Why We Believe--Fear of Death

Religion may not have arisen solely because of the fear of death, but if you ask people today, they will tell you that there has to be some continuing life after death. Religion provides assurance that there is such life.

Death is part of nature. Every living thing dies. All humans die. No matter how long science is able to extend the length of a human life, we will all die. It is inherent in all living things. Why do we fear death? Why is death the most terrible part of life? Why have we surrounded death with such enormous horror and grief? You would think that such a natural, universal event would be stoically accepted by us as inevitable. But it isn’t.

We fear death because fear is part of our survival as a species. Any species that does not develop some type of fear of death is likely to become extinct. Our young species has managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years in part because of our fear of death. Like other genetically successful species, we have developed evolutionary methods of avoiding death, at least until we have reproduced and spread our genes. Whether we will be as successful a species as the long-lived turtles, sharks, and alligators, remains to be seen.

I believe that one of the many strategies the human race uses to deal with its fear of death is the creation of imaginary beings called “gods.” By creating gods, humans seek to avoid the despair that might accompany a full understanding of their fate. The invention of gods is a tranquilizer that helps man deal with the fact that when we die, we die to eternal oblivion.

Most people realize that the human body does not survive death. What they hope for is the survival of human consciousness and memory. The idea is that our spirit or “soul” survives in an afterlife. It would make little difference if the spirit or soul survived but did not remember living on earth. Most people wish for the survival of our memory. In heaven we would know who we are and remember our lives and family on earth. For most people this includes seeing and getting back together with our loved ones (although Jesus said that in the resurrection there was no marriage, Matt. 22:23-30). For most, the afterlife is an idealized version of life on earth. There is no pain, no misery, no stress, no sin, no evil, only unlimited joy. For Catholics it is the “beatific vision.” For Moslems it is “Paradise,” an eternal feast in a green garden with beautiful virgins serving the faithful. For most people, people in heaven are aware of what is happening on earth, and many believe that the dead can intervene in earthly events.

There is something contradictory about the idea that our consciousness survives our deaths. Death is, ipso facto, the death of consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the brain, and if the brain is dead it does not function. We want to believe that somehow, through the hand of God, our consciousness, our brain, goes on working after death even though for earthly purposes it is finished. We want to believe that the mind is not really part of the body, but rather, a spiritual function. Science knows that the mind is the brain and the nervous system, a purely physical phenomenon, and like the rest of the body, it dies.