Faith in God and the fear of death (page 2)

cyberjesus

I can see that religion is quite useful, in particular, for these two issues:

(1) Unwillingness/fear of dying

(2) Coping with grief/loss

you mean like a drug? or like pain medicine?

leavingwt

you mean like a drug? or like pain medicine?

For some, it could be precisely like this. Or, perhaps, like a placebo.

Try these on for size. . .

"A "Good Deal" is a state of mind."
"It's not a lie if you believe it."

Cyberjesus: To the person who has lost someone in death, which offer sounds better? (I'm not asking which sounds more probable.)

-- Don't worry, honey, he's now with Jesus and one day you'll be with him

-- He's as dead as the bugs on your windshield and you'll never see him again.

If this were a sales competition, which team would win?

Since we were all JWs, we can put ourselves into the shoes of the person who posesses CERTAINTY. It's as real as the ground beneath their feet. Nothing could be more real. There is no doubt.

THE GLADIATOR

I don't fear death - it's the end of both joy and pain.

I regret death - it seems such a waste.

caliber

Most here believe that death is the cessation of existence .

So, the only kind of uncertainty that should be "feared" is whether or not Christianity is true. Thus even a slightest possibility of God's existence must be meant with great resistance !

To belief there are people who fear nothing, to me is the greatest leap of faith of all !!

Even good healthy due respect can be spoken of as fear if you so chose to believe such !

In the Bible, fear is represented in two ways: as an emotional or mental attitude (sin,) and as a term for reverence toward God.

Positive fear (reverence) of God calms the emotional negative thought towards the word fear .

Fearless to me means to risk ones very being for a preceived greater cause

Sigmund Freud was an extremely narrow minded and demented man, and his views on the fear of death were typical of such thinking. He typically saw things in black and white, and though he was no theologian, he thought he comprehended the deep spiritual drives that motivated man. In short, as stated, he believed they were driven by a fear of death. This would be like comparing the complex emotional relationships between a man and a woman with the humping of two dogs in a back alley!

The spiritual awareness in people is often deeply emotional and highly moral, and to say it's merely rooted in a fear of death cannot be addressed, simply because doing so with someone of Freud's lack of understanding of the matter would be akin to discussing quantum physics with African Mau Maus.

Freud's narrow views of man's intellect and sexual drives should have been an embarrassment to him, but he was never short of readers in his own day. Still, there were many who had far more deep-rooted theories of the intellectual motivations that drove men to seek to find, or establish, a relationship with a higher intelligence. Certainly men such as DaVinci, Sir Thomas More, Cicero, Socrates and others were not driven by such base insticts. Many gave their lives freely, in fact, for much more intellectual ideals. (And religion contains a strong leaning towards the ideal. Man is, after all, made in the image of God, according to the most sophisticated belief systems.) Even atheists such as Camus who, after a lifetime dedicated to a belief that God didn't exist, faltered towards the end of their lives. Is it a fear of death or a fear of one's status after death, that drives one? Certainly the answer is far more complex than capable for someone of Freud's understanding.

Freud believed man's most complex needs and desires could be reduced to simple common denominators. And that's a complex absurdity in my view.

agonus

I doubt the majority of believers' faith is motivated SOLELY by fear of death. I think it may be a small part of the equation for many, but I think that most people of genuine faith believe what they do rather because of the presence of LIFE and the miracles contained therein. I know that's how I felt for many years (and in most respects still do).

Nickolas

You attacked the man rather than the idea, Cold Steel, and you didn't answer the question.

Thank you for answering the question intelligently, agosis. Lots of great answers above.

streets76

[no god for me]

I obsess over death constantly. Particularly sudden, out-of-the-blue, unexpected, unexplained death. Seems to be a middle-age thing.

It's not death I fear, per se, it's non-existence. Maybe there is no distinction.

wasblind

I still beleive in God,

I refuse to let my bad experience with the JW's ruin that.

and like tammy, concern for my child would be the most

important thing to me.

OnTheWayOut

[I am a rationalist. It's like being 100% sure that God isn't there, but it leaves the tiniest bit of room for HIM/HER/IT actually presenting some kind of credible evidence of existence.]

Man is in his infancy of understanding the universe and the brain and the need to believe in the unbelievable. Even after we grow up a bit, slick conmen will continue to stir the emotions of people who want to see Grandma or Hubby again. But for the most part, many many more people will realize within a couple of generations from now that we evolved from lower lifeforms, and the spark of life came to non-life. Religion, even in our horrible economy, is not bouncing back so strongly because people are realizing that we are on our own, and that the conmen are within religion.

Faith in God and the fear of death

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