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Goodbye Jesus

Embarresing(sp?) Question


Dakota

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Hello Dakota:

 

I don't remember ever being afraid of death. I don't remember ever being troubled about my certainty that there is no afterlife.

 

I can't take credit for this; there is no trick to it - it's not something I DID. I just have always looked at things the way they are. Regarding the topic of these specific fears of yours, I can tell you some things, but then it's totally up to you to accept them and go on with your life.

 

Here's the first one. Everyone and every thing dies. It's just a fact. That's what we do...we are born, we live our lives (however long or short), and we die. It is certain. To fear this is to be a little bit out of balance, and religion exploits this unbalance and makes it worse. Religion feeds on fear and the natural desires of humans, who are herd animals, to conform.

 

Everyone dies. It's just a fact. It is illogical to think that some part of us continues in a so-called "afterlife." This is merely the fearful hope of people whose ego has terrified them. These things ARE. Now go on living and be happy...that's the meaning of Life.

 

You have already taken the first steps in overcoming these fears. The most important first step is shucking religion. It is the most wonderful thing you can do for yourself. As your life advances, you will feel as if a mighty weight has been taken off you. The really hard part is dealing with the huge majority who will continue to claim that there is a god and that jesus represents salvation and that you are a weird pervert atheistic communist faggot whoremongering child molesting murdering thieving snot eating bastard for not believing it anymore.

 

On this board there are some who are ex-christians but not atheists, as I am. I reject all religions, but I don't want to insult those here who have some other belief system in place. Although I actively attack the Abrahamic religions I leave the rest alone, as they do little harm, in my not-too-well-informed-about-other-religions opinion.

 

 

I am pretty outspoken about my atheism. My family knows, as does my husband, and my friends. My husband became an atheist around the same time i did, so theres no confrontation there. My family are all christians, but they are very liberal, most don't attend church or even read the bible, except for a few shocked expressions and jokes about my atheism they just shrug it off as a "phase" that i am going through. Most of my friends christians, again very liberal, and one friend is a Jehovah's Witness.

 

Nicole (the jw) is very sweet by nature, we discuss our viewpoints quite often, she'll occasionally send me those Awake magazines, but she asks first and only sends them if they have something in them I would be interested in reading. She's supposed to be sending me one shortly where they supposedly "prove" evolution wrong.

 

Last night was the first time I told my step-sister, felicia, that I was an atheist. We were friends long before we became step-sisters, so its more of a friend/friend relationship than family. She was horrified, to say the least, she tried to debate with me on the "truth" of the bible by pointing out prophecies that I was able to easily show her were either false, did not happen, or could apply to anything and there for not a "prophecy". Then she moved on to asking me how I could be an atheist because I wasn't "raised that way". She told me that she cannot believe in evolution because she cannot believe humans came from a monkey (her words, not mine). I told her that she should probably look up what exactly evolution is and how it happens, she said she already knows, but from her words I think she has no clue. Towards the end of the conversation she said she would no longer discuss this stuff with me, she admitted that "my way of thinking" was more scientifically correct, but her way of thinking was supernaturally correct and would secure her everlasting life in heaven. It just blows my mind that she can see I'm "scientifically correct" but still chooses to believe in the supernatural, which has no evidence or proof of existence. It makes me want to shaker her! :Doh:

 

I haven't really had any issue with Christians calling me names or being nasty to me over my unbelief yet, I'm sure its coming though.

 

But thanks to people like you, on these forums, I think that I'll be able to handle it when it does happen.

 

Thanks for replying to my original post!

 

Dakota

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It can be depressing to think of your entire life being wiped from existence...but it's better to have no afterlife than a crappy one.

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Don't confuse the fear of dying with being dead.

 

You may fight winking out 'til your last breath, but ofter that is nothing as far as you are concerned.

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Don't confuse the fear of dying with being dead.

 

You may fight winking out 'til your last breath, but ofter that is nothing as far as you are concerned.

 

 

Thats basically what I was doing, I fear dying, but understand that when I'm dead I'm not going to be concious of it. As time passes, the fear diminishes. An excellent mind game I use on myself whenever the "no afterlife" fear creeps up is this: I ask myself about the day before I was born, what did I think about it? Of course the answer to this is NOTHING, i was not aware of the day before I was born, just like I will not be aware of the fact that I'm dead! I believe Mark Twain has a quote that goes something like that. Now that I am able to think my way out of fear, I accept it, and like others have said, it doesn't really seem as bad as before.

 

Sometimes I wonder if christians continue with their blind faith because they are to afraid of the concept of nothing after death. I know when I was a christian the most appealing thing in that religon to me was that we didn't just cease to exist after we died. Now I can look upon things objectively, just because you want or *believe* something to be true, does not mean that it is.

 

Thanks again for all the replies, it truly did help, sometimes I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't found this website, you guys are the best!

 

Dakota

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Does anyone else have this fear?

I haven't read the whole thread yet so someone may have already said this. I personally don't exactly like this idea, but it doesn't scare me. The reality is that non-existence will be no different than sleeping without dreaming. And I personally love to sleep. So, that part doesn't scare me at all. I guess what I don't like is that there are certain things about life that I find pleasurable that I will not get to experience ever again and I wll miss those things. Well I guess on the flipside though I won't ever have to experience pain or sadness or death, either, so it's not all bad.

 

I don't see non-existence as any better or worse or scarier or less scarier than existing.... just different.

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BTW I think as you get older living becomes more of a pain in the ass than anything else, anyway. You end up spending more and more time on fighting to keep your spare tire from expanding, or keeping the wrinkles at bay or trying to keep your ass or boobs from falling to the floor, or washing that gray right out of your hair, or finding the right glue to hold your dentures in place, or having multiple hip replacements, or whatever. After so many years of this it's got to get old. Just don't go down without a fight!

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