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The common human fear of death is irrational.
It would be perfectly understandable to fear the process of dying; it can be,
and often is, long, unpleasant and painful; although it
doesn't
need to be.
To the individual who dies, death is the loosing of consciousness.
Sleep is also the loosing of consciousness, but it it temporary.
Why should we fear the one and not the other?
To die is simply like going to sleep, but this is a sleep from which we will
not wake.
We were, in a sense, dead before we were born; what reason do we have to
fear re-entering that state?
An unwillingness to die is a different matter; it is perfectly reasonable
that a person who loves life, or has a strong reason to want to live (such
as having children to raise) will be unwilling to die; but an unwillingness
to die is very different from a fear of death.
I wonder whether the fear of death is mostly confined to the people of
those cultures that were based on
Judaism, Christianity and
Islam;
the religions that brought the world the concept of eternal torture in Hell?
Do Hindus and Buddhists fear death?
I don't know.
I should make inquiries.
At this point I probably should say that I do not fear death.
This must be at least partly due to the fact that I am thoroughly convinced
that the God of the Bible does not exist and that the theory that we all
have an
immortal soul
is quite incredible (in the true sense of the word) and has been all but
disproven by modern science.
The Bible, with what it claims to tell
us about the Christian God, has
to be about the most unconvincing, irrational, and inconsistent collection
of fantasies and folk tales known to Man.
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