DEATH REALITY CHECK,
Death is one of those subjects that many people find difficult to discuss in frank, realistic terms. Oh, we live in a world where death is depicted everywhere; on the big screen, on TV, in stories… but generally we confine our view of death to surreal tales… where death is never really death, but something else.
The subject of death terrifies most clear-thinking people – which also allows death to be used as a big nasty club, a weapon against those who would ask too many questions and possibly demand actual evidence as part of the answers. Thus, all you have to do is listen to some sincere religious person trying to convert you to realize that mortality is the driving force behind religious conversion.
People are scared to death of death; they can’t handle the thought that they will cease to exist as a conscious entity. That great terror is what drives people to religion. As the centerpiece for the reason religion exists, one would expect to find many lurid descriptions of death and dying religionist tomes such as The Bible, and you won’t be disappointed.
Succinctly stated: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14,15)
An honest statement from the author of Hebrews: It is all about the fear of death. That’s the hammer that religion always has against reason. Fear is also used as a club to promote the other purpose of religion; its purported social control. i.e., without religion, they say, people would go wild and do all kinds of crazy things like commit incest and genocide.
Now, the amount of social control exerted by the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is somewhat limited and even rather dubious due to the fact that these faiths hold to a rather extreme form of moral relativism, but nonetheless this fear works to some degree for social cohesion and control. Perhaps I will deal with the moral relativism of Christianity in some future post but let’s stay on track for now…
