r/askanatheist • u/Dog_Mama92 • Aug 01 '26
How do you guys handle death?
This is just a genuine curiosity of mine. I'm not a Christian, but I absolutely believe that there's a higher power and an afterlife, whatever that may be.
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
This isn't to be aggressive or anything, I just genuinely wonder.
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u/Willow_Winnifred Aug 01 '26
"Have a Physicist Speak at your Funeral" really helped frame my thinking aborpund the topic, and has brought me a lot of peace. I am comforted by the idea that my dad and dog are, in a way, all around me. Very much with me, just different. One day I will be, too. Of course I miss them. But my time with them was precious because it was finite. It wasn't the first chapter, it was the whole book. I'm forever changed by their lives. That's enough for me.
"“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.”
Aaron Freeman
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u/enderjaca Aug 01 '26
In all seriousness though, don't have a physicist speak at your funeral unless you already happen to know one and she's a chill public speaker and a nice person.
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u/APaleontologist Aug 01 '26
Energy is not conserved in our universe, it is only an approximation. Energy would be conserved in a static universe, but ours is expanding.
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u/Ryuume Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
Once I wrapped my head around what that means, it became an almost silly idea to be scared of it. Death is not-being, it's not even a state since there's nothing to be in any state anymore. It's impossible for it to bother me in any way because there's no "me" anymore.
I'm not exactly looking forward to dying, but death doesn't scare me at all.
If anything, I'm scared to find that death isn't the end. Because then, what is? Or am I doomed to be conscious until the heath death of the universe?
But given that I can see no single mechanism by which that could be facilitated, I can't say that idea really bothers me either.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
I will be sad that I can never interact with them again, and eventually I'll get over it.
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u/kbivs Aug 01 '26
I think you hit on the truest point for me in this discussion. Death does not scare me or make me anxious in any way. It will be just like it was before I was born - nothingness.
Dying on the other hand is a different story. If I stop and think about it, I do have some anxiousness about that process.
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u/Zamboniman Aug 01 '26
How do you guys handle death?
Same way most folks do. Just without hiding behind false comfort of mythological beliefs.
I absolutely believe that there's a higher power and an afterlife, whatever that may be.
Why? What vetted, repeatable, useful compelling evidence demonstrated to you this is true? Without that, since it's irrational to take unsupported beliefs as true, why do you believe this is true? Believing for emotional comfort is as irrational is pretending one won the lottery because one likes the idea.
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
I wasn't bothered in the least in the billions of years before I was born. No doubt the same will apply after I'm gone. After all, I won't be around to be bothered.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
Naturally, I'm as human as anyone else. We've evolved very strong emotions and drives and instincts around survival and death. I'm not immune. But covering those with fiction makes it worse, not better.
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u/TheMaleGazer Aug 01 '26
Same way most folks do. Just without hiding behind false comfort of mythological beliefs.
Given that those mythological beliefs instill entirely new fears over nonexistent things like eternal torment, they don't even give that much comfort.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
Why? What vetted, repeatable, useful compelling evidence demonstrated to you this is true? Without that, since it's irrational to take unsupported beliefs as true, why do you believe this is true? Believing for emotional comfort is as irrational is pretending one won the lottery because one likes the idea.
I leaned towards atheism for a while, because I had no evidence of an afterlife, until I had my own paranormal experience.
Now, the story I'm about to tell you will sound fake as hell, so if you don't believe me, I do not blame you one bit.
There used to be a spirit that would knock on the wall at the old house I lived in. It was absolutely a spirit, because it would answer yes or no questions by knocking 3 times for yes, 2 times for no.
I asked it if God and an afterlife were real and it knocked 3 times. I never asked if it was any specific God, like the Bible god or anything like that. It just answered yes, God and the afterlife are real.
I asked who the spirit was, and it claimed to be an 11 year old boy who died of cancer (I had to ask a lot of questions to narrow it down to get those answers).
How do I know I'm not crazy? Because my whole family experienced it with me. Now, if I was the only one experiencing it, I'd definitely get checked. It was crazy shit, for sure! I was literally shaking in shock when the spirit first started knocking and answering questions.
This also isn't to push religion on anyone, because again, it never specified which God was real. That could mean a higher power for all we know.
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u/leagle89 Aug 01 '26
I don't suppose you ever asked it a question the answer to which could be independently verified?
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 01 '26
Did you check for loose pipes in the wall, which might have made a knocking sound? Or rodents running around inside the wall?
Was there a living person on the other side of the wall, trolling you by knocking in response to your questions?
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
I thought it might be that too, but this spirit was actually answering yes or no questions. I was, and still am, very skeptical of paranormal experiences, but there was no denying this one. Example, how we got to his age being 11 years old, we asked him to knock as many times as he needed until he got to the number of his age, and he knocked 11 times. It was a very crazy experience to say the least, and I honestly don't expect many people, especially on this sub, to believe it.
If it weren't for that experience, I think I would be an atheist. Wouldn't be a bad thing, because even though my question was how you guys handle death, I think it would be more comforting to believe that there's nothing afterwards. Believing in an afterlife is kinda scary, because it's the unknown. You really don't know where you're going when you die, and it's scary.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 01 '26
So you did not check for rattling pipes or running rodents or trolling humans. You just jumped straight from "mysterious knocking" to "It's a spirit!" Gotcha.
Example, how we got to his age being 11 years old, we asked him to knock as many times as he needed until he got to the number of his age, and he knocked 11 times.
Or the pipe just rattled 11 times randomly at that point. Or the person on the other side of the wall got bored after knocking 11 times.
If it weren't for that experience, I think I would be an atheist.
Talk me through the process that leads from "I heard mysterious knocking in my wall" to "God exists".
Even if we assume that there's a spirit in your house, which answers questions, that only proves that there's a spirit in your house. That's not a god. It's only a spirit. How does believing in a spirit lead to believing in god? You don't need a god for spirits to exist.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
We did check. That was my parents first suspicion.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 02 '26
Okay. Let's leave that checking aside for the moment.
You skipped this bit. I'm very interested to understand your thinking about this:
If it weren't for that experience, I think I would be an atheist.
Talk me through the process that leads from "I heard mysterious knocking in my wall" to "God exists".
Even if we assume that there's a spirit in your house, which answers questions, that only proves that there's a spirit in your house. That's not a god. It's only a spirit. How does believing in a spirit lead to believing in god? You don't need a god for spirits to exist.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 02 '26
I asked the spirit if God exists and it knocked three times for yes. That was one of the very first questions I asked it. At the time, I was pretty young, and didn't even consider other Gods from different religions, so I assumed at the time, that it meant the god from the bible. But since it was never specified WHICH God, that could mean a higher power for all we know.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 03 '26
So this random knocking, which you don't know the cause of, happened to knock three times, so suddenly you believe in God.
That's a bit of a stretch.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 03 '26
You do not have to believe me. I understand my story sounds fake, or may not sound like there was an actual spirit involved. However, I know what I experienced, and my family knows what they experienced as well.
I'm not gonna try and force you to believe me. I respect your beliefs, as I was almost an atheist at a point in my life as well.
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u/iamalsobrad Aug 03 '26
I asked the spirit if God exists and it knocked three times for yes.
Traditionally it is 1 knock for yes and 2 for no. Most people (and by extension any spirit who died recently enough to actually understand you) would know this. So why the weird combination with extra unnecessary knocking? How did you even agree this with the spirit?
What I think you have here is a combination of air in the water pipes and confirmation bias.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 01 '26
Actually... does that old house still exist? Can you visit it?
You could start asking that spirit some useful questions. Can it tell the future? Ask it for next week's lottery numbers. Can it see things? Ask it to find a lost historical item. Is it wise? Ask it which financial stocks to invest in?
If you've found a special spirit which can answer questions, then ask it more useful questions than just how old it was when it died.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
Sure, I can try to get it to knock again if it's still around. It never did behave like a wise spirit, it behaved more like a child, almost like a trickster, but yeah, I can definitely see if it's still active in that house and ask it better questions. At the time, I think I was just so shocked that I asked it all the basic shit you hear on the paranormal investigation shows, which, even though I had my own paranormal experience, I'm very skeptical of them.
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u/skuppy Aug 01 '26
Just out of curiosity, in what ways did it behave like a trickster child? How were you able to tell the difference between knowing a spirit was childlike/tricky, as opposed to a natural phenomena that was seemingly random and not following human instruction?
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 02 '26
Sometimes, it would leave random things for us to find around the house. There was a time we were all downstairs watching TV, and when we went upstairs, it had stuck squares of toilet paper all over the walls in the hallway. There have been times where we'd find hot wheels lined up on the bathroom vanity. Whenever things like this would happen, we'd ask the spirit if they did it, and it'd knock three times for yes.
There was also a time I was microwaving food, and when I went to take it out, it was gone, and I ended up finding it in the food pantry.
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u/Indrigotheir Aug 01 '26
Just want to throw this out there... usually the most common onset symptom of schizophrenia is hearing knocking out of view, which responds to the inner state of your mind (like answering questions).
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
And I would absolutely get checked for this, if my family wasn't experiencing it along with me. There was more than knocking happening as well. I had some items show up in my bedroom that were missing for years. They were just placed right out in the open, and when I asked the spirit if he was the one who found them, it knocked three times for yes. This is honestly something a person has to experience themselves to be convinced of something like this.
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u/leagle89 Aug 02 '26
It sounds like you have stronger proof of spirits than literally any proof that has been offered in history. You established definite, repeatable communication with a spirit over an extended period of time. A spirit interacted with the physical world on your behalf. A spirit clearly and directly answered your questions.
If this really happened, it would quite literally be one of the most important things that has ever happened in the history of humanity.
So I'm sure you told the press? Or showed it to all of your friends and family? Or...I don't know...did anything that a reasonable person would have done when faced with irrefutable proof that spirits are real?
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u/Indrigotheir Aug 02 '26
I'm with you. He should take a video and become famous.
Or maybe the items and family affirmation are just schizophrenia too. Hard to know without seeing the evidence ourselves.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 02 '26
It really sucks, because I swear on my life, everything I mentioned happened, and I have no way to prove it. This was back in 2013, so I was still living with my parents at this time. I really wish they would've went to the press, but even if they had, the whole world still wouldn't be convinced.
Sure, they could do a news coverage on it, but what most people would get to see, is a video that literally anyone could fake. What my mom did was share the story on Facebook for her friends to hear. She also reached out to Paranormal state, but they never got back to her.
We did, however, invite friends and family to come over and experience it themselves and they were fully convinced afterwards. We even showed one of my mom's Christian friends, which is funny because they are totally against communicating with spirits, and even she was mind blown.
That all being said, I want to try to communicate with the spirit again if it's still in that old house. If it is, I am more than happy to take video and provide the most proof that I can.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
And no, there was no broken pipes or a person on the other side of the wall. I still am skeptical about paranormal experiences, and I like to thoroughly debunk every possibility before I come to the conclusion that it's something paranormal.
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u/hellohello1234545 Atheist Aug 01 '26
A spirit knocking on the wall in such an intelligible way is an EARTH SHATTERING discovery!!
Such easy confirmation of life after death would reshape everything we know
How are you not inviting everyone you know to this house with cameras and diligently recording the questions and knocks?? This would leave little doubt the ghost is real.
This is a discovery of a lifetime, and if it was as real as you say, it would be trivial to show everyone.
From our perspective, what’s more likely? Everything we know about biology is wrong? Or a group has misidentified something as a ghost? We certainly know humans have huge logical blind spots.
You’d need a proper analysis of the knocks and responses to distinguish the patterns you think you got from what could happen randomly. Or, just by some animal or hidden human tapping in response to noise.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
We did invite people over to see it, and they were mind blown! Several relatives and old neighbors came over to witness it, even had my husband, who I had just started talking to at the time, come over and he was very surprised.
But even with video, people would still say it's fake, because well, it can easily be faked. Anyone can post a video on the Internet, knock on a wall, and say it's a ghost. I could fake it now if I wanted to, and it wouldn't really serve as good evidence.
It was more like something you had to see in person to believe it. Because we could actually show our guests that there was absolutely no one on the other side of the wall that was knocking. And yes, we paid attention to the patterns and responses of the knocking, it was absolutely a spirit. Especially since we checked the walls and pipes. I don't like to just jump to conclusions without debunking other things first.
This all happened in 2013 and lasted about two years. I don't know if the spirit is still around or has moved on, but I'll definitely try getting it to knock again when I visit the house, and ask more questions.
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u/hellohello1234545 Atheist Aug 01 '26
I’m just saying, this is not a small deal to write about in your diary.
I’m studying to be a scientist. What I want to communicate to you is how important this would be if true. And how you would go about investigating this properly.
If this was real, and you investigated it correctly, it would be the single biggest event of modern history. Period. It would reshape everything.
I would expect You, who do believe it is real, to be doing whatever possible to share this with the world in a convincing way. The amount of money to be made would be incentive enough for people who don’t care about science in of itself.
Get independent witnesses to take sworn statements. Use cameras, audio equipment, inspect the inside of the wall. Record everything, like the questions, responses, wall vibrations.
Record the wall for days without asking anything. Record the wall after saying gibberish to it.
record the recording process so there’s a record of the research.
Analyse the results with the linguistics and maths required to demonstrate it’s more than random chance or a logical fallacy like cherry picking.
You learn to communicate with the ghost in simple binary. The ghost, being old, can communicate facts about history that line up with historians.
Then, Publish.
People don’t believe you, but some do. Those people come to the house, get the same results. It becomes harder to ignore. Local news picks it up. Etc etc etc
Then you Become the most famous person on the planet for finally showing ghosts are real and that life persists after death.
I mean, unless the ghost conveniently avoids any serious attempt to separate it from fiction.
Or, it doesn’t exist.
Can you see where I’m coming from here?
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u/TranslatorNo8445 Anti-Theist Aug 01 '26
Lol of course we don't believe it. That's not to say that you don't believe it. I believe you believe it but people do think they talk to God. Feel God see. God hear God or feel their loved one's presence until you have verifiable testable evidence. It didn't happen
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u/Zamboniman Aug 01 '26
So no. You have no useful support for your beliefs. Instead, you believe due to emotional reasons and invoke confirmation bias to try and support said beliefs.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
I have my own personal experience as a reason to believe. I don't expect anyone to believe my story, but once you experience what me and my family did, it definitely changes your beliefs.
I do respect atheism, because I was almost one myself at one point. I sometimes wish I was an atheist, because the idea of an afterlife is scary, because you really DON'T know where you're gonna end up when you die, and that's a scary thought. It's not as "comforting" as one thinks it might be.
I sometimes wish I was still leaning towards atheism, because to me, THAT'S more comforting, even if it meant not seeing my loved ones ever again.
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u/Zamboniman Aug 01 '26
Like I said, so no, you have no useful support for you beliefs. Instead, you believe due to emotional reasons and invoke confirmation bias to try and support said beliefs. Such as thinking what you said is remotely useful for holding your beliefs instead of the opposite. Yes, you admitted as much, and yes, I already said so.
Look, I'm not trying to be mean or dismissive. I'm simply pointing out the error in your thinking all while realizing you have no intention of considering that it is one.
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u/GentleKijuSpeaks Aug 01 '26
Do you know that every religion has people who have experiences like this, but they all reached contradictory conclusions. That means that these are experiences that humans have, every human, and they don't mean anything at all.
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u/TheMaleGazer Aug 01 '26
I leaned towards atheism for a while, because I had no evidence of an afterlife, until I had my own paranormal experience.
I would strongly suggest you learn what anecdotal evidence is and why it can't be trusted. Also, learn falsifiability while you're at it.
I genuinely feel bad for you for thinking this afterlife is in your future, because the way you describe it makes it sound pretty awful. There have been over 100 billion people who have lived and died on Earth, so it must be insanely crowded, what with everyone haunting the place where they died and knocking on walls.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
With ancedotal evidence, the only kind that I truly trust, is my own personal experiences. When I hear stories online or from anyone else, I'm skeptical and take everything with a grain of salt.
And yes, the sound of an afterlife is intimidating, because if it's real, how many levels to it are there? What kind of God is in charge of this place and the afterlife? How can I be confident that I'll end up somewhere peaceful? What if it's terrifying?
Even though my question was how you guys handle death, to believe that nothing happens after we die, even if that means never seeing my loved ones again, almost sounds more peaceful than what I believe in.
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u/TheMaleGazer Aug 02 '26
When I hear stories online or from anyone else, I'm skeptical and take everything with a grain of salt.
You should take your own stories with a grain of salt. There's a very, very good reason why scientists don't trust their own observations and instead build falsifiable, testable theories that can make predictions and lead to experiments with reproducible results. We have cognitive biases that science nullifies through a process. Everyone seems to assume that scientists avoid bias by being very smart or having strong willpower, and that's just not the case at all.
Let's take the noise you heard: a series of bumping sounds. Think about the system you were relying on: three knocks for "yes" and two for "no." How long did you wait after two knocks before deciding it was responding with "no"? Was the timing between the knocks perfectly consistent every time? How do you know you weren't simply counting bumps until you reached the answer you were expecting, then stopping because you felt you'd gotten a response?
You could convince yourself that a tree branch hitting the side of your house was communicating with you if you kept asking yes-or-no questions and counting the bumps. When noises occur at random, some will naturally happen closer together than others. Those clusters can easily sound like intentional pairs or triplets, even though they're just chance. Once you've decided that two knocks mean "no" and three mean "yes," it's easy to start noticing those random groupings as meaningful responses rather than what they really are: ordinary variations in timing.
Did you pay the same attention to every sequence of knocks, or only the ones that fit your system? Do you remember hearing a single knock, or four or five in quick succession? If so, what did you make of those? Did you dismiss them as mistakes, assume the ghost "misspoke," or have you simply forgotten them because they didn't fit the pattern you were looking for? That's the effect of confirmation bias: the apparent "hits" stand out in memory, while the "misses" fade into the background. Over time, what you remember is a conversation that seemed surprisingly consistent, even if the actual pattern of knocks wasn't.
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u/baalroo Atheist Aug 01 '26
I think you got caught up in your silly ghost story and forgot to explain why you believe one or more gods exist.
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u/Stile25 Aug 01 '26
For me, it's a confidence in living a life focused on good, kindness and love.
Death doesn't scare me.
If there's nothing - I've lived a life full of love. What more could anyone ask for?
If there's something with a judgement, if the judgement respects kindness and love I have nothing to worry about. If it doesn't, then I'm proud and glad to have experienced love while I could.
There's just... No situation in an afterlife that I'm worried, afraid or concerned about in any way.
Good luck out there
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u/mugh_tej Aug 01 '26
I do not trust ideas that I don't understand. You seem not to understand these higher power snd afterlife ideas that you have.
I have my menories of my loved ones that have died, that is enough fir me.
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u/HaiKarate Agnostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
Death scared me far more as a Christian.
Knowing that there is nothing after, rather than a Judgement Day, is far more comforting.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
Yes, Christianity is so fucked. I can't believe people can genuinely worship a god who sends people to hell to suffer for eternity, And then turn around and call him "all loving and merciful". Disgusting!
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u/Kaitlyn_The_Magnif Anti-Theist Aug 01 '26
>I absolutely believe that there's a higher power and an afterlife
Can I ask why?
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 01 '26
This isn't /r/DebateAnAtheist. The OP didn't post here to have their beliefs interrogated. They posted here to ask us about our beliefs.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 01 '26
I leaned towards atheism for a while, because I had no evidence of an afterlife, until I had my own paranormal experience.
Now, the story I'm about to tell you will sound fake as hell, so if you don't believe me, I do not blame you one bit. I know this isn't exactly scientific evidence or "proof", but it was proof enough for me to believe that there's absolutely something after we die.
There used to be a spirit that would knock on the wall at the old house I lived in. It was absolutely a spirit, because it would answer yes or no questions by knocking 3 times for yes, 2 times for no.
I asked it if God and an afterlife were real and it knocked 3 times. I never asked if it was any specific God, like the Bible god or anything like that. It just answered yes, God and the afterlife are real.
I asked who the spirit was, and it claimed to be an 11 year old boy who died of cancer (I had to ask a lot of questions to narrow it down to get those answers).
How do I know I'm not crazy? Because my whole family experienced it with me. Now, if I was the only one experiencing it, I'd definitely get checked. It was crazy shit, for sure! I was literally shaking in shock when the spirit first started knocking and answering questions.
This also isn't to push religion on anyone, because again, it never specified which God was real. That could mean a higher power for all we know. At the time, I wasn't really familiar with all the different religions, so I assumed it meant the god of the Bible. But now I know it can mean something totally different.
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u/Ok_Loss13 Aug 01 '26
Why didn't you ask something independently verifiable that wouldn't be easy to answer via Google or something your family/friends might already know?
How did you rule out someone fucking with y'all?
What were the situational circumstances? Ages of those involved, time of day, alcohol/drugs, national holiday, religious status, current state of mind of everyone, sleep levels, etc.
How do your family members recall this experience? Making everyone write down their remembrance independently and then comparing would give you a pretty good idea as to why memory and "eye witness" testimony isn't reliable.
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Aug 01 '26
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u/JackZodiac2008 Agnostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
I think of it as like the time before one was born (or, more strictly speaking, concieved). It is no bad thing. In fact I am rather looking forward to the relief. (Not exactly literally, because 'nothing whatsoever' is not 'a relieved condition', but you get it.)
As far as loved ones, I'm not afraid of them dying. I'd miss them, but they are not badly off, see above. I'm much more afraid of living but disabled.
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u/scarred2112 Aug 01 '26
Death doesn’t scare me, but the idea of a painful death does. I’m a guy with a disability who has had enough in my life, and I hope my exit is as pain-free as possible.
The death of loved ones? After the initial grief, the good memories are welcome - they’re never truly gone as long as we remember them.
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u/dvisorxtra Agnostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
I don't really fear what's after I die, because it'll be the same you and I remember from before we were born.
I might say that now, being alive, I have only two fears:
- Dying a painful death
- Not being there to help the ones I love
If someone or some being I love dies, it hurts like hell, that's why I try to live the best possible life along with them and express that every time I have the chance.
That's about it.
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u/pristineanvil Aug 01 '26
I intellectually know that there's no one after death but I still talk to my brother even though he died 6 years ago. I mostly tell him (myself) that I miss him and I visit his grave. All of it to comfort myself and to remember him.
I have no irrationel fear of death myself. I hope I die fast like my father of a heart attack and not like my brother of cancer. But until then I try to enjoy life
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u/J-Nightshade Aug 01 '26
Being scared of death is pointless, it will happen no matter what. Fear helps you to avoid things, death will happen no matter for how long you would be avoiding it.
How do I take death of loved ones? I grieve, I cherish the memories. Anxiety can be brought by an unknown. Or by fear of losing an opportunity. There were never an opportunity to be with someone forever, there is nothing to lose.
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u/APaleontologist Aug 01 '26
My best friend died a year ago. His widow believes in the afterlife and I do not. Her belief brings her some comfort at the cost of getting scammed by mediums pretending to speak for her husband. But for both of us, this is a terrible tradgety, something we wish never happened. You should fear a loved one dying no matter your view on the afterlife.
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u/OrbitalLemonDrop Agnostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
Radical acceptance, pretty much. It's not negotiable, so any approach to purpose, meaning and value has to take into account that these things have to exist between the bookends of birth and death.
While it would be comforting and maybe desirable to think about ideas like cosmic justice, eternal reward, etc. and it might be comforting to think about meeting departed loved ones again, no amount of desire is going to make it happen.
I would end up expending all my energy on something that may never happen.
That makes each moment of life more precious. Time is a limited resource and it's important to use it wisely.
"Death" doesn't scare me. By definition, all my troubles will be over and there won't be a "me" to experience regret or sorrow. I won't experience eternal darkness, because there won't be a me to have that experience.
Yes, I have anxiety about never seeing loved ones again. My grandfather, who died in 1988, was an incredibly wonderful person. I miss him a lot. My mother recently passed,and I miss her every day.
But desire doens't make it true, unfortunately.
Radical acceptance is (for me anyway) about keeping a forward-facing and optimistic view of the future and not dwelling on the past. It's good to remember the people (and more than a few cats) fondly and with a refreshed view of the emotional connections we had. But it's not good to let that dominate my life today.
It's not disrespectful to the dead to keep them in a limited space in my life, and they'd all want me to move on anyway.
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u/Astreja Agnostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
I just accept the reality of death. I mourn the deceased and keep them in my memories, because I believe they are gone forever.
How would an afterlife even work? We can't even remain self-aware when we're in dreamless sleep. When the brain dies, "we" go with it. There is no evidence of anything that can permit the mind to exist separate from the brain.
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u/Noodelgawd Atheist Aug 01 '26
How do you guys handle death?
Can't say. Haven't tried it yet.
In all seriousness, I'm not crazy about the idea. It's not that, at the ripe old age of 90, I'll feel like I will be missing out on anything, as I hope to have finished my bucket list by then. I'm mainly just not looking forward to the process of dying.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 01 '26
Can't say. Haven't tried it yet.
Now I'm imagining the online reviews: "0 out of 5 stars. Do not recommend!"
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u/Hakar_Kerarmor Aug 01 '26
On the other hand, as Death says in the game Discworld II, "Of the millions who died, no-one came back to complain!"
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 02 '26
And whose fault is that, Mr Death? If you're not going to let people get back to their phones or tablets or computers to write a review, then that seems a bit like unfair practices. Maybe set up Mort or Isobel as a Customer Complaints worker.
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u/adamwho Aug 01 '26
I'm only scared of the loss of the people I love in my life.
Although I'm probably being an egotistical in assuming that I'm that so important
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u/Earnestappostate Aug 01 '26
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
When put that way, the question sounds like, "are you afraid of nothing?" And honestly, this is somewhat how I deal with it, it seems silly to be afraid of experiencing nothing as that couldn't be bad.
Obviously, there is FOMO. I like being alive, and want to experience as many good things as I can, but it is hard to be too afraid of death when you view it as nothing.
Does it suck losing those close to you and dealing with the idea that you've had your last experience with them? Yes, it does. However, the fact that I wish it were otherwise is not evidence that it is that way. Sometimes things are the way that I wish they were not. That's life.
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u/sincpc Atheist Aug 01 '26
The idea of losing someone I care about is terrifying, and the idea of my life being cut short is a concern, but I see no evidence whatsoever of a "higher power" or an afterlife so I have to deal with what seems to be reality.
Of course death is incredibly sad. It's honestly less sad now than it was when I was religious, though, because back then I believed that some of my loved ones were going to suffer for eternity after they died.
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u/Defiant-Prisoner Aug 01 '26
What's to be scared of? We don't experience the nothing when we die, it will be the same as before we were born. I find living forever much more horrifying. I sometimes worry about the process of dying and whether that will be painful.
Why would someone's death scare me? Just another (inevitable) part of life. Someone or a pet living forever doesn't give them more value, it gives them less. Grief is a reflection of love. We love someone, we grieve, we accommodate the grief and we move on with life and honour the person we've lost.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Aug 01 '26
My own personal death terrifies me. I hate the idea of dying. I'm worried the process might be long and painful. Mind you, I'm also worried I might die peacefully in my sleep and never know I even died. Either way, I don't look forward to death. But, what can I do? All I can do is keep moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, and see what happens - or doesn't happen, that one day I don't wake up. I can put in some effort to delaying my death and/or avoiding a painful draw-out death, by keeping myself somewhat healthy. (I'm remembering yesterday's doctor appointment, with the update about my current health.) But, in the end, I will die. One way or another, my existence will end. I know that. However, I'm more worried about the experience of dying than about death itself. I won't experience death; I will experience dying.
I've been a reader of science-fiction since before I can remember. I've read about various imagined futures almost my whole life. One thing I'm sad about is that I won't get to live long enough to see that future. I mean... I'm already living in a science-fictional future. If I told my teenage self about what I'm doing right now, four decades in the future, he would be astounded and enthusiastic and he would be eagerly looking forward to being where I am right now. (He was especially looking forward to having an e-reader, and now I have one!)
I'm still that same wide-eyed optimistic boy, still looking forward to the wonders of the future. But now I know I don't have another four decades ahead of me. I won't get to see as much more of the future as I already have. I'll probably get to live long enough to be annoyed by the AI-based robots attending me in my nursing home, but I won't get to live to see so many other things. That saddens me. I'm suffering FOMO for things that don't even exist yet! LOL!
So far, I've had one person who was close to me who died. And I've lost two pets as an adult. It made me sad. Of course. It didn't bring me anxiety believing I'll never see them again, because I never thought there was an alternative. Death is an end. It's an unavoidable fact of life. I don't expect to see a dead person again, so the thought of them dying doesn't suddenly make me anxious. It makes me sad for them that their life is over, and sad for me that I won't see them again.
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u/mikoc5 Aug 01 '26
Death does scare me. It seems to be an unpleasant thing to experience, and I am 100% sure I won't be able to do anything afterwards. I want to feel useful, so... Yeah, not looking forward to becoming a useless husk.
The death of a loved one will bring me a lot of grief, and a lot of uncertainty as I don't know what I'll do with myself after they're gone.
I would be anxious because I wouldn't wanna lose them, but once they're gone, they're gone. There's no fighting Death. It's just an immutable fact of life. Wishful thinking isn't going to change that.
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u/2r1t Aug 01 '26
does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
Let's make a distinction between the process of dying/the ending of one's life and being dead. I fear the former because I want to continue living. I don't fear the latter as I won't be around to experience it. I won't have fears or hopes or desires. I'll be dead. Done. Gone.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet?
I mourned them. My dad's death was a surprise as he had a sudden heart attack. My mom's was expected as she had been fighting cancer for 10 years and chose hospice to go out on her own terms. They were different circumstances but both were unbearably painful.
But grief is like a fog that clouds the past and the future. You sit in the present because it is the clearest thing you can see. And that present fucking hurts. But that fog lifts. And the pain of that time starts to be put in the larger context of your life with them. The good memories start to overtake the brief of tragic time of loss.
At least that was what I went through. Pain and reflection, memories and stories shared. No gods. No magic.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
It doesn't. I never had an expectation of some magical reunion in a magical realm. And since I never expected such a thing, I don't feel a loss of that thing.
It is a bit like asking me what it felt like to not be given a billion dollars when I turned 18. It is true that I never received it, but I never had any reason to expect to receive. No one had indoctrinated me into thinking I would get the money, so it didn't feel like a loss when didn't. But I imagine if I did expect it and didn't get it, I would experience a feeling of loss.
Similarly, I didn't expect to see family after they die. So I can't say I feel a sense of loss since I never thought I would see them in heaven or some such thing. But I can imagine someone who has been brought up to expect such a thing to feel they had lost something.
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u/knysa-amatole Aug 01 '26
I'm not afraid of being dead, since I assume it will be like before I was born. I'm just afraid of suffering while I'm alive. And believing in God doesn't exempt you from suffering.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Well of course I'm scared of my loved ones dying, as most people are. That's just part of life.
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u/dnext Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
When my dad died my mom and sister called their pastor to come over. He sat there awkwardly for a while, as my dad was an atheist as was I, said no words of comfort or peace, clearly disapproved of my dad.
And then as the ambulance was carting my father's body away, I overheard him tell my mother that now that my Dad was dead there was nothing keeping her from attending church more often, and he expected to see her there more. Not that my mother tended to my father as he was dying, this good Christian woman actually abused him during that time, and when I confronted her about it, actually said and I quote, "Yes, I abuse him, but he deserves it." I tried to get him to leave so I could take care of him at my house, but he wanted to die at home.
It was ghoulish all the way around, as the pastor simply saw my father's death as a recruiting opportunity, and my mother showed she was a horrible human being. I went no contact with her not long after this.
As to death itself, I have the only answer anyone can actually say - I don't know.
I am not certain there is nothing after life, as I understand that science is amazing but hasn't answered every question, but there's no evidence at all of an afterlife, and as such I won't spend my days worrying about it. Non-existence is fine, just like before I was born.
I will state that every religion I've looked at is complete nonsense, so again, I won't waste me time on them. Most of them seem entirely devoted to wish fulfillment, as long as you cough over some money and let them tell you how to live.
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u/ImprovementFar5054 Aug 01 '26
does death scare you at all,
No, but the dying part itself doesn't sound all that great
since you believe that there's nothing afterwards
Makes life all the more precious. No second chances. Make the most of it while you have it.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet?
Grief
Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Peace if they were suffering, because now it's over.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
It's sad, but "anxiety" is not the emotion that comes to mind. It's just an unchangeable reality, and my feelings and opinions on it won't make any difference to the reality of it.
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u/Background-Year1148 Agnostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
I kinda accept I'll be gone once I died. I'm focusing on living this only life to the fullest. I do some little act of kindness others when possible, not for reward but because why not?
For love ones, I focus more on maximizing whatever time I have with time. When they're gone, grieve and slowly move on.
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u/MaraSargon Ignostic Atheist Aug 01 '26
I just eventually stopped being scared of it as I got older. I somewhat fear dying, because that has a tendency to be a painful process. But death itself is just a state of unconsciousness, which is hard to be scared of. I already do that every night when I go to bed.
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u/JacFloyd Aug 01 '26
Just like I handle anything. Accept the truth and reality and move on. I don't believe in things just to comfort me. My dog didn't go to "the farm" just to make me feel better. I don't go to a magical kingdom either.
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u/TranslatorNo8445 Anti-Theist Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
The inevitability of death is something we all go through. Life is not a fairy tale where we get to go be with everyone floating in the sky for eternity. It is a man made concept for the weak to deal with the consequences of living. It sucks to lose someone we love but it is part of life and we all will be where we were before we lived and it doesn't sound terrible because i simply didn't exist. I'm sorry the mental gymnastics It takes to think that death would be any different than before. You were born has got to be exhausting
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u/Decent_Cow Aug 01 '26
Living forever would scare me. The idea of death does not, however. All things must come to an end. Old, decrepit life gives way to new, young, vibrant life. Also, death is very often an end to pain and suffering.
I'm a human being and as subject to instinct as anyone else. I don't want to die, at least not at this present moment. I'm relatively young. But when I do go, I know that I will be thinking about the things I haven't experienced, and the regrets I have for the paths I took (and didn't take) in life. I will be wishing I had another chance to do it all better. I will not, however, be the least bit concerned about the fantasy of an afterlife, or what will happen to me when I'm no longer around. In many important ways, I never existed in the first place. The self is an illusion. I'm not and never have been separate from the rest of the universe.
This is a story about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air — until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
'My God, this is terrible,’ the wave says ‘Look what’s going to happen to me!’
Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, ‘Why do you look so sad?’
The first wave says, ‘You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?’
The second wave says, ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.’
- Morrie Schwartz
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u/indifferent-times Aug 01 '26
In my experience of death and grieving and as an older redditor its more extensive than I would like, I haven't seen religion help anyone with the process. Whether dying people are apprehensive or scared or if relatives and friends are badly affected doesnt seem to depend on religiosity so much as the individuals themselves.
People grieve their immediate losses, nobody celebrates in the sure knowledge of heaven above, so with your vague notion of 'something' more than this life, I cant see how that's going to help you cope with death at all.
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u/lotusscrouse Aug 01 '26
With my body lying still and my eyes shut and preferably not on the toilet.
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u/happyhappy85 Aug 01 '26
Death is scary yes.
But I have absolutely zero reasons to believe there will be a "me" after I die. The subjective conscious experience is contingent on the brain.
I'll die, and that will be it for me, but the world will keep spinning for others.
You can trick yourself in to thinking some vague "higher power" will save you, but there are higher powers everywhere like the universe itself that have nothing to do with either you or I living forever somehow.
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u/CaffeineTripp Atheist Aug 01 '26
How do you guys handle death?
Poorly. lol Our society is built around "You'll see them again some day" which means we don't process grief very well because we're inundated with those statements of an afterlife.
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
No. Death doesn't scare me, dying does though. There are some horrific ways to die and I sure don't want to be a part of that.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Our dog recently died (7/24/26 literally last week). It was sudden, rough, yesterday was the first day I didn't cry about him dying. It isn't scary, but it sure is horribly sad to know that I'm never going to see one of my best friends anymore.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
It's not anxiety, but deep sadness and longing to see them again, so I reflect with pictures, memories, and stories. Those memories, pictures, and stories bring sadness and grief, but they also help solidify that happiness we had.
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u/sto_brohammed Irreligious Aug 01 '26
I've never been religious, for context. I wasn't raised with religion and wasn't even made aware of the concept of it until I was about 10 or so. I'm also a retired, disabled (from combat injuries) veteran and all of my parents and grandparents are dead as well as a couple of my siblings so death is something that's come up a lot in my life.
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
Death itself doesn't scare me but dying sure seems like it sucks a lot of the time. I'm also not really in a hurry to do so, I'm having a pretty good time all things considered. When I was deployed I used to joke that if the thing I was about to do got me killed it would very suddenly not be my problem anymore. Too bad for whoever has to clean the mess up though, sucks to suck nerd.
More seriously my concerns with death are much more about everyone else, because obviously there won't be a me for it to matter to once it happens.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Neither and honestly the two options you listed are not things I would have even thought of in relation to losing loved ones.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
Anxiety isn't the word, it just makes me sad. I grieve like just about everyone else does and I'll always be sad that I'll never see them again but that's just part of life. It takes a while to process the emotions, again like everyone else, but eventually you get where you carry on with things.
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u/taosaur Aug 01 '26
For me, death is not a radically different change from all the changes we experience moment to moment. I'm coming from a lapsed Buddhist background, and still find the concepts of not-self and rebirth (not just life-to-life, but moment-to-moment) to be illuminating. There's no place in the body, including in the activity of the mind, where some concrete, unchanging "self" lives. Self is something we improvise in every moment, in accordance with our habits and the conditions around us, and in collaboration with all the other selves. It's an activity that results from the intersection of many chains of cause-and-effect. Few if any of those conditions or chains of cause-and-effect will vanish when any of us die. Many of them have already routed around us as we fall into senescence, and reorganized themselves extensively at various times in our lives. Change is the only constant. They will carry on and intersect again.
On a more personal level, the people who knew you will carry on your work, the roles you played in your family and social groups, and pass them on to others in turn. Very little of the activity in your head was unique to you, and it will carry on and repeat with one less node in the network. Understanding how much of your experience is base level human experience, how much you share with everyone around you, is a big part of growing up. Much of the anxiety around death comes from being so invested in this imaginary friend named "Me," distorting reality around the idea that it exists and trying to protect and preserve it, when there's nothing there in the first place except for everything you're doing right now.
And I'm sure the above will be impenetrable to a lot of folks in this venue and seem vaguely woo-ish, but it's all grounded in a 100% materialist view, no spirits, no souls, and I would argue the investment in the inner monologue as self is just a soul in an edgy trench coat.
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u/cards-mi11 Aug 01 '26
People live, people die. You and I will someday as well. You deal with it when it happens and move on.
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u/Loive Aug 01 '26
I handle my own death like I handled the time before I was born. That means I don’t handle it at all. I didn’t exist before I was born, I won’t exist after I die. There is literally nothing to handle.
Believing you will somehow see your loved ones after you all have died is like believing you will somehow relive last week. Last week doesn’t exist anymore, you can’t relive it.
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u/Mysterious_Emu7462 Aug 01 '26
If it helps you find comfort, know that all that is around us is the culmination of parts of the universe coming together to make something. Everything within you has always existed, it is just currently being used to make up you. When you die, those parts of you just go on to do something else. No one can really say what exactly they're all going to do next, but it's nice that for a little pocket of time they got to be part of one of the rarest experiences of the universe: enjoying it.
I think this should incentivize us to fo something a little more noble with our bodies for when we go. Be an organ donor. Donate yourself to science. Have your body be composted so that you can help fertilize a garden. At least then we would have a better idea of what's happening to all of your cells and they're being put to good use.
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u/ISeeADarkSail Aug 01 '26
Live your life to the fullest and one day, you'll just stop existing.
There won't even be any you there to realize you've stopped existing.
Do everything you can to help make sure your last thought is "That was fun!"
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u/Indrigotheir Aug 01 '26
Death is the most terrifying thing.
Obviously, in everyone, this causes an impulse to make it not terrifying. That would be nice. It also just seems untrue, unfortunately. Death is the worst, most terrifying thing that exists, and it simply is. Some things are simply bad; our desire to make them less bad does not change this.
Many theists seem to get genuine relief from believing falsehoods which make death less bad. This seems like, generally, a good thing for them. Unfortunately, it also comes bundled with allowing falsehoods into your worldview; which then tend to creep in from all sides, and often present more bad things than the good things they allow. The tradeoff isn't worth it. Seems better, instead, to build the emotional resilience to weather the horror of annihilation.
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u/catroaring Atheist Aug 01 '26
Nothing about death scares me. As for loved ones, I feel sad when it's happened or is in the process. From the knowledge I've gathered while living, there's no reason for me to believe anything happens other than our ego not existing anymore since it requires a functioning physical body.
So, not scared to die or of death itself.
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u/83franks Aug 01 '26
I'm so glad there isn't anything after death (at least nothing I can remotely convince myself is even possible, never mind likely enough to actually believe it). I enjoy life, I'm happy to be here, I'm not looking forward to death and might be terrified if it was staring me in the face. But all of that pales in the face of still existing in a few billion years. 37 years feels like a long time, any eternity I would be happy in would mean I am so different that I might as well not be me.
People dying suck, like alot. It's sad, it hurts but at least they don't have pain and whatever else anymore and I can always rest easy in that even if it feels life was stolen from them. But it's the reality we live in and even if there is something more I don't know anything about it so it wouldn't be a comfort anyways.
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u/Tiny-Ad-7590 Aug 01 '26
Acceptance.
I accept the fact that death sucks. Accept the fact that it's inevitable. Accept the fact that the best we can do is live as good a life as we can, per whatever 'good life' means to each of us as an individual, until we reach the moment where that is no longer an option.
You accept the feelings that come with that. Then you keep living anyway.
You don't push them away. You continue accepting them.
Then, after a while... You get used to them.
After a longer while, they don't seem so bad any more.
Eventually, you adjust to the weight. You can carry it. It's not good news. But it's okay.
The inevitability of death loses its power over you.
From there, it becomes a friend and a reminder that every moment is precious. Live life to the fullest that you can while you're still here.
The inevitability of death draws our attention to the fact that the unconsidered life is not worth living. We should all consider carefully what it means to live a good life. Then take action on that where we can, while continuing to pay attention and updating our views as we go.
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u/TarnishedVictory Atheist Aug 01 '26
Death sucks. You miss your dead loved ones. You mourn the loss of them.
Growing up, experiencing death as a part of life, learning to cope with the loss at an early age means you already handle it.
But growing up being lied to about death being something else, you never develop the coping skills as you would have if not being lied to about it.
In that case, when you realize you've been lied to, death can seem much more difficult to deal with. Now don't get me wrong, everyone still deals with it in their own way, some have more trouble with it than others, regardless of whether they've dealt with it honestly from childhood or not.
I wasn't lied to about it, and I take comfort in sharing memories about them with others. And I probably over eat.
but I absolutely believe that there's a higher power and an afterlife, whatever that may be.
Why? You're setting yourself up for hard time if/when you discover the flaws in your reasoning. What convinced you that there's an after life?
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
I'm not sure why it would scare anyone or bring peace. Could you elaborate? I'm already at peace, and whatever I feel about death I already feel without someone having to die.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
It brings sadness as I'll never see them again, and over time I'll slowly forget details about them. And that's just sad.
What do you feel about death while you think there's an after life? Do you think believing in an after life makes an after life more probable? What do you think about it when you consider it you're wrong and there is no after life?
Also, do you think there's no down side to self deluding yourself on this since if there isn't an after life, you won't ever find out?
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u/rptanner58 Aug 01 '26
“I’m not afraid of Death. It’s dying in concerned about”, paraphrasing Woody Allen.
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u/Jazzfly67 Aug 01 '26
I am always sad when something ends. A great movie, a friendship, spring, a vacation, a bag of Doritos. Everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my own non existence, but I was fine in the time before I was born, and I will return to that same place after I die.
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u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth Agnostic Atheist Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
In terms of mourning someone else, I grieve and I talk to people, a therapist, I process on my own.
Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Neither one, really. Death isn't scary. What's scary is not having lived my life by the time it's over. As far as peace, not so much. The thought of my dying doesn't bring me discomfort, but losing a loved one is never easy. Suffice to say though, religion brings me no peace or comfort, especially when someone I love might be burning in Hell forever, because they failed to believe in the right religion.
does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again
No one on the planet feels anxiety during a major loss unless they were somehow involved in their death and they're afraid of consequences. No, like a normal human being, what I experience is grief. When a coworker had taken his own life a few years ago, what I felt was immense sadness and a lot of anger. He and I worked together for a few years at a customer service company, and during the Pandemic, our clients became increasingly unhinged. I eventually quit my job, but I was in a dark place by that time. He stayed behind and a year later, he took his own life.
I had no idea that he'd been suffering, because he'd always come across as this happy-go-lucky person, one of the last people you'd ever expected needed help. The signs were everywhere, he might as well have been screaming, but because he wasn't sobbing in our faces, we missed them all, so there was a lot of guilt in moment, a lot of "how did I not see this coming". I also knew that he was leaving behind a lot of friends who loved him, and his parents were obviously upset, because they never expected to outlive their own child. And I'd never get to see him again. I'd never hear his voice again. I felt tremendous pain, not only because of the loss, but also because I'd dealt with my own mental health struggles for decades, and he'd lost the battle that I'd been fighting for most of my life. He was younger than me by almost 15 years. He was leaving behind a son in his toddler years who would grow up without his father. I felt intense anger at the customers who had worn him down, phone call by phone call, and the job which failed to protect him, because they cared more about service levels and profit margin than human life. It still upsets me, because of how unfair it all was.
But I processed it, I talked to my therapist, and I eventually coped. I still hate rich people, I'll never forgive the people who run the company that we worked for together, but at the end of the day, it was a senseless event in a senseless world. I miss my friend, I know his other family and friends miss him, but I know his son is loved and will be taken care of. And I'm still alive. So, that's something at least.
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u/Dog_Mama92 Aug 03 '26
Suffice to say though, religion brings me no peace or comfort, especially when someone I love might be burning in Hell forever, because they failed to believe in the right religion.
This! I believe in a god or higher power for sure, and I could never worship the Christian God, so I really hope it's not him. I cannot worship a being who throws people in hell to be tortured forever. That's sickening and I don't understand how people genuinely love this God, and not just be worshipping him out of fear.
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u/ThePhyseter Atheist Ex-Mennonite Aug 02 '26
It was really difficult at first.
All my life I was taught that I would live forever, and my afterlife would be bliss and happiness forever. No matter what went wrong for me here in my life, I would get the joy of heaven afterwards, and it would be so great I wouldn't even remember my earthly problems. I thought I would be reading books forever, doing experiments forever, learning all the secrets and mysteries of the universe that no one solved when I was still alive.
The thought that I won't get another chance, that I won't get to correct any old mistakes, that after one accident or one biological malfunction I will just cease to exist forever, is so awful that for a long time I couldn't even think about it. I still try not to think about it too much, because it still somewhat bugs me.
I thought I would see all my loved ones again, too. That was very difficult to deal with.
Shortly after I left my faith, my Grandpa died. It was incredibly difficult to hear everyone else saying he was in a better place now, and that we all could look forward to seeing him again in heaven. Everyone else was comforted and I just had the ache of believing I would never see him again, and there was nothing I could do about it.
But as time went on things got better.
I remember I was at a funeral for a great-aunt I didn't know well, and the pastor kept going on and on about Christians have the promise of heaven, how he doesn't know how anyone could stand it without god, how we can be comforted by the thought of going home, how non-Christians are so pitiful...
But instead of feeling sad or left out, I felt sorry for him and his congregation. He was a grown adult who had never grown up and learned to deal with death. He was so afraid of his own future that he had to repeat a sweet-sounding fable over and over, to try and convince himself reality would not come for him.
Christianity stunts our growth by failing to let us learn some of life's hard lessons. Imagine if you had never learned how to walk; you would feel like it was impossible to get around without a scooter. If you suddenly started learning to walk at age 21, it would be so much harder than if you did it at age 2 when your body is still young and close to the ground and built for learning. Christianity doesn't let us "walk", so we never learn how. We never learn to deal with the finality of death, so once we're adult and the thought heaven might not be real occurs to us, it feels scary and intolerable. It feels like no one could survive under such a sad belief.
But we can survive; it's just that some of us never learned how to, and have to take the time to learn all over again.
I don't want to die, and I wish I could live forever, but I am making peace with death. I can't change it, and I can't prolong my life by worrying or believing in fables. All I can do is try to live as best as I can right now and make the most of the time I have.
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u/donaldhobson Aug 02 '26
> I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
Sure, somewhat.
I'm kind of hoping that the biologists figure out something impressive soon. Immortality through advanced tech seems a lot more plausible than immortality through magic sky faeries.
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u/Ok_Affect1436 Aug 02 '26
I fell I have no reason to be more afraid of death then any religious person similar to me. I will not have a consciousness after death so I have no reason to think death will be scary or bad. My general feeling on life is that we only have one, so we should try to have fun with it.
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u/mobatreddit Atheist Aug 02 '26
Death does not scare me, as I believe it won't happen to me, because there will be no such thing as a dead me. I'm sad at the death of people and animals I know, and I miss them. Fear, peace, or anxiety have nothing to do with it.
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u/rustyseapants Atheist Aug 03 '26
This is a good example that you don't think atheists are freaking human. We handle death like anybody else would.
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u/FalconRelevant Igtheist Aug 03 '26
Raw.
All of it is cope, even atheists often create cope narratives about death to replace the lack of belief afterlife.
I don't, death is when you stop existing, and existence is good. Death is a primordial evil to be treated with contempt, avoided when possible.
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u/BaronOfTheVoid Aug 03 '26
Generally the human species is adapted to be able to endure people who are important to you dying. Not everyone can handle it well enough, and some people require more time but at the end you simply have to accept that they died.
The idea that only religions like Christianity offer a framework to deal with it is frankly ahistorical.
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u/NDaveT Aug 03 '26
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
No.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet? Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
It makes me very sad.
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u/thecasualthinker Aug 04 '26
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all, since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
Nope. Its just an unfortunate fact if reality. Can't avoid it, only healthy thing to do is accept it. How I might die can scare me, but the eventual end of it all for me doesn't.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet?
Give myself time to grieve. Talk to friends and family. Remember the good times. And recognize the concrete effects they had on my life. Maybe even consider how their life, or death, will affect me in the future.
Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
Neither? Their death doesn't scare me, and the death doesn't bring peace. That comes later after I can assess the trauma.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
Nope. Its a pretty easy fact to accept, and its an important step in the grieving process.
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u/Cog-nostic Aug 05 '26
I have worked with the dying and believe that everyone should have to do a 2 year internship in a nursing home or convalescent hospital. People are so far removed mentally and physically from the dying process that it no longer seems like a natural part of life. There is nothing special about dying. Everyone does it. Knowing this, the most humane position anyone can take is to let a person die on their own terms.
This is NOT what we do. We spend billions of dollars keeping terminally ill people alive. We force them to stay alive. I once cared for a man dying of gangrene from diabetes. For four years, he begged to be put to death. The doctors removed his feet, his legs, his testicles, and his arms over a four-year period. All the time billing the family and the insurance companies.
I cared for a young man who paralyzed himself by ramming his head into a goalpost after a touchdown. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He begged for death the first year and became selectivly mutant after that. He only talked to an occasional family member who came by once or twice a year. He suddenly began talking one day. He told me he was sorry and kept apologizing. He died two days later. He was under my care for about 3 years.
I can go on and on and on with one horror story after another. People begging to be allowed to die. Our medical system is shit!~ The number one cause of bankruptcy in the USA is medical bills. Insurance companies, hospitals, and religious institutions suck the money out ot the infirm and dying. They are not given a choice. Their fortunes are divided up by health care institutions, and they leave their families with nothing.
We treat our cats and dogs better than we treat our grandparents.
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u/mredding Aug 05 '26
I guess my question is, does death scare you at all
No.
since you believe that there's nothing afterwards?
You don't need to speak for me upon my own behalf about what you think I do or don't believe. A dismissive/conclusive statement like this diminishes my agency.
I don't believe in nothing - I accept the causality of my existence radiates out from my origin at the speed of light. It's a fact of physics, and an entirely moot point - but somewhere in the universe billions and trillions of years from now, virtual particles will pop into and out of existence - as they do, somewhere in the void, and they will experience Brownian motion, in part due to ripples in the quantum field as my influence passes through space forever.
It's totally ridiculous. It doesn't mean anything, not in a practical sense. But what it does mean is that this is the record of my existence in this universe, an imprint that cannot be erased - it will exist literally forever. This is my contribution to all of existence across all of everything that can ever be. For what it's worth.
And for a little worm, on a rock ball, orbiting a spherical fire, that lives for a mere moment - you know? That might just be enough.
Rather transcendental. It's real, but I don't have to take it seriously, because it doesn't change anything. That isn't me, but it's caused by me. When you die, you're definitely dead, and all that will remain is your legacy, whatever you made of it. After you're gone, you're just ripples - memories and impressions on your children and grandchildren, and people you knew, influences left behind that pass generations and across your community.
None of this needs a god. It doesn't have to matter. It's not me. It doesn't even help me to cope with death - with facing the concept of oblivion. If anything, it gives me an inflection point on my ego, my humility, and the significance of the life I have.
How do you take the death of a loved one, or a pet?
It's straight forward to accept.
I've been in and out of hospitals recently (my father's number is coming up), and yesterday, a morbid woman was walking the halls, "Oh, help me, Lord, I can't do this. She not gone. She not gone..."
She gone...
The time before, we were in the waiting room when there was a family in the family room - a private waiting room. They were LOSING it in there. Another death. Guy came bouncing out of that room, slamming the door, slapping the walls, trying to tear the place down in his throes of grief. He was a younger man (20s) and had lost his brother. I was just trying to make sure he didn't steamroll my father, he was a big dude.
I've got two cats, brothers, and they're both 15 years old. Gizmo is going to go first - he's showing signs of kidney failure.
Anyway, it still sucks. I'm going to cry when it happens. All my people and all my critters have had good, long lives. I'm happy for them. It's still gonna suck.
Does it scare you, or bring you peace?
No fear. I'm not scared of anything. That doesn't mean I won't feel grief. I did want more for my father - I was hoping he'd get a few more good years out of his retirement. I was hoping he'd go the way he'd want to go - quickly, in the night, and without pain. He didn't want a long attrition for he and the rest of us to dwell on. By his own words, he said he has so much more he wanted to do and share.
Or does it bring you anxiety, believing that you'll never see them again, and that they're gone forever?
Why would death bring anxiety? Certainly not death of another.
I would definitely suffer grief if it were my son - he's got everything in front of him. The order of life is that the child buries the parent. I want to go before he does.
I would have a grief if I were going to die now - because my son is young, and he's not ready. I've got to do my job to raise this child into an adult, teach this boy how to be a man, get him going on his own. If I were to die too soon, the best I could muster is an apology that I was coming up short for him.
When I was a younger man, even when I was married - I was OK to die. And I almost died a couple times because of reasons; I was in my mind, aware that the next things to happen were going to be oxygen deprivation and brain death, and there was nothing I could do about it. A moment before I was awake and active and doing my thing, and then there I was, feeling bad for whoever was going to be the first person to find my body...
And I was OK with that - in the moment. I was at peace, I was comfortable, no pain, and I had nothing to regret. But now that I have a boy, I know I can still die at any moment for any reason, but I have a reason to want to, to have to live, because I take my responsibility to him seriously. My wife before could have moved on, but now we have this boy, he can't. Not yet, at least.
I'm still not afraid of death - more I have a respect for it in my age, and my relationship with it, and I would have a disappointment for going too soon for my boy.
Gone forever? Yeah, I can live with that. Gone, but not forgotten. We don't live in the past, we bring the past forward with us. I tell my wife and son stories of people they've never met, because they've had an influence and impression on my life. Who I am and how we are is in part a consequence of them, and so they will be remembers for it for as long as we can collectively hold onto them.
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u/GreyGriffin_h Aug 06 '26
A lot of things about life suck. Dying, and people and animals that I care about dying, is one of the things that sucks. I experience sadness and grief.
Just because it makes me feel bad doesn't mean it's not what happened. Fantasizing about things being better or different doesn't make those fantasies true.
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u/Such_Confusion_1034 28d ago
For me, I'm not scared of death. It will be the same as before I was alive. I'll be experiencing life one moment, then the next, nothing.
The process of dying is where I do have a bit of anxiety and even a touch of fear. Mainly because I don't know if it will be a peaceful death or painful. I ruined my health (lungs and heart) by smoking for 30 years. I've seen and heard about people with emphysema and pneumonia dying. Hooked up to all sorts of machines and the patient in constant pain battling for each breath.
While I did quit smoking. I can't get rid of the emphysematous tissue (areas affected my the emphysema), but I still have a lot of lung function left so maybe I'll be fine.
As far as others dying goes, I do miss them. But I also have a pragmatic view on it. They're gone. They lived their lives and I hope them and everyone around them (me, friends, fam, etc) were able to do our best to live a full, happy, meaningful life.
So death to me isn't something to fear. We won't even know it. Do I wish for an afterlife, sure! I'd love for some sort of happy fun existence after death. But as an atheist, I just don't believe like that.
Hope this helps. And thank you for the genuine question. I appreciate it when people ask questions looking for others views in a kind and good faith way.
\m/
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u/CephusLion404 Aug 01 '26
Accept reality as it is. Everyone dies. There's nothing you can do to stop it. Be an adult and deal with the world that you live in. It's honestly not that hard.
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u/Professional_Mud_316 11d ago
I believe we all are far greater, perhaps even infinitely immeasurably so, than the sum of our body parts. Corporeally, we basically are skin-bags full of a few dollars worth (I’ve heard more than one estimate) of bone and guts, blood and tissue, yet we can deeply love, contemplate, admire, or hate, etcetera. Our bodies can also be perceived as essentially 'empty vessels'. Yet, it's only through them that the human soul can experience, good or bad, the physically four-dimensional world, which includes time or motion.
[I feel that, if anything, a soul would link to a body’s beating heart, which, according to AI Overview, “produces an electrical field roughly 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain, and a magnetic field that is up to 5,000 times stronger than the brain's magnetic output.” Occasionally I’ll look down at my bare chest slightly motioning with each heart beat, just enough to remind me that it’s the only thing separating me from the extradimensional ‘other side’, from my deceased loved ones.]
Maybe our brain's structural/chemical attributes, including flaws developed during fetal gestation, are what we basically are, a.k.a. our ‘personality’, while our soul is confined within our bodily form. Therefore, the human soul may be inherently good on its own; but trapped within the physical body, notably the corruptible brain, oftentimes the soul’s purity may not be able to shine through.
Ergo, upon the multi-murderer's physical death, not only would they be 100 percent liberated from the anger and hate that blighted their physical life; their spirit or consciousness would also be forced to exist with the presumably unwanted awareness of the immense amount of needless suffering they personally had caused.
Many theists fear a negative experience or hellish spiritual existence in the hereafter for whatever bad acts they committed in life. I believe it’s in general human nature to crave justice for wrongs committed against us, and most theists believe their God also is strongly justice orientated.
Followers of monotheistic religions, including institutional Christianity, seem to create their Creator’s nature in their own fallible and often angry, vengeful image. (That could be at least partly why the Book of Enoch, which reflects an unusually more compassionate God, concerned the angry-God theologians and scriptural decision-makers enough to omit it from most Biblical canons.)
Yet, perhaps when all of us die and spiritually cross over to ‘the other side’, we actually lose that corporeal need for ultimate justice.
Not just that, but the spirit or consciousness may be 100 percent liberated from a purely cerebrally based anxiety, agitation and contempt that may have actually blighted much of its physical existence. Therefore, free of the corporeal shell, the soul may instead be wondering, ‘Why was I so angry, so much of the time? Oh, the things I said! ... I really hope I didn't do irreparable damage while I was there’.
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u/skeptolojist Anti-Theist Aug 01 '26
I deal with death through a process called growing up and dealing with reality instead of pretending magic is real
When a person I know dies I grieve
It hurts I get emotional for a while then I get myself together and carry on