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I remember as a little boy being scared thinking about death,and scared and confused about notions like infinity,and ever and ever.I remember considering suicide by jumping out of my bedroom window.I must have been about 6 or 7.
The God idea didn't change anything.It seemed even more scary than just being dead.
My mom would occasionally take Awake magazine from
people at the door.She would just fling them unread
onto our bookcase.I would pick them up and look at the illustrations,the Pope with his great big hat,long robes and a long stick was weirdly scary and all about death.
Even today I associate religion with death.It's all about death;and fooling people into believing that there is no death "if you really believe".
Older and wiser now,I no longer fear death,and understand that religion is just make believe.

A better question might be why humans are so preoccupied with life-after-death. It seems like such a waste of time to contemplate something so trivial. Every piece of evidence available to us in the universe suggests that death means death - finished - done. When we die, our body decays and we return to the earth (unless, of course, we are rich enough to preserve our bodies - a completely different argument altogether). Is it ego? Ignorance? Or just another nefarious part to the religious population control matrix?

Entire religions and civilizations have risen and fallen based their estimation to the question of "what happens after death". People spend their entire lives in fear that their current life activities may somehow affect their post-life environment and presume that - whatever comes after this - must be dramatically better or infinitely worse than what we have today.

Of course death is death.That is reality.
But since the beginning of time people have fought this
dreadful idea for obvious reasons...nobody wants to die,
and nobody wants to see their loved ones die.
Religions exist because they tell us what we want to hear:
there is no death. And not only is there no death,
but in fact there's a wonderful place up there we call heaven,
and it's run by a charming white bearded old gent called God.
If you believe in him,
and if you are good,then you will spend eternity in Heaven,
instead of dying,or going to Hell,where all the baddies go.
What's not to like?

For centuries Christianity has been dominated by a Platonic two worlds view suggesting that this world is a shadow of the real world which is to come and for which this life is but a preparation. That this life is all we have and at death we shall simple burn out or fade away seems to me not inconsistent with a Christian humanism which afirms Jesus' principle dying to self, letting go of oneself into a more committed and compassionate way of life.

You gents say “get a grip”-- on what?
What I mean is the handle you are gripping is only an opinion. Where is the handle on an opinion? Prove there is no afterlife, if you can't,-- get a grip on it.

Er, after whose death? My death?

To me, nothing, because I'd be dead.

Something of me lives on through my work, possibly, and my children, if any.

My body returns to the earth as it decays.

Indeed, get a grip.

Marc Bain,

Thank you for your interesting explication. I had wondered about Jewish thought on this subject.

You die. That's what happens. That's ALL that happens. Get a grip.