Atheists, are you afraid of dying?

no i don't fear death. sleep is a sample of what death will be like. are you aware of what is happening when you sleep. for the most part you are not. most people who believe in an after life do so simply because they are scared of the unknown. death is the ultimate unknown. i do not fear the unknown, i embrace it.

I'm technically not an Atheist, but I'm going to answer anyway. I don't really fear death. But, then again, I'm a pretty laid back person. I actually just don't care enough. Haha. I don't think I'll disappear forever. I mean, even if there isn't a Heaven or Hell, I could still exist as a thought. Some sort of consciousness just... being conscious. Not really being alive or being dead, just there. It doesn't seem all that fun, but it also doesn't seem all that bad. It would give me plenty of time to think. That's pretty much all I'd be able to do. Just floating around in nothingness, processing information. But, if the ceasing to exist forever is what happens, it wouldn't matter much. I mean, I wouldn't exist anymore, so I wouldn't be able to regret it or anything. There wouldn't be anything to regret, or even feel the regret.

Well, now it's about 8:30 AM. I got in around midnight, but didn't get to bed until two, so I just woke up. Headache, of course. The five year old is singing Hannah Montana songs to make my day more joyful.... greeeeat... So, I think I'm gonna pass on the beer this time. As for death, not afraid of dying. Just afraid of what I may be leaving behind.

I think the concept of a personal heaven gives a very negative view on your life. If you get to go to the greatest imagineable places of all when you die, why even bother taking a decent shot at it here?

Knowing that when I die, I die, turns out to be my greatest driving force. A plant withers and dies when it doesn't get watered. Does it go to heaven? Most people would say no, when the only actual difference between a plant and a human is that a human has the brain power to imagine a place like heaven. They're both organic creatures, and alike in so many ways.

The certainty that I will only have one shot at this life, makes me want to live every day like it was my last.

But no, I'm not afraid of death because nothing in this world is meant to be feared, only understood.

It's a great question. Not rude. It's more a sadness over the prospect of my loved ones dying than the prospect of my own death. What being an atheist DOES do though, is make you appreciate life more. Because of the finality, you see it as precious, and incidentally, that's mostly where an atheist's morality comes from. That is, I don't want someone's "bad" behavior to compromise the quality of my limited, precious time here, therefore it would be hipocritical of me to compromise someone else's.

Death scares me, but only because it makes me realize my mortality. Then again, I am young, and such 'discoveries' can be pretty unsettling for someone my age.

But I dont worry about it- my time will come and I will join the universe in it's endless cycle. To think about death and what comes after- that's morbid. I enjoy life as it is.

Now, not to be rude, but I think finding comfort in some sort of life after death cheapens life.

If I believed I would get some sort of heavenly reward after death, I would constantly bypass the true beauty this life has to offer and fail to appreciate it.

I missing something here. What's scary about not existing? I didn't exist 100 years ago, and the thought of that doesn't scare me, so why should the fact that I will cease to exist sometime in the future bother me? I mean, it's not like I'm going to know that I don't exist. I simply won't.

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This is explained in the philosophy of Nietzche who proclaimed the death of God and ignited the existentialist attitude in the 1800's. It goes like this:

When a person realizes God is dead, he realizes there is no objective truth. There is no imposed morality, no one to look to for guidance.He describes a bird flying over the ocean and realizing there is no land. The bird becomes tired and then is overcome by a sense of doom because there is no land in sight and the bird is tired, exhausted and an eternity of unrest lies ahead. This is the existentialist dread that you speak of about the paralizing fear of non existence.

Nietzsche goes on to say that this dread passes and a man realizes that he is all that matters if God is dead. His actions are his choice and his morality is also up to him. He becomes God. He makes the rules. His sole purpose is to vent his strength. He becomes die ubermensch, the superman. And this new atheist superman doesn't fear anything.

Of course I'm afraid of dying, I don't spend my time worrying about it

But just out of interest - you say you have personal relationship with Jesus but then people of other religions say they have personal relationships with their gods and they know that they're right

You can't all be right, so what if you've got it wrong?

Or you're right about jesus but you're just not following him in the exactly right way?

Shouldn't you be worried about that?

What if your "sins" have doomed you to hell? Every single theist thinks they're getting into heaven regardless of what they've done or what religion they believe in. The odds of you managing to be right really aren't in your favour.

If I were a theist, I'd be absolutely terrified.

No, I am not afraid of death, only how I'll die.

"If I was an atheist, I would constantly fear death"

Well, since you're not an atheist, you couldn't possibly know what your "atheist" perspective on death would be.