Original thread here: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1050583

For me it was my own ego. That's what kept me believing in "god" or a "higher power" or even "reason in the universe" etc.

I was convinced that my consciousness was sooooo doggoned special that it simply had to continue after death. Otherwise it was just too wasteful to contemplate. I think it was a hold over from my Mormon training. All that God in embryo talk sunk in pretty deep.

The older I get the more I hate the idea of "eternal life". Have ny of you seen the Sean Connery movie called Zardoz(sp?).

Why would you hate the idea of eternal life?

I want to live for ever and ever. That doesn't mean that I want to be trapped in this body forever, only that I want to live forever. There's so much to learn and discover and do and create. There are so many others to meet and love and admire and enjoy.

Why would anyone ever want that to stop--forever!?

Steve

After you've met everybody, loved everybody, seen every thing, done everything mastered everything, and enjoyed everything, not just once, but let's say 10 billion times each. At that point forever is nothing but an ugly prison from which you will never escape.

I ABSOLUTELY do not want to live forever. If you tell me that I will live for a million, billion years, then sign me right up. If you say it'll be a trillion quadrillion years, then I'm on board. But you say 'forever'? No dice. I need closure. I need to know that at some point, I will cease to be. At some point, it will end. Otherwise, life has no purpose.

I have always felt like this, even as a TBM. The idea of eternal life was the hardest doctrine - emotionally - for me to swallow.

Yes. I agree completely. It is not life after death that I find troubling, it is eternal life after death. For me, I am O.K. with life after death, so long as there is an "opt out" option that can be triggered by free choice; sort of like the suicide option in this life. "Eternal life" scares the hell out of me; much more so than annihilation.

Sometimes we forget that the "survival of death" issue is not the same as "eternal life" in the Mormon or Christian context. The belief that consciousness survives bodily death does not entail that consciousness is eternal, or that there is a God. Too often the arguments and evidence for such survival are suppressed because of an improper mental link that survival somehow entails religious faith.

I've never self-identified as an atheist, but I grew
up in an atheist household and most of the neighbors
mistook me for being an atheist myself, prior to my
Latter Day Saint baptism as a young adult.

I've watched numerous Mormons (and a few RLDS) evolve
out of Mormonism and into atheism. It has been a unique
phenomenon, in my experience, and I've never seen
anything quite like it in cases of lapsed Evangelicals,
disgruntled Catholics, and the likes.

The most common residue of Mormonism that I've noticed
in these new-born atheists, is a need/desire to hold on
to a personal identity -- something -- reincarnation,
or an after-after death "spirit world," or ghosts, or
some other supernatural means by which to continue
individual consciousness.

Looking back over all of that -- over several decades --
its seems more than a little strange to me. I can't
quite figure out WHY.

I guess we all struggle to preserve ourselves against
an untimely demise, and many of us carry that battle
all the way to the edge of the grave. But why not just
surrender the instinctive self-preservation at that point?

Maybe I've lived too long away from the USA and mainland
American thinking. In Asia, and to some extent in the
Pacific isles, the Individual is nothing -- the Group is
EVERYTHING.

I would naturally guess that the overwhelming power and
presence of the Group, in Mormonism, would pre-condition
its members to an easy surrender of identity. But, I guess
not. I've seen atheists, who, after an extended period
away from Mormonism can finally be glad not to have to
continue existence after death in a never-ending Mormon
imprisonment -- but that sort of relief doesn't seem to
set in immediately after determining Mormonism is false.

Perhaps my growing up in an atheist family, with deep
Latter Day Saint roots, "inoculated" me against afterlife
delusions. And my being married to a Jewish lady, who has
no interest whatsoever in "Sheol," has strengthened that
early atheistic conditioning. Just seems natural to me.

UD

I don't fear death at all any more. As a Mormon I didn't really fear it either, just the "final judgement". I knew I wasn't and would never be perfect and thus unfit for celestial glory. I had myself all prepped for terrestrial glory or maybe even a position as a TK SMOOTHY : ).

Yeah, eternity wasn't going to be much fun. Sitting around millennium after millennium Lamenting the fact that if I had just done six more temple sessions and willingly paid tithing on my Gross Income, and actually done my home teaching, then I could have been a GOD!

I do like the idea of Eternal Rest. The very long Dirt Nap. No more Mortgage payments, no more aching joints, no more worry and stress, no more Mormon Relatives...... Just Nothing. A vacation forever. I'm very cool with that.

Ha!

Existence is overrated. Only the living make noise over it.

Death. For a long time I was terrified of death, because the idea that my consciousness would just end would not compute. I wanted the Mormon idea of afterlife to be true because, hey, you get a lot of cool stuff when you die in Mormonism. God powers, your own universe, etc.

When I realized the Mormon church was bs, at first I felt like I'd been cheated out of all that. For the sake my family I tried to stay active (despite non believing), but could only keep that up for a week. I tried to grab on to regular Christianity, but I couldn't ignore problems with another religion again; Christianity crumbled under the same kind of scrutiny I had given Mormonism. I was a deist for a week, and for another month I tried to avoid the problem by being pantheist and defining god as nature. I realized I was atheist after that and was forced to confront the problems of death and moral authority.

I got over my fear of death when I realized that eternity is much more terrifying. At some point, in eternity, you will have done everything and know everything that can be: but your time in eternity had still only just begun. Then comes a forever of torturous boredom.

I resolved the problem of suddenly having no "ultimate moral authority" by realizing that all moral systems are necessarily man made in the first place; even if there is a god, we must use our own reason and moral judgment to determine if the god is good or evil.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2013 12:11PM by soju.

"At some point, in eternity, you will have done everything and know everything that can be: but your time in eternity had still only just begun. Then comes a forever of torturous boredom."


If you know everything maybe you can periodically wipe your memory out and send yourself to a new planet with a new identity.

As Rosenkrantz says, in Tom Stoppard's play "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," as he ponders death and life(?) after death:

"Eternity is a terrible thought! I mean, when will it ever end?"

As a young child, the thought of eternity made me sick. I'd keep thinking "forever,andever,andever,andever.....>>chunks.
The Mormon (and all religious) mind rape of children is unconscionable.

I'm not afraid of being dead. I'll just be gone like a candle blown out. The dying process itself is a bit concerning, though.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” - Mark Twain

What difference does it make really? Either you die and that's it, you won't know you are dead... because you are dead. OR you are alive as a harp playing spirit in the clouds... or you get to haunt a hospital or a house or something. Either way, why fret about it? All I know is that if I have to hang out with that guy who sez he's my dad, or the guy who for some inexplicable reason had to die for my sins, then forget about it. I'll take my chances haunting the hospital.

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of eternal life. People seem to care less about how they treat themselves, others, and the world around them because this is just a glimpse in "eternity" and all the messy uncomfortable stuff will be sorted after this life.
I feel like ignoring the thought that death could just be it, is dangerous. If we accept death then we can live, when we cover it up with eternal promises and rewards from god, we forget how to live.