The torturous way theists must rationalize death.

[Locut0s]

Theists often try to convert non believers with the laughable fear of hell. What I have difficulty understanding is how they can't see the torturous mind games they have to play with themselves in order to be comfortable with their own belief in their afterlife. There are so many uncomfortable layers to it all that the belief that you simply cease to BE after death seems to easily be the easier fear to face. Obviously religion plays off our most primal fears, that of death and suffering. So they offer up in response the grandest of all possible counter offers, eternal life. And of course with that "gift" has come hundreds of generations of moral corruption, and the arbiters of that gift here on earth (persists, fathers etc) have long been prone to the worst moral abuses because of the positions of absolute power, wholly unearned, we give them. But it's the mental contortions one must have to go through to believe in the type of afterlife that most religions do, that boggles my mind.

For one. You have to sell yourself on the concept of heaven. Whatever the afterlife will be, it by definition, isn't this. And almost all religions posit an eternity of "it". Be it heaven or hell. Ok. Most religions are purposefully vague about their descriptions of heaven, but quite explicit about their descriptions of hell. Hell has to be painted particularly vividly badly in order to scare the "believer" sufficiently so that they don't ask too many questions, don't stray outside the marked boundaries. Heaven can be left up to the individual, save that you will be with your dead loved ones forever. But let's pick this apart a bit. What would it rationally mean to almost anyone, after living 70 or 80 years of a concrete corporeal existence, to suddenly find themselves faced with an ETERNITY of some alien other? I don't care if you promise that I will meet dead loved ones. That to me is a very vivid hell, no mater how much you want to paint it as a heaven. Then there is the continual mental angst a believer must constantly go through to convince themselves that they are going to heaven and not hell. After all "god" always gets the final say in the mater and we all know how capricious gods of almost every religion are. The reason of course is because man had to mold their god to fit nature, which is undoubtedly filled with both great wonders and great horrors, but thankfully it's quite randomly so. It's only with the injecting of a conscious mover into the picture that it becomes actively cruel. And if you believe in this petty, vindictive, abusive god ( theists would argue loving but then so would many an abused argue of their abuser), how do you KNOW that they are going to send you to your heaven, no matter how "good" you have been?

By contrast the idea that I simply cease being, that there is very literally NOTHING after death may be sad, but it's an end that is easily accepted and one that brings me much peace and comfort by comparison.