imajulianutter,

That was a great post.

I wish you well.

"While a recent series of experiments suggests that reminders of death do indeed make nonreligious people more consciously skeptical about religion and, at the same time, also more unconsciously receptive to religious beliefs, there is no certain explanation for why this might be so." (http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2012/04/04/why-would-reminders-of-death-make-nonreligious-people-more-hostile-to-religion-and-more-open-to-supernatural-beliefs/)

Dear George,

We can express our feelings about death in language. Other species can observe their fellow creatures not moving any more and may be well aware that they will never move again. Although they do not have language they may somehow know it will happen to them. I don't think we can find out how they feel about it. I cannot find how you feel about it. You can tell me your words, but I cannot feel your feelings.

To me religion, among other things, is a way of not dealing with death. We can feel we have a future when we don't have a future beyond our death. It is final.

Dear david f,

I have posted the link to that article claiming some “evidence” (nowadays a much misused term) because I just thought it might be of interest to some of those who posted in this thread. The valility or credibility of this “evidence” I, of course, cannot appraise myself.

I certainly agree - and so would, I guess, most of us, “religious” or not - with your first paragraph.

>>religion, among other things, is a way of not dealing with death <<

I am not sure those who appreciate e.g. “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, (whose actual title is "The Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Intermediate State”), would see it that way - unless you do not count Buddhism among religions.

>>We can feel we have a future when we don't have a future beyond our death. It is final.<<

I again agree that many people can feel thus, which does not exclude the possibility of other people feeling differently about their existence beyond the material: If a lightning hit this computer before I could email this post, my thoughts expressed in it would be lost, gone forever. It would be final. However, if I manage to send it off via internet before the lightning strikes, its “body” will be destroyed but my thoughts will be “resurrected” on a different body (e.g. your computer, that I know absolutely nothing about), and my thoughts will continue to live there.

Please excuse me if this metaphor did not convey anything on how I, and other believers, might think about these matters. It is certainly not an evidence or anything. Mostly it could provide an illustration of the rational part (explanation?) of some religious people’s approach to death. Of course, there are also the cultural (how you were educated etc) and emotional parts or dimensions, probably both more important.

I agree that for some religion is the cowards way out in the face of death. There are many scriptural passages that seem to promise immortality to the believer. This sets up a bargain between God and the believer, you believe in me and I will receive you in heaven to live in eternal joy. However, a closer inspection does not bear this interpretation out despite the millions through history that have believed it to be so. I cannot identify with this attitude, I came to the faith from militant atheism not because I believed it would save me from death or that I was convinced that God existed but because I encountered a beauty that was overwhelming. It had nothing to do with the fear of death although its event made the idea of death less oppressive. Death has a different significance when one is groping in the dark, it feels actually present. But in the light of Christ, although very important, it does not seem as awful.

Peter Sellick

davidf... you engage in further put down of people of faith as if they cannot engage in life faced with the reality of death.

Christians live with death. Its founder subjected himself to personal abuse, ridicule, mocking of his person and eventually the violence of the scourge and the cross. Christians are called to always live in the shadow of the cross in their life discernment that seeks truth in all actions.

I do not know what cognitive gifts animals have of death. I do know they have no heroes or martyrs from whom to draw inspiration as we humans do.

Jesus came for us to have life to the full. From his other teachings we know such fullness is about love and relationship with his Father and our neighbour and the call to service to "the other". To worship God in communion with others ( the Church) and to live the Gospels with others ( the people of God) for self and others is the full expression of Christian humanism. It really is all about us. Jesus simply, but painfully and patiently, provides the path for the wholistic human endeavour.

In a way, death is indeed final. Once met we no longer have the chance to respond to the encounter with the Risen Lord - the mystery of the Resurrection is that each generation can experience the Lord's presence. I do not really understand the day of judgement and heaven and hell - our choices are our own judgement : it may be either bliss or a sense of non completion. Just a thought.

Yet death is not final in the sense of human endeavour for the good, the true and the beautiful. Whatever one has contributed in good faith for these finds its way into the human project of bringing this world to a state wherein God's love expressed through the Scriptures and acted out in the Gospels is known by all.
So for a faithful Christian, death should be a resting place from a full life lived well