Most Everything I Learned to Fear About Death Was Taught in Sunday School

A friend pointed me to this post entitled "Death is a Matter of Opinion," which presents some very interesting thoughts on the existential challenges that we humans face in dealing with the certainty of our own deaths and that of other beings. I highly recommend that you read the whole thing before continuing with my additional thoughts, as the author's points about the eternal nature of what we refer to as our past -- these are quite profound.

What I'd like to highlight here are my thoughts on the following excerpt:

It is only the concept of the future which gives death any measurability. We, as humans, seem invariably afraid of (I would say) our mortality, or rather, the end of our mortal existence. To see this as a negative thing, we have to view death as an "ending."

Many religions deny this by saying there's a continuing to life after death. I disagree that this is necessary to rob death of its power. I think that the "end" of this life is only the end if you evaluate the flow of time forward as an absolute beyond our perception. I feel it is the mortal perception of "yet to come" which makes us so afraid. We rely on a "yet to come" in order to function, make plans, gain things we consider to be "valuable," etc., etc..

...

Our existence has occurred, perhaps, in the weak medium of measurement known as "time," but our immortality occurs the moment we take first breath. Each choice we make reestablishes that immortality. And death -- the "end" -- does nothing to change or shake that in any way.

Death, being defined as an "ending of life," is fallacious at best. It has no grasp, it changes nothing, it has no power. It is simply another aspect of life -- not its ending at all, but a form of existence.

When I was a believer in the dogma of eternal existence as a being of our current type, I once made the comment in LDS Sunday School that death is only significant to the living. Folks vigorously disagreed. I was a little taken back but ultimately understood how the context of Christian faith (and Mormonism in particular) requires that death mean very much to the dead. Yet I was still convinced that the living had much more to fear than the dead.

Now I've come to believe that death is entirely a concern of the living and nothing more.

One thing I'd like to add is that religions in general have capitalized on teaching the eternal nature of the human soul. By doing so they succeed in controlling us now by framing an alleged pre-earth and post-earth existence in such a way that we then feel bound by things utterly outside our control, and subsequently seek to align what we can control--the here and now-- with the precepts of faith. The same faith that, via the circular reasoning of appealing to faith, set the context of our fearful reasoning from the start.

I think much of what we fear about life and death is taught to us by those who cannot know such things. And the net result is that we live as slaves of a manufactured pre-existence, and in fear of what might happen to us or our seed (or our ancestors--for the mormons) should we not do all we can do as framed by dogmas we have accepted.

I think whatever solace that religion may offer in the alleged form of "removing the sting of death" arising from the existential, it wipes-out one-hundred fold with its bondage and fear-mongering via doctrines of pre and post existence.