why do people fear death?

Question

IS IT BECAUSE THEY THINK ITS HORRIBLE

Answer 1

People are unsure of what death really is. Is death a horrible process where one feels hopeless? How will we die, I mean we don't all die in our sleep, what if it's long and painful. Is death simply death, we die and then get stuck in the ground or cremated. Is there something more after this life, do our souls go to another body or to heaven. There are so many questions that will never be answered, how can one not fear death when they don't understand it.

Answer 2

No matter what status in life one has, no one knows for sure what happens after death, and no amount of money or experience can prepare one for the unknown. The manner of death is also scary since no one knows how he or she is going to go. Fear or the unknown is a strong thing.

Answer 3

people fear death

Answer 4

Death is an unknown thing. That is why people fear it. Most people do fear the unknown. Is there life, do you just rot in a box, what happens to us? Who knows. I guess one day we will find out, hopefully later not sooner.

Answer 5

Hi, i found this a little interesting...

Most people think religion eases the fear of death. But studies have found that’s not necessarily true.

Although very religious people fear death the least, studies suggest, total unbelievers take second place for ability to take their mortality in stride. The worst death anxieties haunt those who lie somewhere in between those extremes—who are a little religious.

A new study has backed up these findings, and provided some tentative explanations for the surprising phenomenon.

For some of those in the unlucky category of “moderately religious,” the study’s authors found, the explanation may be grimly straightforward. They’re afraid of punishment in the afterlife, such as going to hell.

Many of these people believe in a God, but don’t go to church, pray or otherwise follow through much on that belief. This may “raise the specter of punishment after death without hope for salvation,” wrote the researchers, Paul Wink and Julia Scott of Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., in a paper describing the findings.

Fear of death “was particularly characteristic of individuals whose belief in a rewarding afterlife was not matched by their other religious beliefs and practices,” they added.

Divine punishment may be a less troublesome prospect to strongly religious people, who tend to be more confident of their merit. Atheists don’t worry about it for obvious reasons.

Another reason some slightly religious people fear death more may be that they sometimes question whether an afterlife exists at all, the researchers wrote.

Such doubts might not plague more hard-core believers. And atheists may cope by focusing on ways to achieve at least a “symbolic immortality,” such as through children or creative works.

Being only moderately religious is common in the United States, the authors wrote. They cited figures showing that while four in five American Christians believe in an afterlife, only slightly over half of those, or 44 percent, go to church regularly.

It seems “firmness and consistency of beliefs and practices, rather than religiousness per se, buffers against death anxiety in old age,” Wink and Scott wrote.

In their study, they surveyed 155 people in their late 60s or 70s who were born in Berkeley, Calif. Their findings replicated, among elderly people, the results of past studies with younger people showing that the moderately religious fear death the most.

They also found that strongly religious people feared death the least. The least religious were in between, but slightly closer to the moderately religious.

The researchers said their study had some weaknesses, including a relatively small sample size. Other studies should be done with larger samples and including a greater variety of religious denominations, they said.

The study also didn’t examine how people with unconventional spiritual beliefs, unconnected to organized religion, handled fear of death. This should be a subject of future studies as well, they wrote.

Another finding from their study was that, at least for some people, fear of the dying process itself seems to lessens with age. People in their mid-70s who had experienced more illness and bereavement, perhaps paradoxically, were found to fear death less than those in their late 60s.

Answer 6

It is because they fear their own life. They are too busy worrying what they need to get done, what they want to be, etc..instead of living life and not worrying about mundane things like that. If we did think about death all the time, we would be mad I tell ya.

Answer 7

It's not that people are afraid of where their gonna go it's that they are afraid of how it's gonna happen. Death means the inevitable destruction of the body and most people are afraid of the pain associated with that.
Also the feeling that they did not do enough while they were alive or they regret the things they have done

Answer 8

Death: to die or to perish.

contrary to many common belifs people fear spiders more than death.
while those who fear death are the ones whobelieve in the concept of heaven hel or rebirth.
most of us do not fear death but fear loosing what we have, loosing our selves to some other outworldly force.
We fear loosing our souls our very existance.
many of us also fear geting exticnt. being lost even from the memory of people. we fear the loss of our identity!

Answer 9

death is smething people cannot see so they are scared of that and there r no person who has written about life after death so to go in to an unknown world people r scared

Answer 10

death is a place nobody has live to tell about and of course many people fear what they dont understand. and you can't have someone come back from death to tell of their experience of it. or mabe they are so attached to live they dread the day they have to die.