Are you afraid to die?

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I am an atheist and I am afraid to die because I do not believe that there is an afterlife waiting for us. It also saddens me when I think about the idea of everybody I love being gone forever when they die.

I used to be suicidal and I attempted it once by swallowing half a bottle of painkillers thinking it would be painless but it actually hurt me a lot. My stomach was cramping and I kept feeling like throwing up. After that I realized there is no painless way to die and all death involves feeling some pain, and it's depressing to think that we are all destined to die some day.

It's a horrible thing to think about and I really hate it when humans kill other humans rather by murder or war or whatever. Nobody should ever be forced to die because it is a horrible thing.

Neil Degrasse Tyson had some poignant things to say here with Larry King, it's probably cut up from a longer span of interview but still the perspectives are just as valuable:

the Mormons [sorry, they wanna be called LDS now] have an interesting cosmology- they believe that there are 3 basic levels of afterlife- Telestial, which is a sort of purgatory on a bad day, a prime earth on a good day [depending on one's lifetime behavior]; Terrestrial [a prime earth mental realm where there is much art and music and advanced science/technology, reserved for the pious; and a Celestial Realm populated by The Elect [people in the 1% who are essentially perfect] who serve The One and eventually become their own demigods in charge of their own universes.

I'm not afraid of dying. I do, however, have a phobia of grief. I'm terrified of people I love dying (abandonment disorder, fear of loss), but also because I wouldn't be able to tolerate giving public displays of emotion, crying in front of people, expressing my feelings, reading eulogies or having people surround and touch me in comfort. It's the perfect maelstrom of things that terrify me.

Atheist here.
I'm not afraid but
I really don't want to die-
Deep down I want to live forever.
But we can't always get what we want, so
My only hope is to go out in my own time and at peace,
For my passing not to cause undue grief to those I leave behind,
And to create a legacy that would weave threads of my soul into the fabric of the world
And thereby achieve, without being too literal, another kind of eternal life.
(And if I fail in this, at least let me be buried and not cremated
So that rather than contributing to climate change
My body will be feeding the earthworms
Who are just as important
In the cycle of life
As are we).

I think when I eventually die I want my body to be donated to science because maybe in a way I can help the world after I'm gone and I would feel better.

I'm also listed as an organ donor for the same reason. I hope one of my organs can help save somebody's life.

I'm an organ donor and science donor as well. I'd be very pleased to help a family in need with my 'gift of life'. Furthermore, between my ASD, c-PTSD, cerebellar stroke and extreme synaesthesia I'm sure I'd be providing valuable tissue to study.

(Wow - depressing topic, but true).

high art there

I studied a few religions in school—

According to Buddhism - you have to learn from your lives and when you have learnt enough you are freed from the cycle of mortal life/suffering and death.

And it describes paths to that destination(Nirvana). Well the problem is it is very intense and you gotta give up a lot of materialistic life(Some are less intense than the others). And unless you know what you’re doing you can easily wind up confused or misinformed. In the end you’re one with god.(which is not defined by the religion or I never concentrated on learning about god).

As fantastic as religion and after life sound I think when you cease to exist, you’re done. Although, I wish that is not true.

I’ve had experiences that make me believe in afterlife.

Religions seemed to be an attempt to put us in contact or alignment with a world we couldn't touch and for the most part couldn't even explore or examine of our own volition. Where we seem to be at with the scientific worldview is we want to know the nuts and bolts well enough to be sure that we both aren't self-deluded in believing such things and have the fundamental principles and connections of what it is and how it relates to our universe in mind so that we can practically orient ourselves to it rather than circling around half baked ideas and going to war over them.

I don't know what I believe in. But I've had an experience.

ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy) basically reboots the brain like a computer. It induces a seizure and once that stops there is a flatline on the EEG monitor for a few seconds. Then everything starts up again and is normal. Is this close to death?

I had ECT eight times in 2005/6. I remember every single one I had. When I was unconscious there was nothing. No NDE. If that is what my death will be like then I'm fine with that. Nothing is fine with me.

In college I used to be obsessed with death

My family is not religious

In college , UCSD, it appeared that there were a lot of Republicans Christian's and i was wrong for asking them for a lot of personal favors and they often granted

Almost all of the Republicans Christians ended up homophobic

Plenty of churches in Berkeley have gay pride and trans pride flags


Sometimes religious people claim their deity or their religion is against something, but it is just them that are against it

One fifty year old Baptist Republican had the nerve to tell me that it was "lying" for me to ask him to call me "he" instead of "she"

2006 San Diego was so homophobic

Zero apologies, much less financial reparations

Groupthink

Every day since then, I have been profoundly emotionally disturbed. Because of mister redelings


He appeared nice, normal and trustworthy

He was a civil engineer

He told me "you do not care about anyone except yourself!"

But everyone he cared about is just like himself

And they care about him in return


Maybe the problem is that nobody cares about me



And if heaven is full of homophobic people, maybe it is better to go to hell


Besides by that logic, plenty of "good people " are already in hell


But I am afraid of the unknown

But I want something different

And I am afraid of a painful death


But whatever

The $$$ will run out sooner or later

Health will get worse

No precious lil "friends"

Entitled condescending riffraff so annoying

Everyone is going to drop dead


So whatever

I often find myself thinking that exact same thing. I think that realizing I was gay was the main reason why I became an atheist because I didn't feel like I deserve to burn in hell for something that I knew for a fact was not a "choice". I did not make the choice to be gay contrary to what a lot of ignorant Christians like to believe about homosexuals and any God who sends people to hell over something that can't be helped is not a loving and merciful God in my opinion.

Not in the least. There are indeed worse things than dying, I've been through a few, and I fear those more than I fear death. To me, death is tranquility and peace, living is what can be hell sometimes.

I fear the process of ageing and dying, and how my loved ones will cope, and I fear not experiencing the things I wanted to experience in this lifetime. I believe in a God and some kind of afterlife, so I'm extremely curious about what happens after death and I'm not scared of that.