Advaita Vedanta holds that Brahman, the creator, and Atman, the human soul, are one and the same, (Advaita means 'not two') this means, in effect, that all of us are Brahman/God. So is all of the mind God? I think some is and some isn't, personality belonging to the body, this would include appetite for food, sex etc. I also believe we carry personality traits with us after death as a sort of comforter until we 'wake up' and accept that our so called identity/ego is false and remember who we really are. (The familiar despite its shortcomings is more attractive than the thought of oblivion) So losing your identity is losing a temporary false self image, being afraid of facing the creator is fear of facing yourself, the real you.

My opinion of course.

Socrates was supposedly calm in the face of his death sentence. When asked why he was so nonchalant, he argued that a fear of death is irrational because either:

• there is no afterlife, which means I won't be around to know what death is actually like
• or there is an afterlife, in which case death is kind of an illusion as you carry on existing

The thing I like about this argument is that it doesn't depend on belief. It works whether you're a theist, a theist who doesn't believe in an afterlife, or even an atheist.

In my opinion, people are scared by death because its almost impossible to imagine yourself not existing. Therefore, when people consider their own death, they kind of imagine a disembodied consciousness in an empty void with nothing but their own thoughts to keep them company.

But this invokes substance dualism, as it says your consciousness could exist independently of your mind. I'm not saying dualism is wrong, but most people who deny dualism still have a vague idea in the back of their heads that something is left over after death.

Ultimately though, its what works for you. If belief in God helps you deal with death anxiety, that's great! Other people, myself included, need a more rational argument that covers all bases like the Socrates thing.

if religion is wrong and there is no heaven, that I will simply not exist—that all of this was for nothing. — Play-doh

For nothing? Aside from the religious perspective, we can observe that people who have died still existed. They don't disappear without trace when they die. They affect things while they're here, and they leave that legacy behind when they die. All that actually changes is that the dead person no longer creates new effects and events. But the ones they had already created will remain for as long as there are humans, I think.

The religious perspective is more complicated, and so varied, according to all the different beliefs we have. But I see no reason to assert that there is no life after the death of the body, nor that there cannot be such a life. Demonstrating how this might be so is quite another matter.... :wink:

What exactly is belief in nothing? Don't you mean, not to believe in a particular something instead of some other particular something? Please clarify.

For me, I am comforted by the chance that there is an afterlife—an opportunity to keep on existing—but for those that believe in physicalism, there would be nothing after death. Isn't it scarier to believe in nothing than something? — Play-doh

There is something comforting in a belief in an afterlife, especially if you believe that you're part of that group. God loves you, God saved you, etc,. this is a comfort for people, and it does drive belief. These are simply psychological causes for belief, not reasons. One shouldn't base a belief on the fear of being damned, one should base a belief on the evidence, or on the reason that support the belief. Nor should one base a belief on the chance that they could be wrong.

I agree with substance dualism. I am a theist

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Speaking for myself: Theism and Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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, and I think it presents itself as a strong choice for believers—believing the mind (tied with identity) is separate from the body. This belief would allow for heaven or spirituality or religion or an afterlife, and there's something comforting in that.

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…and none of that depends on mind separate from body. There’s no such separateness. We’re each a unitary construction. We’re animals. Animals are biologically-originated purposefully-responsive devices.
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Our experience is that of being a physical animal in a physical world, a purposefully-responsive device. Our experience is of the “point-of-view” of that animal, which consists of the purposefully-responsive device's surroundings in the context of its purposes..
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Is there more to it than just the above physical description? Of course it’s more than that. As I said, it’s experience. It’s an obvious truism that experience is fundamental. …in our experience.
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And there’s no need for the world of our experience to be other than hypothetical. Our experience is fundamental, then, in an ontologically-meaningful sense. It’s what the whole describable world comes down to.
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There’s no reason to believe that the world of our experience is other than hypothetical. Our experience is a hypothetical life-experience story, with us, the experiencer, the protagonist of that story, central and fundamental to that story. …as its essential component, without which there wouldn’t be an experience-story.
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People want there to be an objectively-existent material world to grasp onto. No need.
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A number of physicists specializing in quantum-mechanics say that QM lays to rest the notion of an objectively-existent physical world. But the academic philosophers, and their followers here, are more conservative, and tend to be quite unwilling to give up their cherished Materialism.
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Off of that, though, I don’t know how somebody who believes that the mind is tied to the physical comes to terms with death.

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What’s the problem there?
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At the end-of-lives (or the end of this life, if there weren’t reincarnation), there’s sleep, which of course becomes increasingly deep sleep. What do you have against sleep? You experience it every night.
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People speak of a fear of “Nothing” at the end. But there’s no such thing. Even at death at the end-of-lives, you never experience a time when there’s no experience. There’s no such thing as “oblivion”. Some fear oblivion, some long for it. The ones who long for it are counting on a false hope. The ones who fear it are fearing unnecessarily.
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Of course, at the end-of-lives, there’s soon no such thing as identity. …or time, events, problems, menaces, lack, need, or incompletion. …or anything being wrong. …or any awareness that there ever were or could be such things.
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And, without time or events,….that’s timelessness. Sure, the body is shutting-down, and your survivors will observe that complete shutdown. But you won’t. In fact, you won’t know or care that there could be such a thing (as I mentioned in the previous paragraph).
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In a word, what do you have against sleep?
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Because it’s final (at the end-of-lives), and timeless, that sleep is the natural, normal, usual and rightful state-of-affairs. Compared to it, life (even a long finite sequence of very many temporary lives) is a temporary anomaly, a blip in timelessness.
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Of course we all want to avoid death, to make it as late as possible, because there are things that we want to do in life. But that isn’t the same thing as fearing death.
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I feel most people desire comfort when it comes to something scary (like death)

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If there’s a sense in which death could be “scary”, it’s because it’s unfamiliar. How could it be other than unfamiliar? We’ve been in this life for so long that it’s obviously all we know. But really, as I said, it’s a temporary anomaly, and a blip in timelessness.
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And, as I also said, you experience sleep every night. Sleep is the natural, normal, usual and rightful state-of-affairs.
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, even if they would prefer to know the truth than be comforted.

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There’s nothing un-comforting about the truth.
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If the mind is tied to the body, and the body dies, then one’s mind and identity die along with it

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Of course. Sleep, going into ever deeper sleep. So what? You experience it each night. It’s natural, normal and usual.
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; one ceases to exist completely

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No. There are some here (you know to whom I refer) who (unreaslistically) long for that.
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As I said, there’s no such thing as oblivion. Even during the arrival of ever deeper sleep, there’s no experience of an unexperienced time.
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For me, that’s a thought I struggle with—that if religion is wrong

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I didn’t say that religion is wrong (…well that depends on the religion).
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and there is no heaven, that I will simply not exist

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You’ll never not exist, for the reason that I stated above. You’ll never experience nonexistence. There’s no such thing as oblivion.
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—that all of this was for nothing.

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It might sometimes seem so, but it happened for a reason. Why did this life happen? It happened because you wanted it. You’re the central, fundamental component of your hypothetical life-experience-story. Without you, its experiencer and protagonist, it wouldn’t be an experience-story.
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You’re in a life because of yourself. You’re the reason why you’re in a life. You and your needs and wants. You and your “Will-To-Life”.
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Furthermore, I suggest that if there’s a reason why you’re in a life (There is), and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then—for the same reason why this life begain—a next life will begin.
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…until such time as you no longer have that Will-To-Life, because you’re life-completed and lifestyle-perfected. Typically there are very many lives before then.
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I suggest that there’s that reincarnation, but can’t prove it…other than to point out that it’s consistent with the uncontroversial metaphysics that I propose.
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For me, I am comforted by the chance that there is an afterlife—an opportunity to keep on existing

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Life doesn’t end, but busy, menacing, incomplete worldly-life ends, after a great many lives, at the end-of-lives. Worldly life ends when you no longer need and want it.
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But even if you don’t agree about reincarnation, it remains that you never end…you just sleep, which is the natural, normal and usual state of affairs.
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Michael Ossipoff

Isn't it scarier to believe in nothing than something? — Play-doh

No.

One shouldn't base a belief on the fear of being damned, one should base a belief on the evidence, or on the reason that support the belief. — Sam26

Why not? :chin: The reasons why we believe stuff are many and varied. Why do you think we should believe based only on "evidence" or "reason"? Genuine question. Why? :chin:

—believing the mind (tied with identity) is separate from the body. This belief would allow for heaven or spirituality or religion or an afterlife, and there's something comforting in that. — Play-doh

From your perspective, you need a free-floating mind separate from your body in order to have heaven. Is it the case from God's perspective that you must have a separate mind and body?

Christians presumably believe in the resurrection of the body. It says so in the creeds.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

A god capable of creating the universe and who offers heaven in addition to everything else, can presumably manage the resurrection of your body. Jesus didn't raise Lazarus's mind from the dead, he raised Lazarus's body.

The prospect of heaven is a comfort, no doubt, but substance dualism isn't a requirement to get into heaven (as far as I know -- but then, how would either one of us know?). Is it death that is disturbing or is it the dying part?