I'm not exactly an atheist. Agnostic might be a better word, but if you get into the philosophy and the literal meanings of the two words it is hard to make a distinction. That would be a lengthy discussion for another post.
I think most modern educated American's are agnostics, no matter what they call themselves. Most people who call themselves believers actually have some doubts. They hope that God exists, and know their social life will be easier if they just say they believe, but deep down they have doubts, they are not sure, they are agnostics.
Most people who call themselves Atheists do not believe in some particular narrow definition of God, but if the meaning of the word gets expanded you eventually run into some definition of God that the Atheist considers a possibility. Expand your definition of God, and deep down they are agnostics.
I could be wrong about this. We would have to do in depth questioning of lots of believers and atheists to really know. Again it would be a lengthy discussion for another post.
Now we come to death, and the fear of death, the topic of this post.
There are at least two different things we group under the classification "fear of death". One is the immediate fear of death that causes us to jump out of the path of a speeding truck. That is a good fear. It keeps us alive.
I'm going to talk about the existential fear. The nagging horror that one day we will cease to exist. I had this fear at one time. Now I don't. I'm going to try to describe the transition and make suggestions about how others might do this.
The answer for me came from the direct experience that I don't really exist as one solid stable being who began at birth and will end at death. What I actually am is a constantly changing wave of awareness. The millions of bits and pieces of sensation, thought, emotion that I refer to as myself are arising and passing away, moment to moment. I am dying and being reborn moment to moment. Actually there is no "I", but that nature of our language requires a subject, object and verb, so to write about this without using convoluted language I will use the pronoun "I".
The last paragraph is a description of an experience. Just reading the description will not give you the experience and will not remove the existential fear of death. How do you arrive at the experience? How do you experience the illusion of the conventional idea of self, which is the basis of the irrational, existential fear of death?
One brief glimpse of this reality happens to lots of people, but does not remove the existential fear of death. How do you repeatedly, and for longer and longer periods of time, dwell in the state of freedom from the illusion of self, so that it becomes integrated in your deep view of reality and frees you from the fear of death?
The thing that has worked for me is vipassana meditation. It originally came out of the Buddhist tradition, but it requires no belief in anything religious or supernatural. It is currently used my the medical community for dealing with chronic pain. It is used by psychologists for dealing with anxiety and stress. If you go into it deeply enough, it may change your view of who and what you are, and may remove the fear of death as you have the direct personal experience that there is no one to die.
- to be continued
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