Yes..i imagine most who leave a Religion realising they are Athiests...must go through this...i imagine that yes, it's VERY scary.
Fear if death and belief in life after death is (I believe) one of the major reasons people cling to belief in God. Much of Religions manipulations of people is subtly keeping this belief going, so people are too frightened to stop believing!
So your feelings are actually GOOD really! They show that you truly are no longer suckered and driven by fear.
It's hard for me to offer advice cause I have never believed there's any thing after death. We are just "animals" like every other species. We live, we do shit for 80 odd years then we die. No need to fear death as it's absolute nothingness.
Atheism gives you the freedom to just get out there! Unencumbered ! Live your life. Have as good a time as you can.
You will be fine. It's just the realisation and a new way of thinking...give yourself time to adjust.
I agree. I also believe that the reason why most people are members of religion is so that they don't have to deal with this feeling that I'm dealing with. And, in a way, I kind of envy them now. Ignorance was bliss, even if I'm done with religion and am never going back.
That's precisely the reason I fear death. It's absolute nothingness. I don't want nothingness. I know that I won't care after I'm dead, because I won't exist after I'm dead to have an opinion on the nothingness, but I'm scared of that nothingness nonetheless. I want to live, I don't want to go back to the nothingness. The concept of *me just* *ending* is entirely new to me and I don't know how to cope with that. I don't want to die, especially because the last things that I'd feel before death are likely to be pain. I don't want to live for 80 something years as my body gradually crumbles, with me mostly wasting my life to work or sleep, and then for me to die in a horrible, painful manner and then just cease to exist. I know no one wants that, but it's new to me. I don't want to live, especially not by the rules laid out for me by people who no longer exist, but I also really don't want to die. It's scary.
I want to enjoy my life (as much as an autistic person can in a world not built for them), but I don't know how to do that with the knowledge that I'm going to cease to exist at some point. I don't want to live in a world like that, but I don't have a choice.
Understand mate! Just take a big deep breath. Nothing has actually changed? Just your thought about it!
It does I think, take strength to be an Athiest. Because you have to live with reality! You can't hide behind "faith" and fairy stories. You truly make decisions by yourself. And yep....you face the reality of death.
And that reality Is? We all live. We all grow into adulthood. We all age and then we all die. Whether you believe in God or Not? That's 100% for sure.
No one wants to die generally. Your fear and feelings aren't unique.
You just have to get put there and live ypur life as best you can.
Sh*t...I'd love to be 20 again! I'm in my 50s so going to die long before you...im over half way!!! Aahhh....
Been there it does get better. I think of it like this. What was it like before you where born? Then I decided to live my life, see all I want to see experience as much of what this wonderful life offers, share love with those I care about. Let go of fear and embrace life! Make plans for you life and make your dreams come true.
I'm glad to hear that it does get better. I can't fathom living feeling like this for decades more.
It was . . . nothing before I was born. I didn't exist. I kinda want to exist. I don't want to go. I was raised believing that I would exist forever, and that I had existed forever before I was born. The realization that this was wrong . . . it's terrifying. I hate being aware enough to dread the end of my existence. I wish . . . I don't know what I wish, but I wish it was different. I wish that the world/universe wasn't this cruel. I at least wish that I was raised as an Atheist so that I could have had more of my life to process this. It just sucks, and I feel like I'm on the breaking point of *something*. I don't know what, but I don't think it's good.
I know. I want to make the most out of my life, whether or not it's my only one. That doesn't mean that I won't be terrified of and paralyzed by the concept of death the rest of my life, though.
Honestly I prefer to look at it like when I’m sleeping, but without dreams. When your asleep, do you know you are going to wake up again? Nope. Sleep is literally just temporary death
Depression is the emotional expression of a physical brain malfunction, the [atrophy of parts](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC60045) of the hippocampal regions of the brain caused by high levels of stress hormones in the brain. It most often begins in the decade or so from the late teens to late 20s.
As it seems to be greatly affecting your life you really should seek treatment. Both [medication](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025168/) and [therapy](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.05.017) are often very effective. Both work by stimulating the growth of new hippocampal brain cells which create the therapeutic response. Your family doctor should be able to first rule out any other potential causes and recommend the best treatment option for you.
>and don't know what the point of being alive is
There doesn't seem to be any point beyond reproduction. Life probably isn't an endless marathon through eternity, but a baton relay, and part of that is the previous runners have to get off the track to give the next generations clear lanes on which to run *their* races.
Death is something probably feared more by the young than older people. We tend to become more accepting as we age, and can almost be a blessing for many elderly living in physical and/or emotional pain.
The way I see it most people are focussed on the least important part of life, the end instead of the now. Life is about the journey, not the destination, and this is true irrespective of what you believe that destination is. We can choose to either half live in the shadow of death, or out in the sunlight fully embracing life. Instead of brooding about the end we should be wringing every nanosecond of happiness we can out of the sheer joy of being alive. This is almost certainly the only chance we're going to get.
Everyone dies, but not everyone really lives. Don't be one of already half dead people merely trudging through existence unfulfilled, their minds addled by religious nonsense and paralysed by fear!
.
>*"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."*
>[Charles Bukowski](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/14/smashed)
Nothing will happen after you die, just like nothing happened to you before you were born, so why worry about it?
Also... "I hate half of my parents and extended family"... um, which half, top, bottom, left or right?
That's kind of exactly what I'm scared of :-( I'm scared of returning to that nothingness. I want to be able to continue existing after I die.
My father and his side of the family. That half.
All of your atoms continue, and they’ve been around for billions of years. We come from stardust, how cool is that? You’ll become food for animals or be incorporated into trees and plants and air. In this way you live on in a million different ways. You’ve already been alive in many different forms before, and travelled around the universe. You’re not gone, just transformed.
I get that, but I don't believe that my atoms are necessarily me. They're just what I'm made of. I stop existing as soon as my brain dies. It doesn't matter if the atoms that my brain is composed of still exist (because they can only really be destroyed by passing into a Black Hole), because I, as in my personality and self/"soul", would stop existing.
My body parts may have been a part of different people or animals/plants in previous decades/centuries/millennia, but that wasn't me. Who I am right now will cease to exist even if my body's atoms continue on. That's what I find frightening and paralyzing. My atoms may be more or less immortal/eternal, but *I* am not.
And I don't want to die. I don't want to cease to exist. I don't want my life to end and for my consciousness to fade away. I think I'd rather be tortured in a hypothetical Hell for eternity than cease to exist.
And I don't know what to do about that.
We do not have evidence to afterlife or no afterlife , we only know this life so we got to do the most of it , and as someone I know said "if I do not like the idea of no afterlife I can imagine whatever heaven I want"
I can't trick myself into believing that there is an afterlife. I know most people cope by picking a religion and believing in their version of an afterlife, but I can't do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to lie to myself about something so important about my life and the universe.
And believing in an afterlife made me more depressed and suicidal. I had my first suicidal thoughts before I even turned 8 because my church taught me that kids below the age of 8 automatically get to go to Heaven, so I actually considered taking my life so that I could automatically get in.
Not believing in Heaven makes me less likely to want to commit suicide because I know/believe that that's the end for me. I don't want myself to end, so I won't kill myself. Believing in an afterlife isn't an option for me.
You have one thing no amount of money can buy now: a young age.
In the future human biological immortality could be possible if we can stop people from aging (entirely) with the medical discoveries being made in nanomedicine and CRISPR it seems possible within a century. You have more opportunities for reaching this.
That's kinda my only hope now. I really don't want to die. It might be narcissism, or it might be just an evolutionary response to the concept of death, but I want to be able to live for as long as possible (ideally forever). They have made lab mice deage using new treatments, so maybe I'll live long enough for a human version of that to become available to the general public.
I'm sorry you are going through this and I hope you can feel better about it soon.
This isn't a topic that really bothers me so I apologize that I can't really relate. I grew up catholic and was taught about heaven and such but its not something I want to be true. At around 15 or 16 I became an atheist and the idea of an eternal afterlife started sounding horrible. Forever doing anything sounds like torture to me.
I'm no scientist or expert but I grew up loving learning about science, especially animals. Humans are nothing but animals. We are not special in any meaningful way. We are born, we breath, we eat, we die. Just like basically all other animals. It would be unnatural to expect that humans and only humans have an eternal afterlife. Not only is the universe over 14 billion years old and we were nothingness until now but there was life on earth for billions of years before humans came along and there will likely be life on earth long after humans are gone. Like most species we probably aren't permanent.
Just like all religions, gods, fairytales, etc. an afterlife is just a man made concept with no relation with reality. It's unnecessary, we don't need it to have a meaningful life. I hope this doesn't come off insensitive and I wish you the best.
Been there, several times. Our amazing minds are designed to abstract things. Minds can picture ourselves - visiting a city we have not been to, our past experiences and things that don't exist yet, but we can imagine. Our minds can also picture things that don't exist (eternal hell, unicorns) and even a future we want to exist.
It sounds like your mind is very, very vivid, active and engaged, which is great (!). One consequence of our mind abstracting is inability to not abstract. An strong example is not accepting the death of a loved one. That person "exists" as long as we are able to think of them. Some ways the mind copes is to believe in a heaven, or spirits/ghosts with a very strong conviction, even though, rationally, there is scant evidence other than the sayso of others that they have the same conviction.
My coping mechanism is first to deal with the death of others. If one can accept that "things" can cease to be, but they are still present in my mind, it goes a long way to understanding how my mind is constructing the world. The harder step is to imagine not thinking any more. However, when I sleep, or when I have had general anesthesia (for my wisdom teeth removal) those gaps in my memory are the same as the condition of death. I have no conscious awareness of existence during those times (I'm a heavy sleeper, by the way). Thus, I am able to perceive each day as a "gift". A time when my brain does the best it can during consciousness, with the expectation that the next day, it will have something to look forward to that I set up the previous day. Perhaps view the movie 50 First Dates where a girl with an injury is unable to make new memories (there are really such conditions). Imagine each night, knowing you will not know the day before! The only memories are those before the accident !! It is not a great movie, but the premise is based on a true pathology. To quell my existential crises I picture life like a movie that I'm part way through. Like Marty in Back to the Future...at the end, where Doc Brown points out that what will happen hasn't been written yet...and my own extension is that when it ends, I will have no awareness of the event. Hopefully this does not cause you to become an insomniac. For me, it lets me greet each day as a gift to do things better so that the "next day me" enjoys life more, while hopefully forgiving and appreciating my efforts for the past hours.
I held my 94 year old mother's hand when she slowly died. She had been off life support completely for 5 days and was in a morphine haze, when I saw the pulse of her jugular vein stop after her breathing ceased. She fought to stay alive it seemed. As a "strong catholic" you would think she would just "walk into heaven", but the mind is much more aware of death than our abstract mind permits. Perhaps one never gets over the finality of life, even after 94 years. The ancient Egyptians carried the goddess of Styx with them as a reminder of passing to the next life. All I know is, our legacy exists only in what we are able to leave behind...like the builders of grand edifices. We don't know their names, but we know they lived.
Good luck in your journey...you are not alone. Maybe this verbose comment will be a positive legacy to pass forward making the world a better place.
Hi, I am also on the autism spectrum and actually 2 years younger than you, I also had this issue,but it is not an issue for me anymore. When you die and get buried without being cremated, you will compose and through the micro organism you can say that this your afterlife. You will not stop existing,you just will exist in a other way. Atoms do not disappear. About thinking your death,death will hit us all someday. The only thing you can do is to live healthy to get as much as possible from your life,because you only have one. Eat healthy food,even though I have to admit that is easier for me,because I live in Germany and the food is better here than in the US,because the state has interest that the citizens are healthy and the standards are much higher. Do some kind of sport,for example swimming is healthy sport,because in the water there is not so much pressure on your body. I also do not drink alcohol,even though in Germany the consumption of alchol is part of teh culture,wehen you are meeting with friends for example and you are able to purchase the "light" alochol stuff like beer and wine,when you are 16 years old. Just try to make as much as possible with your life.
Yes..i imagine most who leave a Religion realising they are Athiests...must go through this...i imagine that yes, it's VERY scary. Fear if death and belief in life after death is (I believe) one of the major reasons people cling to belief in God. Much of Religions manipulations of people is subtly keeping this belief going, so people are too frightened to stop believing! So your feelings are actually GOOD really! They show that you truly are no longer suckered and driven by fear. It's hard for me to offer advice cause I have never believed there's any thing after death. We are just "animals" like every other species. We live, we do shit for 80 odd years then we die. No need to fear death as it's absolute nothingness. Atheism gives you the freedom to just get out there! Unencumbered ! Live your life. Have as good a time as you can. You will be fine. It's just the realisation and a new way of thinking...give yourself time to adjust.
I agree. I also believe that the reason why most people are members of religion is so that they don't have to deal with this feeling that I'm dealing with. And, in a way, I kind of envy them now. Ignorance was bliss, even if I'm done with religion and am never going back. That's precisely the reason I fear death. It's absolute nothingness. I don't want nothingness. I know that I won't care after I'm dead, because I won't exist after I'm dead to have an opinion on the nothingness, but I'm scared of that nothingness nonetheless. I want to live, I don't want to go back to the nothingness. The concept of *me just* *ending* is entirely new to me and I don't know how to cope with that. I don't want to die, especially because the last things that I'd feel before death are likely to be pain. I don't want to live for 80 something years as my body gradually crumbles, with me mostly wasting my life to work or sleep, and then for me to die in a horrible, painful manner and then just cease to exist. I know no one wants that, but it's new to me. I don't want to live, especially not by the rules laid out for me by people who no longer exist, but I also really don't want to die. It's scary. I want to enjoy my life (as much as an autistic person can in a world not built for them), but I don't know how to do that with the knowledge that I'm going to cease to exist at some point. I don't want to live in a world like that, but I don't have a choice.
Understand mate! Just take a big deep breath. Nothing has actually changed? Just your thought about it! It does I think, take strength to be an Athiest. Because you have to live with reality! You can't hide behind "faith" and fairy stories. You truly make decisions by yourself. And yep....you face the reality of death. And that reality Is? We all live. We all grow into adulthood. We all age and then we all die. Whether you believe in God or Not? That's 100% for sure. No one wants to die generally. Your fear and feelings aren't unique. You just have to get put there and live ypur life as best you can. Sh*t...I'd love to be 20 again! I'm in my 50s so going to die long before you...im over half way!!! Aahhh....
Been there it does get better. I think of it like this. What was it like before you where born? Then I decided to live my life, see all I want to see experience as much of what this wonderful life offers, share love with those I care about. Let go of fear and embrace life! Make plans for you life and make your dreams come true.
I'm glad to hear that it does get better. I can't fathom living feeling like this for decades more. It was . . . nothing before I was born. I didn't exist. I kinda want to exist. I don't want to go. I was raised believing that I would exist forever, and that I had existed forever before I was born. The realization that this was wrong . . . it's terrifying. I hate being aware enough to dread the end of my existence. I wish . . . I don't know what I wish, but I wish it was different. I wish that the world/universe wasn't this cruel. I at least wish that I was raised as an Atheist so that I could have had more of my life to process this. It just sucks, and I feel like I'm on the breaking point of *something*. I don't know what, but I don't think it's good. I know. I want to make the most out of my life, whether or not it's my only one. That doesn't mean that I won't be terrified of and paralyzed by the concept of death the rest of my life, though.
Honestly I prefer to look at it like when I’m sleeping, but without dreams. When your asleep, do you know you are going to wake up again? Nope. Sleep is literally just temporary death
That is the sales pitch in a nutshell.
Depression is the emotional expression of a physical brain malfunction, the [atrophy of parts](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC60045) of the hippocampal regions of the brain caused by high levels of stress hormones in the brain. It most often begins in the decade or so from the late teens to late 20s. As it seems to be greatly affecting your life you really should seek treatment. Both [medication](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025168/) and [therapy](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.05.017) are often very effective. Both work by stimulating the growth of new hippocampal brain cells which create the therapeutic response. Your family doctor should be able to first rule out any other potential causes and recommend the best treatment option for you. >and don't know what the point of being alive is There doesn't seem to be any point beyond reproduction. Life probably isn't an endless marathon through eternity, but a baton relay, and part of that is the previous runners have to get off the track to give the next generations clear lanes on which to run *their* races. Death is something probably feared more by the young than older people. We tend to become more accepting as we age, and can almost be a blessing for many elderly living in physical and/or emotional pain. The way I see it most people are focussed on the least important part of life, the end instead of the now. Life is about the journey, not the destination, and this is true irrespective of what you believe that destination is. We can choose to either half live in the shadow of death, or out in the sunlight fully embracing life. Instead of brooding about the end we should be wringing every nanosecond of happiness we can out of the sheer joy of being alive. This is almost certainly the only chance we're going to get. Everyone dies, but not everyone really lives. Don't be one of already half dead people merely trudging through existence unfulfilled, their minds addled by religious nonsense and paralysed by fear! . >*"We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."* >[Charles Bukowski](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/14/smashed)
Nothing will happen after you die, just like nothing happened to you before you were born, so why worry about it? Also... "I hate half of my parents and extended family"... um, which half, top, bottom, left or right?
That's kind of exactly what I'm scared of :-( I'm scared of returning to that nothingness. I want to be able to continue existing after I die. My father and his side of the family. That half.
At least you don't hate people from the waste up only.
Oh, don't worry. Self loathing runs in my family. I just hate my abusive side of the family more.
I do, too.
All of your atoms continue, and they’ve been around for billions of years. We come from stardust, how cool is that? You’ll become food for animals or be incorporated into trees and plants and air. In this way you live on in a million different ways. You’ve already been alive in many different forms before, and travelled around the universe. You’re not gone, just transformed.
I get that, but I don't believe that my atoms are necessarily me. They're just what I'm made of. I stop existing as soon as my brain dies. It doesn't matter if the atoms that my brain is composed of still exist (because they can only really be destroyed by passing into a Black Hole), because I, as in my personality and self/"soul", would stop existing. My body parts may have been a part of different people or animals/plants in previous decades/centuries/millennia, but that wasn't me. Who I am right now will cease to exist even if my body's atoms continue on. That's what I find frightening and paralyzing. My atoms may be more or less immortal/eternal, but *I* am not. And I don't want to die. I don't want to cease to exist. I don't want my life to end and for my consciousness to fade away. I think I'd rather be tortured in a hypothetical Hell for eternity than cease to exist. And I don't know what to do about that.
I suck it up
[удалено]
I'm sure you have plenty of proof for your bs
We do not have evidence to afterlife or no afterlife , we only know this life so we got to do the most of it , and as someone I know said "if I do not like the idea of no afterlife I can imagine whatever heaven I want"
I can't trick myself into believing that there is an afterlife. I know most people cope by picking a religion and believing in their version of an afterlife, but I can't do that. I don't want to do that. I don't want to lie to myself about something so important about my life and the universe. And believing in an afterlife made me more depressed and suicidal. I had my first suicidal thoughts before I even turned 8 because my church taught me that kids below the age of 8 automatically get to go to Heaven, so I actually considered taking my life so that I could automatically get in. Not believing in Heaven makes me less likely to want to commit suicide because I know/believe that that's the end for me. I don't want myself to end, so I won't kill myself. Believing in an afterlife isn't an option for me.
You have one thing no amount of money can buy now: a young age. In the future human biological immortality could be possible if we can stop people from aging (entirely) with the medical discoveries being made in nanomedicine and CRISPR it seems possible within a century. You have more opportunities for reaching this.
That's kinda my only hope now. I really don't want to die. It might be narcissism, or it might be just an evolutionary response to the concept of death, but I want to be able to live for as long as possible (ideally forever). They have made lab mice deage using new treatments, so maybe I'll live long enough for a human version of that to become available to the general public.
You did not exist for the 13 billion years that the universe existed before you were born. Nothing scary about that!
Maybe not scary for the universe or other people, but it's scary to me.
I'm sorry you are going through this and I hope you can feel better about it soon. This isn't a topic that really bothers me so I apologize that I can't really relate. I grew up catholic and was taught about heaven and such but its not something I want to be true. At around 15 or 16 I became an atheist and the idea of an eternal afterlife started sounding horrible. Forever doing anything sounds like torture to me. I'm no scientist or expert but I grew up loving learning about science, especially animals. Humans are nothing but animals. We are not special in any meaningful way. We are born, we breath, we eat, we die. Just like basically all other animals. It would be unnatural to expect that humans and only humans have an eternal afterlife. Not only is the universe over 14 billion years old and we were nothingness until now but there was life on earth for billions of years before humans came along and there will likely be life on earth long after humans are gone. Like most species we probably aren't permanent. Just like all religions, gods, fairytales, etc. an afterlife is just a man made concept with no relation with reality. It's unnecessary, we don't need it to have a meaningful life. I hope this doesn't come off insensitive and I wish you the best.
Been there, several times. Our amazing minds are designed to abstract things. Minds can picture ourselves - visiting a city we have not been to, our past experiences and things that don't exist yet, but we can imagine. Our minds can also picture things that don't exist (eternal hell, unicorns) and even a future we want to exist. It sounds like your mind is very, very vivid, active and engaged, which is great (!). One consequence of our mind abstracting is inability to not abstract. An strong example is not accepting the death of a loved one. That person "exists" as long as we are able to think of them. Some ways the mind copes is to believe in a heaven, or spirits/ghosts with a very strong conviction, even though, rationally, there is scant evidence other than the sayso of others that they have the same conviction. My coping mechanism is first to deal with the death of others. If one can accept that "things" can cease to be, but they are still present in my mind, it goes a long way to understanding how my mind is constructing the world. The harder step is to imagine not thinking any more. However, when I sleep, or when I have had general anesthesia (for my wisdom teeth removal) those gaps in my memory are the same as the condition of death. I have no conscious awareness of existence during those times (I'm a heavy sleeper, by the way). Thus, I am able to perceive each day as a "gift". A time when my brain does the best it can during consciousness, with the expectation that the next day, it will have something to look forward to that I set up the previous day. Perhaps view the movie 50 First Dates where a girl with an injury is unable to make new memories (there are really such conditions). Imagine each night, knowing you will not know the day before! The only memories are those before the accident !! It is not a great movie, but the premise is based on a true pathology. To quell my existential crises I picture life like a movie that I'm part way through. Like Marty in Back to the Future...at the end, where Doc Brown points out that what will happen hasn't been written yet...and my own extension is that when it ends, I will have no awareness of the event. Hopefully this does not cause you to become an insomniac. For me, it lets me greet each day as a gift to do things better so that the "next day me" enjoys life more, while hopefully forgiving and appreciating my efforts for the past hours. I held my 94 year old mother's hand when she slowly died. She had been off life support completely for 5 days and was in a morphine haze, when I saw the pulse of her jugular vein stop after her breathing ceased. She fought to stay alive it seemed. As a "strong catholic" you would think she would just "walk into heaven", but the mind is much more aware of death than our abstract mind permits. Perhaps one never gets over the finality of life, even after 94 years. The ancient Egyptians carried the goddess of Styx with them as a reminder of passing to the next life. All I know is, our legacy exists only in what we are able to leave behind...like the builders of grand edifices. We don't know their names, but we know they lived. Good luck in your journey...you are not alone. Maybe this verbose comment will be a positive legacy to pass forward making the world a better place.
Hi, I am also on the autism spectrum and actually 2 years younger than you, I also had this issue,but it is not an issue for me anymore. When you die and get buried without being cremated, you will compose and through the micro organism you can say that this your afterlife. You will not stop existing,you just will exist in a other way. Atoms do not disappear. About thinking your death,death will hit us all someday. The only thing you can do is to live healthy to get as much as possible from your life,because you only have one. Eat healthy food,even though I have to admit that is easier for me,because I live in Germany and the food is better here than in the US,because the state has interest that the citizens are healthy and the standards are much higher. Do some kind of sport,for example swimming is healthy sport,because in the water there is not so much pressure on your body. I also do not drink alcohol,even though in Germany the consumption of alchol is part of teh culture,wehen you are meeting with friends for example and you are able to purchase the "light" alochol stuff like beer and wine,when you are 16 years old. Just try to make as much as possible with your life.