Is Religion Just Death Anxiety?

I can still remember the moment I realized that my parents would die someday... I was about 5 years old, lying in bed, and just started to cry uncontrollably.

I can only speak to my own experience, but it was a cope for me. I had slipped away from Christianity after years of doubt and had been agnostic for ~a year before death anxiety started getting to me. I had a mental breakdown that ended with me converting back to Christianity. It was comforting at first but once I started diving deeper and deeper into the religion, I knew I had to be honest with myself and accept that I couldn't believe it. The fear of death doesn't go away, but I'm learning to face it on my own terms, not through some religious filter.

Many religions aren't afterlife focussed. The ancient polytheist religions were much more about controlling things happening in this life: for a good harvest, for victory in battle, for protection against disease. But notice: starvation, war, and disease are things that can kill you. So it is still about dealing with death, just in the way of trying not to die instead of ensuring an afterlife. Also fits with the research about how people become more materialistic when reminded about death.

Had a family member just pass this week.. and comparison to my 14 year old dog who is also slowly dying, I am envious of the dog. She's unaware of what is coming and still manages day to day without the burden of fear. All in all, I think there's a massive level of contextual coping mechanisms.

I am 60. I'm an atheist and am chronically ill. I have died once and almost died 3 more times. I have no fear of death. It's because it happened the same way every time and was quite pleasant. Your brain floods your body with chemicals. You forget all your pain. You start thinking of family and friends and it feels alright to go. Your brain gets a flash of life before your eyes and it is all the good things in your life. Nothing negative.

This is interesting. Can we have one on Pain Management vs. Terror Management 😅😊😮

I speak from personal experience in losing faith and this is definitely one of the themes that I hashed out to be able to still have some understanding/compassion/empathy for people that are still religious, instead of seeing them as merely irrational.

Memento mori is a concept in stoicism where one contemplates their mortality and the inevitability of death. When utilised as a spiritual practise this can lead a person become more calm, happier, more peaceful, more loving ect. Basically the opposite of what those studies found. So it seems the effect of the concept of death comes down to whether the person is considering it as an evil that must be avoided at all costs or an inevitable and natural condition of being alive and something to be at the very least accepted in its entirety.

I'm an atheist but I'm still struggling with the whole death thing more than the average person. I do not handle it very well for some reason. When Facebook first came out it kind of hit me as I was talking to an old friend of mine I asked her if her brother was still dating Rachel from high school and when she told me that Rachel had died 10 years previously from cancer I felt so horrible I remember sitting there thinking wow ... I'm sitting here living out my life when Rachel didn't get to live out hardly anything. barely out of her teens it may be in her lower 20s I guess... that's just so unfair. Now every time I hear about someone especially young dying it just breaks my heart severely. admittedly i do suffer from pretty bad depression also

In my mid 20’s to around 30 I suffered pretty severe death anxiety. Interestingly, I never agreed to go to church with my wife (who was very religious) until around that time. It didn’t take long to see the ridiculousness of the precepts, and simultaneously experience relationships with the largest bunch of young adults in one place who always were not adulting well and feeling compelled to make public spectacle of themselves on sundays crying and asking forgiveness and pandering for prayers. People there were always interested in what you were up to…until you leave that is. Everyone was fantasizing about starting their own ministries too. It was very weird.

I'm a hospice nurse so I'll give some of my thoughts from just from my anecdotal experiences with my patients. A big part of my job is actually helping patients and families come to terms that my patients will be dying likely within 6 months or sooner. Surprisingly most people are able to cope with that knowledge really well and most of them contextualize it as relief of suffering rather than framing it as religious immortality. Almost all of my patients are in immense amounts of pain or suffering from an illness (my job is to make it as painless and comfortable as possible) and they almost always mention how they'll be happy to see dead loved ones and it does help them with turning the experience from horrible to hopeful. It definitely does calm anxieties in patients and families when they believe that their suffering will actually have a payoff and isn't just needless pain until they're gone. One interesting thing I've noticed is almost everyone of my patients calls out to or says that they see dead loved ones on the last couple days of their life. I've had a few atheist patients who had the same experiences. I'm not saying this is proof of an afterlife, but since it's such a prevalent phenomenon I can absolutely understand how the idea of an afterlife was created by people to explain almost every person seeing their dead loved ones before death. I'd be interested to see a study done looking at cultures that primarily believe in reincarnation compared to a single eternal afterlife to see if the phenomenon is influenced by their religious and cultural belief or if it's just an innate mechanism that our brains use when faced with death. The people I find clinging to religion for coping with death is usually from the families of patients rather than the patients themselves. Families can be rational about the immenent death through the entire process and even want the patient to pass quickly so that their suffering can end, but as soon as the patient dies a lot of them instantly change and are quite surprised. A lot of families try to find something important and superstitious about the day they died. "He loved rain, of course he died on a rainy day" "Today is her dad's birthday, of course she chose today." Often when they find significance to tie to a family member's death it turns their mood from greif to celebration and makes it a lot easier when they can call friends and family with "good news" instead of just calling about the death itself. Overall, I personally do think religion is a large part of coping with death, I see it in my coworkers too. I'm an odd one in my field being that I can cope with death in a non-religious context but I am very very much in the minority. Being an atheist in my field isn't difficult especially because I can comfort people in a clinical context by discussing the relief of suffering and explaining that there are studies showing that the body can hear up to 2 hours before death so they likely knew they were surrounded by family. But damn am I glad that we have chaplains as part of our team because I wouldn't be able to offer the religious comforting that most people need during that time. I do think a large part of reliance on religion for coping is due to the fact that at least in America, death is so often ignored in day to day life that when it's affecting someone personally, it's most people's first time working through their actual beliefs.

Cows must be really religious.

Am an atheist an am scared of death, not so much of actually being dead because I know once am dead, am dead, but am scared of the way am going to die and the thought of never knowing anything again terrifies me. 😢

Well, it's not just death anxiety. It's also life anxiety. Historically, life has been pretty damn harsh. Pretty sucky. More or less impossible to get through unless you convince yourself that it'll be better once it's finally over and everyone you think deserves it will be horribly punished. It's basically a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that life is hard and there is no justice.

I think its a big part. When my grandmother died, my mother took comfort in the idea that she is in a happier place without pain, where she can also see my deceased uncle. Same thing happened when our dog recently passed away. I'ts kinda awkward since i'm an atheist and she knows this, but i'm not about to bring that up when she is upset and vulnerable. So whenever she says things like that I just nod along.

The full podcast is available now to Patreon supporters. This clip is taken from Within Reason episode #25 with Andrew Mark Henry (Religion for Breakfast), which comes out this Sunday! The examples cited in this video are derived from a TEDx talk by Sheldon Solomon, one of the original developers of terror management theory. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/wuJhD5TkX-0

I was literally thinking yesterday “Cosmic Skeptic should collab with Religion for Breakfast”. Could this be a crazy coincidence or is it so unlikely that a magical mind must have planned it? Almost certainly the former but still super excited for the full episode!!

I can tell this will be a fantastic episode! Thankyou so much Alex for making quality videos/podcasts for us! Remember to drink water and rest well :^)

I was a Christian years ago when needing a heart transplant (we're talking modern-medieval days of transplantation). People around me used all the religous, comfort-coding they could, offering prayers and letting me know that "God told them" that I'd be ok, etc. But that did not put me at ease. The only comfort I found, then and now, is that if I died, I wouldn't know it. I didn't know about me before I arrived on Earth so it shouldn't bother me that I won't know of me after I die. That thought was one of many that inched me down the road to deconversion. Finding Cosmic Skeptik years later brought me those last few inches. Lol

Alex, have you heard that death anxiety is one of the main themes touched on in the new Puss in Boots movie? And handles it very maturely for a kids' film. I highly recommend you watch it.