I can tell you from experience that people who are dying and hold religious beliefs and beliefs in god are as likely to be frightened at the thought of dying as anyone — Tom Storm

It's not so much about the moment of dying itself, but dealing with existential crisis during your life. If you start thinking about these topics, if you have faith, you can use that as an escape "it's fine, I'll just go to another world, and what I'm doing here is just a step to something greater".

Besides, "the afterlife" only kicks the can by begging the question of the "meaning of the afterlife." — 180 Proof

Spiritual people just avoid thinking about the meaning, sometimes they say that "only god can understand" — Babbeus

It keeps you focus on one step, on the life you're living now, they probably think that they will find the meaning of the afterlife in the afterlife itself, and so on. It's like a high school student who's passionate about physics and wants to understand a specific concept for which he needs more background than he has, he's just going to wait until he goes to university. But yeah you're right, it actually prevents people from thinking too far for their own good. They "trust" whatever forces out there instead of investigating by themselves. If you think about it, the "why" questions never end, the only way to get closure with it is to know where to stop, which "why" is too far from the reality we live in to make sense. So I was wondering if we could make a rational approach of metaphysics that would get people back on track of their lives, as much as religion does. Like take the physics student, if you tell him "you'll understand at university", or if you tell him "well actually we don't understand that one, it's just a mathematical model that happens to work", one is certainly more powerful for motivation than the other. With the second one, maybe the student is going to be like "well fuck this shit, I like understanding stuff completely, so I'm gonna go for engineering instead".

Or maybe the society feeds the need to understand "completely" way too much, doesn't show the uncertainties enough, keeps saying "that's okay, scientists know", or experts or whatever. So naturally people get disappointed when they realize "no one knows", not even "god". Maybe people would naturally stop the "why" questions when they realize it's out of their reach, and it wouldn't come as a disappointment if they're used to deal with uncertainties. Maybe they wouldn't try to play the superhuman who can understand several dimensions, or multi directional times even though we only know past present future. no offense.

Sounds like you may have come from a religious upbringing or culture that privileges afterlife stories — Tom Storm

It's more than afterlife stories (cf last paragraph I wrote on this post).

So what is "the meaning of afterlife"?

Because picturing "nothing" is scary, because death is scary? Also about the meaning of life, there isn't any, why don't we all commit mass suicide? — Skalidris

There is, potentially at least, a plethora of meanings of life. Why should there be only one? The very thought that there is only one forecloses the possibility of people finding, creating their own meanings. This is what Nietzsche meant when he spoke about the inherent nihilism in Christianity.



:up:

This is what Nietzsche meant when he spoke about the inherent nihilism in Christianity. — Janus

:up:

??

Did you miss the part where I say that people assume they're gonna find the meaning of the afterlife in the afterlife itself?

So you assume the "meaning of life" is that there is an afterlife we ought to prepare ourselves for in someway and furthermore also assume that we will a find the "meaning of the afterlife" (e.g. preparing for the after-afterlife) in the afterlife, is that it?

I'm assuming that's how religious people could reassure themselves, yes, why not? They basically stop thinking about it because they trust God, they trust whatever is in the afterlife. So even if someone asks them "yeah but well, what's there going to be in the afterlife and after that? They can say that they will see for themselves when they get there. I'm playing the devil's advocate here, I'm neither religious or spiritual, and I've never been either of the two.

I expect death to be just like it was for me two hundred, two thousand years ago. In other words, nothing. To me that sounds perfectly fine. Nothingness is not to be feared or lamented. Am I happy about it? Happiness is such a puerile term. — Tom Storm

The question is whether an oulook like yours can be arrived at deliberately.