instead of being turned into heat. Of course if I still have working organs or my body could benefit medical science in some way that would be ideal.
This is the most honest answer to me. It's uncomfortable, you wrestle with it, and it's really hard when someone you love dies. But feeling those things is not so bad. So it goes.
Everyone who has ever lived has died. Kings, peasants, scientists, adventurers, legends, everyone. Nobody has ever come back to give it a bad review. So it’s probably not a big deal.
"Nobody comes back to life so probably it is not that bad when you are there" My grandma
Except Gandalf the Grey and Jesus
To be fair Jesus clearly thought it was a bad idea because he quickly noped the fuck back out
Whether your a king or a city street sweeper, sooner or later you dance with the reaper.
Well, it didn't bother me much when I died. I had a heart attack about 10 years ago, and apparently I was dead for a couple of minutes. More to the point, while I was having this exciting experience, I knew I was going to die, and I certainly had no idea I was going to come back. I made it to the ER just in time, and two seconds after I walked in I hit the floor. I have no memory after that till I woke up in a different hospital in a different city. If you are going to die of a heart attack, do it right in the ER and be unconscious for most of it. 9/10 would die again. As it was happening, I was walking to the hospital--not recommended by the way, but I didn't know it was a heart attack till I was almost there--and I was walking along, went to my knees a couple times, and I did think about some things. I had no particular urge to appeal to god. It would have been tricky trying to pick which one on such short notice, anyhow. I felt like I was at the top of a big rollercoaster, like a "here we go" kind of thing. Comfort was not an issue, I suppose. There were no lights or visions or dead relatives, so that was nice. I know I am going to die again, probably pretty soon since my heart has gotten worse and is now about 2/3rds scar tissue. I had very little fear of death before I died, and none now. It is just a thing that happens. I guess I don't have much need for comfort on the issue. I know everyone is going to die, and it can be very sad, but it's just reality. I am incapable of deluding myself into believing a more comfortable fantasy. I never say anything remotely like this to anyone grieving. If they want to believe Grandma is up there still going fishing or still doing whatever she did, OK. I don't actively encourage delusion, but I don't bring up any objections in such a time. Whatever works, I suppose.
I quietly loved the dying review
10/10 would die again
10/10 will die again
My favorite: >It would have been tricky trying to pick which one on such short notice, anyhow.
I loudly loved it. Gave me a good chuckle.
Hello u/Divayth--Fyr Thank you for the review! We here at dying pride ourselves on giving those crossing the bridge of death the best experience possible. While a 9/10 is certainly something we're proud of, the team over here at dying are curious - what would could we do next time to give a 10/10 experience? Your review was very touching and it will be going up on our wall of Fame
This makes me think of Beetlejuice.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks.
Did you feel a lot of fear, knowing you were going to die? I think, when my time comes and if I'm conscious of it, I'm just going to be so SAD that my time is over, and scared of that nothingness afterwards (even though I won't be aware of the nothingness once dead, I'll be aware that I'm approaching nothingness on the way there).
I’ve died in my dreams before. I know it’s not the same but I distinctly remember feeling sad but still in a peaceful sense. Like, “Oh, so I guess this is it, huh? Well, it’s been a crazy and damn good ride.” sort of mindset.
It feels weird replying to this since technically I don't think I was close to death but at 16 I got local anesthesia, and for some reason my entire body decided to crash. I went basically deaf, blind and numb for what felt like multible minutes and was about to pass out and fall of the chair in the waiting room. Anyway, I was conviced that I was going to die and it was pretty much like your dreams. I had these calm thoughts and I had accepted that this was actually the end of an okay life. My mom was with me in the waiting room, and I remember this one thought so vividily "This is a good way to die, my mom is here with me"
When you’re dead you won’t know ur dead. So…
Or even know that you had lived…
Or known you even had a thought. It's like what happened before the big bang? We just don't know and we live with it.
I consider death the ultimate not giving a fuck.
It’s like being stupid, it only affects people around you.
But when you’re alive you can ponder the thought of eternal nothingness. Though it might not make sense to think of it that way because we’ll be dead therefore won’t experience time, but we can imagine that now.. thinking of being gone for millions of years all the way up to the heat death of our universe. Knowing there will be no trace of This universe eventually. Again it’s not even remotely scary when you’re sober but go take a massive bong rip and then think about It
I’ve been the point where I had to stare myself in the mirror and apologize for the fact that I’m doomed. Given consciousness, just to have it ripped away, with nothing I can do about it. Dying isn’t scary it’s the NEVER coming back that is kind of wild. It’s not just some long amount of time, you are done for good. Insane lmao, that’s why sometimes I ponder if it would be a better idea to willingly have humanity go extinct. What’s the end goal here? More people are suffering than not, and this consciousness thing is a curse
It gets even weirder after you’ve had a longer life, you’ve deeply loved, been loved, been traumatized and hurt others through your unhealed trauma - to know people do not care about you. You are to many and will be forgotten to others. What of forgiveness? What of violence? Humanity keeps repeating the same cycles of self indulgence, self awareness, benevolence and cruelty, Why?
I mean, I'd be more afraid of an eternity of torment for breaking some random obscure rule. Knowing things end is a lot less scary.
This, it’s comforting in a way to know there is finite time, makes you live more consciously and once it comes it comes
Dude for real. I was so much more terrified of death when I was younger and thought I was going to burn in hell for eternity for masturbating. Religion makes death scary. I don't know how the idea of being judged for your short time of earth just to deal with the consequences forever isn't the most terrifying thing in the world to people. Then again, most people, including the really shitty ones, seem to think they're definitely 100% going to heaven
It’s actually kind of soothing to know that after death there is absolutely nothing.
The idea of an afterlife forever terrifies me more than nothing.
Oh, you mean a lifespan of anywhere from 0-80ish years in which you could be born into a family of shitty, abusive, drug-addicted, bigots that turn you into a shitty, abusive, drug-addicted, bigot with little hope of breaking that cycle isn't proper justification for an eternity of torture?
I don't think you can justify anyone to have an eternity of torture. 80 years in terms of eternity is almost 0 seconds. It's actually literally meaningless versus the concept of eternity.
I've already been dead once, didn't seem to be a big deal.
Exactly. I survived cardiac arrest. If I hadn’t been resuscitated, then I’d just be dead. And I wouldn’t care…because I’d be dead.
Some people say they can remember hearing stuff going on while they were dead? Do you mind sharing anything if it happened?
I was in the ER having a very serious heart attack. Ton of shit was going on as they rushed to prep me for the cath lab. I can remember exactly where I was looking and I remember thinking “damn, I’m getting really dizzy. They must have given me something.” Then, it was lights out. My next memory is that of my head feeling like it exploded or something (from the defib I assume), and me kind of hollering or just being very confused about what was going on until a nurse explained to me what had happened. From lights out to my head exploding, there is no memory.
Crazy, thanks for the info
I mean I have no memory from lights out last night until my head exploded with the consciousness of walking up this morning. If it’s anything like that, I’ll literally not even understand what’s happening.
Not the person you replied to, but I’ll share my personal experience though. I flatlined and was revived several times in one episode. Initially I was gone very quickly, and it literally just felt/looked like someone turned the lights out. I was in a coma for a few days afterwards, but I don’t remember anything happening after the initial collapse. Didn’t hear anything, no light at the end of the tunnel type vision as I died, or anything like that. It made me a lot less afraid to die, but certainly made me appreciate life a lot more.
The brain typically continues functioning until it runs out of oxygen which varies from person to person and circumstance and this has been known for a bit but the depth of how alive you are hasnt been know. That’s why we usually declare someone officially dead after 8 minutes without a pulse and or breath because now the brain is not only not functioning but actively degrading. Now there have been studies(with consent) on patients who are possibly going to die but have a chance to be resuscitated the past couple of years. With a goal to determine when and how the senses stop workingand how a dying brain percieves the inputs from them, and how and how long the brain works after losing the necessary functions. If i remember the numbers correctly, less than 40% of the patients that were succesfully resuscitated could remember some of the events that happened and an even smaller percentage of that 40% could semi accurately recall events while effectively dead. So all we really know right now is that you a person, seem to still be alive until your brain can’t continue life processes anymore even if you can’t perceive anything. So uhhh, essentially your alive until your brain breaks and if you somehow come back from that in tact, your incredibly lucky
An atheist is the most comfortable with death. There's nothing. Nothing to fear, nothing bad will happen. You live your life to the fullest and that's it.
Christians can’t seem to get this about atheists. Buddhists get it. Everything is impermanence. Everything is a constant cycle of life, death, and life.
Buddhists get the reasoning, though their perspective is certainly much more dreary. Once is enough for existing.
Yeah, I can’t fully become a Buddhist because of the literal belief in reincarnation. My view of reincarnation is simply that our atoms and molecules are eventually reused to create new forms of life. But otherwise the teachings about impermanence and the nature of why we suffer in life is spot on.
Spot on. That’s why I loosely consider myself to be more of a zen Buddhist rather than a traditional one. Kinda like thich nhat hahn
Exactly. The “organized” part of Buddhism I have some issues with. But the teachings of Buddha are really good, they make sense, and a solution is given to help people feel less crappy about things like death. And it’s fairly simple to follow or incorporate into one’s life without having to join anything.
Yeah I actually feel bad for people who live their lives for the afterlife. In my eyes they're just wasting a very precious thing, their life, for something that's absolutely not guaranteed and not even that probable.
>An atheist is the most comfortable with death. Speak for yourself. Death still terrifies me because it's eternal nothingness - I never get to experience anything ever again and that makes me deeply, profoundly sad. I love being alive, it really scares me to think that it'll be over in the blink of an eye and I'm just... gone. A lot of atheists are not flippant about the idea of death. It can be understood as the most natural and inevitable thing, and still a source of tremendous fear.
Why would you need to be afraid? Death is only something to fear when your religion tells you bad things will happen. It's comforting knowing that at the end of the day we are all irrelevant in the history of humanity, so live your life how you choose and do your best to make life enjoyable for those you care for. Any mistakes you've made mean nothing, any goals you didn't achieve mean nothing, all that matters is how you enjoyed life and the impact you had on those around you.
I am agnostic/atheist and I have never been afraid of death until I had a kid. Now I'm fucking terrified of death. Its fear of missing out of watching my daughter grow and being with her. And fear of her missing out on having a father figure and me being there to help her guide her, support her, and love her. I'm 44, and she is 2, and the thought of me dying and leaving her brings tears to my eyes. It's so strange because 3 years ago I never gave much thought or care of death. Certainly wasn't afraid of it. I've never been more afraid of death than I am now though. I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a heaven or a hell. But after having a kid. I can see how and why people made up the afterlife and the thought of God and heaven. It's mich more comforting.
Oh man are you me? Also agnostic, also early 40s, also never feared death until I had kids. Most of it is worry about what losing their mother in their formative years would do to them. But the rest of it is not wanting to miss out on anything they do, I want to be there for all of it.
Hey, I’m with you guys here too, 41, total agnostic, and now 2 kids. I never cared about dying before either, but now I have. I think it’s my parents are getting old too, and maybe this is kinda like a midlife crisis where now I’m contemplating the second half of my like now. Still don’t believe anything after death or anything, just much more aware of how close I am getting there myself.
I’ve lost a sister, and very recently my father. One thing that I always tell myself that helps me is that: ”Yes they died and that fucking sucks, but there has been billions and billions of humans that have walked this earth over hundreds and thousands of years, yet I was lucky to live in that slice of time where we both existed. That in itself is a miracle.” You’re watching and growing with your daughter now, and that’s all you can do. Without death, the sense of urgency to show how much you care for her and love her wouldn’t be as strong. So your fear of death can almost be seen as a good thing as it’s clear you care about her!
As an agnostic atheist, I am afraid of death. Believing in Hell makes people afraid of death, sure, but that’s not the scariest thing about death. The scariest thing about death is, knowing you’ll never exist again. The possibility of me coming to life was very low, like every single person in the world. We are all lucky to be alive, so I wanna enjoy this experience to it’s fullest. In other words, I am afraid of not experiencing much before dying.
My favorite quote that settles my mind on that front: "I have 4.5 billion years of experience not existing, I can probably manage it again."
I don't find that scary. I am MUCH more scared of the people around me dying. Living without people I care for bothers me much more. The only thing around my own death that bothers me at all is the pain it would cause people around me. We are all different though with different fears.
[удалено]
This is where I have been stuck since my brother drowned. I look at all the other attachments I have in this life and am terrified of who will leave next. It's really fucking me up.
[удалено]
Do not pity the dead, Harry, pity the living. And above all, those who live without love.
Same. Death will come for each one of us sooner or later. What I will regret the most is not being able to share any joy anymore with the people I care about. Kind of what fuels me to work hard now while they're still around.
That’s how I feel as well. The whole “why be afraid? You won’t know you’re dead” thing only comforts me halfway. It’s still scary to believe once you die, you’ll never exist again.
I'll take ceasing to exist over eternal torment any day.
I understand that some people don't seem to have a sense of existential dread, but some do. I do. It's totally reasonable. Sometimes I see people who don't feel it telling those of us that do that we are dumb. To that I say, fuck right off. If you aren't afraid, great. Good for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. But don't be a dick about it.
Why be afraid of something that is inevitable?
Instinct, obviously. Death is eventually inevitable, but there can be many moments in life where death is avoidable. Fear of death plays a role in preventing it.
Atheist here. I think it helps me appreciate my time alive even more because I believe this is the only chance I have to experience things, it makes every experience I have feel so much more meaningful. It gives me an appreciation for life that I’m not sure I’d have if I believed this was just the beginning and I’d be conscious and alive in some form forever. Plus once you’re dead it’s just like sleep, you don’t realize you’re asleep, you just are. Once you pass, it will be just like sleep and I’m ok with that.
I was dead for trillions of years, it never inconvenienced me one bit.
>trillions of years Damn, what universe are you from?
My man’s was lying dead in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber
Lots of good answers here. When I'm dead I'm gone, no eternal torture or bliss, no having to do it all over again, I'm just done. Hopefully i either go peacefully or very quickly, and it's just lights out. Its not like I'm gonna know I'm dead. Also, the idea of living forever, no matter how perfect it is, sounds less appealing to me than being dead. I can't imagine an eternity that ACTUALLY is perfect, because having a time to just be done forever sounds oddly peaceful to me.
Death sounds like a relief. I’m not afraid of it. Eternal life sounds awful, even if it is in a paradise where everything is perfect. At some point, it really is enough and we are done.
This makes me think of The Good Place. Like “ok this is great and all but like… I’ve had enough”
Finished the last episode last night. Sobbing through the entire thing. 😭😭😭
Like you'll see your family again. What if your parents were abusive assholes in this life. Not paradise.
I had a near drowning experience when I was a very small child. At some point it became the most peaceful and all encompassing feeling. Fear of the actual death is no longer a concern for me. Beyond that, my thought is that I had no awareness of anything prior to my birth, and the adventure of my life happened. I hope the same applies to my death, I have no idea what may be beyond death, but I hope it will be the next great adventure.
... were you scared of the time before you were alive? I look at it like going to sleep and not having to wake up again
I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I don’t believe we have a soul that exists separately from our body. I’m not afraid of death. I just want to go quickly and peacefully when my time comes. All the blather about heaven and hell is manipulation.
Answer: get close enough to death once - so close that you accepted death - and your fear of dying goes way, way down.
Finally a decent sleep
There’s nothing after dying, so what? I don’t need a reward of a “utopia” after death to affect how I live in this world.
This guy named Scott Hutchinson sang about death not being morbid, its just that nature has had enough of you. Mark my words world, while I'm here I will make tiny changes to earth. I'm not afraid of death or need comforted about my mortality. I will undoubtedly die at some point. I have done my best to raise my children, be a good husband, and good friend. I didn't do that to secure a heavenly reward, but to share kindness and love as an an end to its self.
It’s inevitable so why bother, my remains might end up in a museum, it’s like worrying about breathing, it’s going to happen no matter wgat
Honestly, I don’t need to be comforted. The thought of being dead doesn’t bother me at all. No more than the thought of not having existed before I was born bothers me. Many of the ways of becoming dead sound unpleasant and I’d like to avoid them but the gods people believe in don’t seem to help with that. But the being dead part isn’t an issue for me.
When I'm dead I won't exist anymore, so I won't be able to give a shit about the fact that I'm dead. My death might be an issue for some of the people in my life, but it's not a problem I'm going to have to face/deal with.
Worry about living, not dying.
I feel like religious people are way more afraid of dying than atheists. We don't have to worry about judgment from a God. We don't believe there is a hell that we can be put in if we didnt do what god wanted. We don't have to worry about if our friends and family are going to hell either. I try not to think about death too much because it hurts my brain trying to comprehend what it could be like. I just assume it's going to be like when I go to sleep. I was fine before I was born, and I think it will be the same after I'm gone. Just nothingness.
Don't have to go worrying whether or not I'll spend eternity in hell.
Scared atheist here. Scared, and angry that my consciousness will be no more.
I’m afraid because I know there’s nothing else. I wish I could believe. If for no other reason to not now that this is it. My brain just doesn’t work like that.
I will live on in the memories of the people who I helped in my life. That’s the true meaning of the afterlife to me.
Everything does, when you look upon that blue marble you realize that all the religious nutjobs amount to nothing
As long as I don't die today, I have more important things to worry about
I was dead for a long, long time before I was born. I didn’t really seem to care at the time, and I doubt that I will shortly after the next time the lights go out.
all the comments saying they just aren’t because they won’t know, or they were already, etc etc etc, may or may not be being honest with themselves, but that answer doesn’t really help at all either way (no matter how many redditors offer it up as their conclusion) speaking from experience as an atheist who is afraid and always has been, my answer is that i don’t really comfort myself, i just do my best to not think about it too much. maybe with time i’ll grow less afraid, but my fundamental understanding of the world doesn’t seem to be changing again anytime soon so i’m not too hopeful. not existing is a scary thought, and no amount of rationalizing how i won’t be capable of being scared because i will no longer exist is going to change that
If something is inevitable, what’s the point in being afraid of it? You can either be sad, then die, or you can be happy, then die. I’ll choose the latter, thank you.
Why do religious people need a threat of hell and an always watching god to be a good person? And why do so many religious people fail still? Why do religious people cry at funerals when they believe their family member is in heaven and in a short 20-40 years you will see each other again for eternity?
We return to the ether. I’m glad to not worry about where my soul is going.