Is death meant to be feared? What do we KNOW happens after death?

Question

I am writing a paper for my psych class on death and grieving and would like other people's opinions on why we fear death as none of us can truely know what happens after death.. so should it be feared?

Answer 1

I don't believe it is meant to be feared... but most people sure seem to fear it....many are terrified of death. I suppose it is because most people fear the unknown. And not just death but the fear changing jobs.....unknown. Fear moving to a new city or state...unknown.

I use to fear death but finally accepted, for spiritual and earthly reasons, death and no longer fear death. Like most people I believe....I still fear dying...not death, but the act of dying. Will is be painful, will it take a long drawn out period of time...those fears.

I explain it with the old joke......"Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no body wants to die to get there". No fear of death..it's natural. But a fear of actually dying.

I hope that helps a bit with your psych class. Oh, what do we know what happens after death. We don't. I have a believe of what will happen and on a spiritual level I suppose I would say "I know it will happen." But I don't have any empirical evidence.

Answer 2

it is not meant to be feared. the fear comes from not knowing what is to come. people create their own fears, in their minds.

because they do not know what to expect. the thing most people fear is the pain of death, is it really a pain, or is it as if you get your first shot from a Doctor. you fear it very much, but after words it was not as bad as you thought. some people fear what is to come next, but that fear is how you lived your life. and if you are one that lived it right?

there are many reasons a person fears death. each have there own types of fears. but they are all based on the fact, that they do not know what, to expect.


After death. you shale rest, until Judgment day. then all soles will rise to be Judged.

Answer 3

wonderful question. the honest, truthful answer is, noone knows. simply bc noone has stayed dead and come back to tell us. i personally am a Wiccan, so i believe that when i die, i'll go to the Summerland, a place of rest and reccouperation for the soul where you're reunited w/those who've gone before you. but, again, that's just a theory. death truly is the last great mystery, bc we can't study the soul, can't even prove it exists. all we have is alot of holy texts where others tell you what happens. it can't be proven, it's all a matter of faith. i have heard athiests who had near death experience say they died, and nothing happened, they were simply brought back to consciousness by medical personel. i think you see what you expect to see, and if that's nothing at all bc u don't believe in an afterlife, that, too, is what you will see. sorry i can't give u a str8 forward answer. p.s. i don't fear death at all. just because i don't fear death doesn't mean i'm packing up now to experience it. i try to live everyday as though it were my last. i believe that's a good philosophy for anyone who has any faith, or none at all.

Answer 4

Anyone of us have the answer to those questions, since no one know what is that really happens after death, many things have been told, and also we have seem nay movies, about it, also we have read about it, the religions have their opinions too, but there is no one who has came back to tell us ´´hey guys this is it´´, well some sick people also says they have seen a tunnel and a light..well, a lot of things told. We are afraid of it, because all of these, since this is something unknown for us, we have fear, we don´t know what happens, where we will go after, and this got us desperate about it. sorry for my English, i ´ve tried my best to give you my opinion, hope its helps.

Answer 5

As a child I was caught under a platform in a river and it appeared to me that I saw my future life ahead of me. According to one of my brothers I was that long under water that they held there is no way I could still have been alive. Well I was and ever since I have situations where it is a de javu as I seem to know what is going to happen in incidents albeit it never had happened to me before.

Then some 20 years later I was a minor accident at work and was loosing blood. the first Aid person told me to wait as he was chatting with a fellow worker. I am by nature very calm and so stood there waiting. Well, I must have collapsed by the loss of blood. According to people, as they later advised me, I was death. Yet, I was able to tell them precisely what everyone had stated and what was being done around me, this, even so my father-in-law made clear to me (later) he had seen many dead bodies during the war and he had no doubt I was death.
As such, I learned that you could be alive while others think you are death.

Lucky me they hadn’t dumped me in some rubbish bin, so to say.

It is very strange to lie there and knowing what is going on but you do not utter a word and to others you are death.

I do not fear death because I know to well that if my time is up then I will have departed regardless of what I might try to do otherwise.

You should more worry about not being death but being left for death! Once you are death that is the end of your time and no need to worry about anything then.

While you are alive you can work on things for after death, such as a testament (last will), etc.

Consider that every day might be your last day on earth as a living person and you may realise how important it is to live everyday to the fullest.

Ask yourself how often did you say hello to your neighbour?
How often did you smile to the person sitting next to you. OK if you have a toothache just grimace as if you have fun in it.

Once I was in the middle of a storm and trees falling all around me. I decided (in the dark) to move the car a bit further by a few metres. After about an hour the storm was over. I heard chainsaws and workers were cutting trees around my car away and were surprised I had survived the ordeal and not a scratch on my car even so trees had been all around the car and also electricity (power) lines. Had I not moved the few metres I would have been killed by the trees. The only pocket I happen to choose was where the fallen trees protected me from the power lines.
Clearly wasn’t my time to die then.

Often, such as in car accidents, death can come within milliseconds that you would not even know what happened to you, as such no good to worry about dying, just take it as part of your life that one day it will happen and if it does let it not be that you hadn’t lived your life as yet.

Worry about life not about death.
We are born to die!

Answer 6

I fear death cause i have no more control! I've always been afraid of not being in control of my life and when the finally is here, it's not up to you any more and worst and scariest part of all you don't even know when it's gonna happen!

Answer 7

It's not really death that some people fear -- it's what comes AFTER death. If you're a religious person, you fear the judgment by a god for the life you led. If you're a thinking, rational person, you're fairly certain that after death, you're a worm feast.

Answer 8

The only thing about death is that you will never know the ending of the story.. death is final and your story does end.
It is the one thing that you can not go back and try again.

Answer 9

We like ourselves. When we die, our selves end.

What we know happens after death is that our body rots. (So it's better to be cremated than pay for an expensive coffin.)

Answer 10

Its not if you have Jesus in your heart