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Suicide is significantly lower among atheists compared to those that are religious. Although earlier studies showed results that supported your viewpoint, later ones, ones that were more broad based, especially geographically, showed that the more religious one was, the more suicide occurred.
In fact the common trope that religion gives something to live for, it is exactly the opposite. Religion gives you something to DIE for. Atheist see themselves only having one life, and to live the best life possible and after that, as everyone else, we all become wormfood.
What will we know? The same as before we were born.... nothing.
You would have to be the bravest person alive, to jump head first into suicide, even for atheists!
There is no guarantee anyone is right about the afterlife, killing oneself is like diving off a high mountain into water you dont know the depth of..(could be 100ft deep or 3ft deep!)...
And the worst part about suicide...if you ended up somewhere 'BAD'...its not like you can kill yourself again, you are basically STUCK wherever you happen to end up.
You would have to be the bravest person alive, to jump head first into suicide, even for atheists!
There is no guarantee anyone is right about the afterlife, killing oneself is like diving off a high mountain into water you dont know the depth of..(could be 100ft deep or 3ft deep!)...
And the worst part about suicide...if you ended up somewhere 'BAD'...its not like you can kill yourself again, you are basically STUCK wherever you happen to end up.
I was responding to another who brought it up first... thinking that religion adherents are less likely to commit suicide.
I was responding to another who brought it up first... thinking that religion adherents are less likely to commit suicide.
IDK, the way I see it, EVERYONE, religious or not, has cause to worry.
NONE of us knows what happens when we die, even the non religious are not exempt in any way.
Lets just say this, one would have to be a very devout atheist to have no fear of death, just because they dont believe in any religion doesnt necessarily mean they wont end up in a good or bad place. Its a dice roll basically, 50/50.
Suicide is significantly lower among atheists compared to those that are religious. Although earlier studies showed results that supported your viewpoint, later ones, ones that were more broad based, especially geographically, showed that the more religious one was, the more suicide occurred.
Well, I've always been the opposite of everyone else. For me, my belief and submission to God is what keeps me here. I think that's the main difference. Many people can be believers in God but not all of them place themselves under the authority of God. God is the one who decides when my life will end, not me. And as long as I am living I still have some purpose of his to fulfill. And as a caveat, I'm definitely not certain that will never change; you put me in some trying circumstance that is just unbearable, I very well may say I've just had enough God. It's only by his power that my faith is maintained.
As an former atheist, I know that without my belief and submission to God, I would have ended my life because there is just very little joy in it for me. Too much is painful compared to the near perfection that I had experienced. I would much rather cease to exist. And I do pray frequently, as Job did (though I of course have had no where near that kind of trial) that the Lord will take my life soon. It is the only thing I truly look forward to, that I know will definitely happen.
And again you just can't be sure that death will be like it was before you were born. That is how I thought of it as an atheist but it doesn't hold up to consistent logic. The glaring fact is that you never were dead so how can you say anything about it? No one that we speak to has ever been dead to tell us what it's like. We can only perceive it from our own limited perspective.
Just because the dead person has nothing more to do with this life does not absolutely equate to them not having anything to do with any life whatsoever. It's just what we know now that we can absolutely state that there's nothing more perceived here after one is gone. That is the only, only thing anyone with consistent logic can state absolutely about death. Anything else is speculation and if you are honest with yourself intellectually that is the conclusion you will arrive at.
IDK, the way I see it, EVERYONE, religious or not, has cause to worry.
NONE of us knows what happens when we die, even the non religious are not exempt in any way.
Well, that's what I keep saying but I'm told that some do know what happens. So, being a former atheist myself, I'll pull the atheist card that they use to accuse me of the senselessness of my belief (which I understand from an atheist's viewpoint): where's your concrete evidence? And that can't be a dead person because as Ive pointed out all that shows us absolutely is that the dead have nothing more to do with this life. That we already have an abundance of factual information on.
I want to see the void from the dead person's perspective that I can hold up before an audience at like a lecture hall and say, "Look here. This is what it is like to be dead. Here is the concrete experience." I just don't see how you can display that. We are still confined by these senses that we have by which we experience this world. You cannot say with absolute fact that there are no other senses that we gain upon entering death by which we perceive a different world. We would not be able to apprehend that from this life.
Well, that's what I keep saying but I'm told that some do know what happens. So, being a former atheist myself, I'll pull the atheist card that they use to accuse me of the senselessness of my belief (which I understand from an atheist's viewpoint): where's your concrete evidence? And that can't be a dead person because as Ive pointed out all that shows us absolutely is that the dead have nothing more to do with this life. That we already have an abundance of factual information on.
I want to see the void from the dead person's perspective that I can hold up before an audience at like a lecture hall and say, "Look here. This is what it is like to be dead. Here is the concrete experience." I just don't see how you can display that. We are still confined by these senses that we have by which we experience this world. You cannot say with absolute fact that there are no other senses that we gain upon entering death by which we perceive a different world. We would not be able to apprehend that from this life.
YES! great post.
A big part of the problem in trying to understand what happens after death and how it 'feels'...there is no time in the afterlife, I think that much can be agreed upon by everyone, there is no passage of time, no measurement of time, etc...its basically eternity/immortality...
But what does eternity feel/look like?
I cannot begin to answer that, but I can guarantee, its NOTHING like the existence we are familiar with!
I often hear religious people warn of 'suffering for eternity'...but there is no logic in that, suffering or pleasure, requires passage of time, the question is what can exist in a realm that has no time? NOTHING really. 'Eternity' would not feel like a 100 trillion years or 2 seconds...its NO TIME at all.
This is probably not something our human minds can comprehend until we experience it for ourselves, whatever it is, its not going to feel like anything we know. I even question if consciousness can even exist in a realm without time?
IDK, the way I see it, EVERYONE, religious or not, has cause to worry.
NONE of us knows what happens when we die, even the non religious are not exempt in any way.
Lets just say this, one would have to be a very devout atheist to have no fear of death, just because they dont believe in any religion doesnt necessarily mean they wont end up in a good or bad place. Its a dice roll basically, 50/50.
I don't fear death, I just don't want to turn into worm food anytime soon. I fear dying, as most of us will have debilitating diseases, ones that may cause us to endure a lot of pain and suffering. I feel for my children and grandchildren and how they will feel when I am gone. But when I die, my children know to compost me, so I can feed the bugs and slugs, and give life to plants, so others can live.
But I will know as much after I die as I did before I was born... nothing.
Well, I've always been the opposite of everyone else. For me, my belief and submission to God is what keeps me here. I think that's the main difference. Many people can be believers in God but not all of them place themselves under the authority of God. God is the one who decides when my life will end, not me. And as long as I am living I still have some purpose of his to fulfill. And as a caveat, I'm definitely not certain that will never change; you put me in some trying circumstance that is just unbearable, I very well may say I've just had enough God. It's only by his power that my faith is maintained.
As an former atheist, I know that without my belief and submission to God, I would have ended my life because there is just very little joy in it for me. Too much is painful compared to the near perfection that I had experienced. I would much rather cease to exist. And I do pray frequently, as Job did (though I of course have had no where near that kind of trial) that the Lord will take my life soon. It is the only thing I truly look forward to, that I know will definitely happen.
And again you just can't be sure that death will be like it was before you were born. That is how I thought of it as an atheist but it doesn't hold up to consistent logic. The glaring fact is that you never were dead so how can you say anything about it? No one that we speak to has ever been dead to tell us what it's like. We can only perceive it from our own limited perspective.
Just because the dead person has nothing more to do with this life does not absolutely equate to them not having anything to do with any life whatsoever. It's just what we know now that we can absolutely state that there's nothing more perceived here after one is gone. That is the only, only thing anyone with consistent logic can state absolutely about death. Anything else is speculation and if you are honest with yourself intellectually that is the conclusion you will arrive at.
There is no indication, other than faith, that any part of us "lives on" once we die. Sure, billions hope and pray they go on into some celestial North Korea, where a ruler dictates they bow and succumb to that ruler for eternity, but who wants that?
"Faith is believin' what you know ain't true..." ~ Mark Twain.
I don't fear death, I just don't want to turn into worm food anytime soon. I fear dying, as most of us will have debilitating diseases, ones that may cause us to endure a lot of pain and suffering. I feel for my children and grandchildren and how they will feel when I am gone. But when I die, my children know to compost me, so I can feed the bugs and slugs, and give life to plants, so others can live.
But I will know as much after I die as I did before I was born... nothing.
For me it's going to be ashes to ashes.
But you're right. I don't fear death because it's inevitable. I fear the potential of suffering, perhaps great suffering.
So to circle back to the OP and recap the discussion so far, "existential dread in youth" is a multi-faceted problem that at least some of us feel is not directly caused by the decline of religion (or on the other hand, prevented by religion). It is a stew of factors including increasing lack of economic opportunity / upward mobility including absurd cost of college education and usurious student debt, exploitive employment environment, the mental and emotional / addictive downsides of social media, a polarized political and newstainment environment, etc. To the extent religion counters any of this AND is declining, that would be of incidental concern but doesn't really get at root causes in my view. If lots of people are losing hope and feeling lack of agency, then if your first thought is that young people are going to be made okay by looking forward to an eternal reward is not likely to be an effective starting point. One must first LISTEN to young people and UNDERSTAND how they feel and WHY they feel as they do, which might mean having comfortable assumptions challenged or be opening to more difficult solutions that aren't going to make that angst go away (and stay away!) in a sudden rush of transcendent feelings.
One thing that I think has happened to some Christians in the US especially is that the unprecedented prosperity and upward mobility of the period roughly 1946 to 2006 has gotten confused with some sort of divine national blessing / manifest destiny, and the end of this period which one might trace to the Great Recession of 2007 or even the dot-crash of 2000 somehow reflects god's displeasure with insufficient piety. These claims are made without quantifying them in any way and without considering the many other influences and sea changes going on -- as if god corporately blessing or cursing us were the sole cause of everything. It is just a more general "the world is going to hell in a handbasket and people are turning from god" assertion. Where in fact this roughly 60 year boom was never sustainable and bound to end anyway.
I have grave concerns for the prospects of my [step][grand]children and there are plenty of reasons to have those concerns. The decline of religion in my view is not central to those concerns.
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