RE: Help me not fear heaven/hell
March 18, 2019 at 7:26 pm
(This post was last modified: March 18, 2019 at 7:41 pm by Fleeing Jesus.)
(March 17, 2019 at 10:17 pm)wyzas Wrote:(March 17, 2019 at 1:35 pm)Fleeing Jesus Wrote: I’ve been looking for help, this is true. Not a sock, though.
You might want to stop thinking that you're going to die tomorrow/soon.
Yeah, that’s its own problem. I struggle with that, too. : \
(March 18, 2019 at 2:34 pm)adey67 Wrote:(March 16, 2019 at 4:34 pm)Fleeing Jesus Wrote: Hey, everyone. I thought I’d ask for some help here.
I was raised Christian but don’t believe in god anymore. I think it’s all nonsense. We’re on this pale blue dot alone. I believe in science and reason.
The problem is my atheism is only at 99%. There’s 1% of me that still thinks I could be wrong and that I’m going to hell for being a bad person. I’m also afraid of the idea of endless life, mostly because I struggle with anxiety and the idea of eternal anxiety in heaven is my idea of hell.
Can anyone help me unhinge the last 1% so that I’m not afraid of heaven and hell anymore? It would mean the world to me. I’d like to not have this hang over me for the rest of my life.
- Fleeing Jesus
My first comment is on the necessity of patience, typically fear of hell is one of the last things to go once you leave religion behind. It can take years for that nagging fear to go away completely and sometimes it stays with people for their whole lives all be it at a much reduced and manageable intensity.
My second comment I hope will help you to combat the anxiety you are feeling.
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that humans have a soul/life force that is capable of surviving death.
The existence of an indestructible life force capable of housing our thoughts memories and personalities means that dementia head injuries brain tumours etc should have absolutely no effect on the above mentioned and yet we know they do.
Every thought personality trait etc is the result of the electro chemical reactions in our brain, that ends at death.
Of course the religious will counter this by saying that the soul is only activated at death or some such variation on a theme however that's just a desperate apologetic and must necessarily involve magical thinking.
It is a fact that philosophically no one can say with absolute certainty what happens after we die, where there are gaps in our knowledge there is always a greater than zero% chance of something being possible but just because something is philosophically possible doesn't make it plausible, to quote Mark Twain " I have been dead for billions of years before I was born and not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it"
This is a great response, thanks for this. I also like the one about fearing fire breathing dragons because my fear of them is at 0%. Remind me on my deathbed to chant “fire breathing dragons.”
(March 18, 2019 at 1:44 pm)EgoDeath Wrote:(March 16, 2019 at 4:34 pm)Fleeing Jesus Wrote: Hey, everyone. I thought I’d ask for some help here.
I was raised Christian but don’t believe in god anymore. I think it’s all nonsense. We’re on this pale blue dot alone. I believe in science and reason.
The problem is my atheism is only at 99%. There’s 1% of me that still thinks I could be wrong and that I’m going to hell for being a bad person. I’m also afraid of the idea of endless life, mostly because I struggle with anxiety and the idea of eternal anxiety in heaven is my idea of hell.
Can anyone help me unhinge the last 1% so that I’m not afraid of heaven and hell anymore? It would mean the world to me. I’d like to not have this hang over me for the rest of my life.
- Fleeing Jesus
So, is the idea of life simply ending when you die less scary than the idea of an afterlife? This would be the opposite of how many people feel, which is interesting. I don't really know if anyone can help you stop fearing hell or an afterlife; I think you just sort of have to think this through. You don't remember anything before you were born, right? And why would you? You did not have a conscious brain to experience anything... so... same thing for when you die. When your brain dies, you get turned off. And there's nothing.
And while we don't "know" this, we really have no reason to think otherwise. So far as we understand it, consciousness is the result of electrical activity in the brain. Once that activity goes dead, so does our conscious mind. Death, so far as we know, is just like before you were born... there is simply nothing. The computer gets shut down. You get powered off and you're gone forever. A little unsettling, actually. But it's all the more reason to enjoy things while you're here!
Honestly, an afterlife scares me more than oblivion. I’ve suffered from a psychiatric drug-induced condition in the past called akathisia where you can’t stop moving your body (even when exhausted). It’s so terrible that people who suffer from it chronically are six times more likely to kill themselves than people with depression. The thought that there’s no end to that kind of suffering is far scarier than the idea of oblivion at death. I’ve been in tears before begging my parents to tell me that there’s no god so that when I die I will at least be at peace. It’s literally hell on earth and the thought that there’s no end to it is the single worst thing I can imagine.