Relationship between atheistm and suicide

[Hotsackage]

My suffering, makes me an atheist

 

[R_N]

I became atheist through suffering also. First I stopped being religious out of spite, then stayed atheist because of logic and common sense.

 

[Cutepoison]

Were you always an atheist? Or you did you become one during your lifetime? Why? What are your thoughts on what happens after death? Are you at ease with this knowledge?

I was raised by christian parents, and was very devotedly christian up until 14 years old. During my years as a teen, I experimented with many religions, but ended up an atheist. All of them ultimately failed to bring upon the miracles they promised. I think I'm an atheist mostly because religion as a whole failed me, and I can't bring myself to trust those bittersweet lies no more.

After death, I believe your conscience ceases to exist, and this thought scares the hell out of me because I feel very disappointed by that perspective. I really wish there was an afterlife but can't bring myself to believe in one.

I am definitely not at peace with the thought of fading into nothingness. It sounds terrible and I'm scared. How does one become at peace with that?

For me, it's pretty simple - remember how it was before you were born? Exactly - nothing. I think that's what we can expect once we die.

 

[xXSarac3nSlay3rXx]

I am an ex-Christian. I became an atheist around 15 because I had access to the internet. I couldn't maintain a belief in god after being exposed to arguments against the existence of god. Darkmatter2525 in particular had some thought-provoking videos that swayed my opinion. I believe that when I die I'll simply cease to exist. I'm okay with this outcome because it won't be a positive or negative experience. It simply won't be an experience.

 

[awfullife]

I was raised in church. Never really bought into it. Then after college my faith got pretty strong. I got into an amazingly lucrative career (neurosurgery sales) and most of the surgeons were believers. I then recovered from alcoholism. Aa and faith were extremely important in my life and I was in peace actually. Wife divorced me. I lost my biz. Spent all my money fighting for custody. The pressure caused me to make some very poor money decisions as well and now 4 years later I went from a millionaire to broke. Estranged from my kids. I try to pray but struggle believing any more. Dying would be a relief. Why did I deserve this oh Lord? I guess I'm a faux believer.

 

[TAW122]

I flipped around being agnostic and being atheist during many points of my life, but have generally shifted towards atheism. As far as atheism and suicide, I could say that atheists generally see the world for what it is and don't necessarily believe in something that cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Furthermore, having less guilt and shame (through religion, whatever the religion may be - not limited to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) tying them down, yes, it is a small factor. I think it really depends on the person's temperament and character in general.

As far as being at peace with that, well from the outsider perspective, I can say (with confidence) that formerly religious people or even people who are religious are brainwashed and raised into fearing hell and nothingness. I can't really tell you what will help you come to terms, because everyone interprets it differently and there are just too many variables to give an exact answer on how to "overcome it." What I can give is that when I was somewhat agnostic, I rationalized with myself that the things in religion, in the Bible, and what was preached is certainly questionable and doesn't add up. That alone helped me not fall into religion and become manipulated by it.

 

[Freedom Believer]

We will never know until we CTB. If there is an afterlife, then we can have a second chance at happiness. If there isn't, we won't be in pain anymore and we won't be able to think about the nothing. It's a win-win in my opinion.

 

[notjustyetagain]

i've been an agnostic atheist my whole life. my parents are atheists so i was never brought up with religion. i opted to go to sunday school to learn about christianity when i was 6 but it seemed ridiculous so i stopped going after 3 sessions. i'm extremely grateful i wasn't indoctrinated with the idea of hell. the fear of infinite and eternal torture seems... a bit much for a child to bear, to put it politely. my parents still had me believing in santa claus until i was 4... i was napping with my mother and must've had a brainwave; looked at her and said "santa isn't real, is he?" -- she laughed and confirmed my suspicions.

as to the afterlife, i believe that oblivion is the result of death -- no more experiences. my greatest fear is living forever, in any afterlife, or coming to exist as another being (it happened once; i don't know that it can't happen again?) in some cycle of reincarnation. i think that after googoltriplexigong years of any afterlife, everyone would be batshit insane. re reincarnation, if that's true, my only hope is that this universe is the only one -- because evidence is pointing to this universe tending towards maximal entropy, making it unable to support life eventually. if ours is the only universe, the reincarnation cycle mercifully ends at some point.

nonexistence/oblivion is ideal. i've had general anaesthesia (granted that's not death) at least 50 times and, other than the pleasure of "fading out", it was simply... nothing. i never got used to believing that whatever procedure i was getting done had yet to be performed, because i experienced no time or anything else. i think my fear of death isn't a fear of oblivion, but the fear that i'll continue existing somehow, the fear of how my death will impact other people, the fear of not having tied up my loose ends, the fear of dying, some warped offshoot of my survival instinct, who knows what else. but fearing oblivion itself seems to make no sense. i don't think i can be at peace with all that. ever.

re the difficulty of being at peace with oblivion, i can understand your being disappointed, but what about it sounds "terrible" to you? if oblivion really is the endgame, it literally can't have any qualities at all, neither good nor bad? is your fear possibly related to dying vs being dead? from what i've read some people really are at peace with death, welcoming of it even. i'd love to know how to reach that state. maybe they've sorted out all the loose threads that i haven't. i don't know. i hope as your time nears you find a way to make it less frightening.
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my $0.02¢ on terminology: "gnostic" derives from the greek gnostos, or "relating to knowledge", making gnosticism/agnosticism a matter of knowledge. "theism" derives from the greek theos, or "belief (of a specified kind) in God, a god, or gods", making theism/atheism a matter of belief. all knowledge is also believed, but not all beliefs are known (e.g. i believe that i won't win the lottery, but i don't know that i won't) -- so knowledge is a subset of belief. by that reckoning there are four combinations:

• gnostic theists: those who know that deities exist, and necessarily hold a belief in them
• agnostic theists: those who don't know that deities exist, but still hold a belief in them
• gnostic atheists: those who know that deities don't exist, and necessarily lack a belief in them
• agnostic atheists: those who don't know that deities don't exist, but still lack a belief in them

according to wiki, "atheism is, in the broadest sense, an absence of belief in the existence of deities". this is sometimes called "weak atheism". "strong atheism" is the positive claim that there are no deities. personally, i don't know that there are no deities, but still lack a belief in them.

also, some equate "spiritual" to love, compassion, empathy, purpose, etc.; i call these things love, compassion, empathy, and purpose. similarly, some equate "god" to reality, everything, the universe, the cosmos, etc.; i call these things reality, everything, the universe, and the cosmos. bootstrapping the words "spiritual" and "god" to concepts which already have words to clearly represent them seems confusing.

 

[nw7]

I become atheist/agnostic about 4 years ago. I hope there is no after life. I hope when we die, we're dead; and that's it.

 

[Emily123]

A religious person may believe that it is sin to do suicide . An atheistm does not have any reason to believe so . it is the only difference that I can see

 

[JoeFailure]

I'm amazed sometimes at the way atheists put themselves in a box, the exact same way that people who are religious do. The reasons sometimes being things like "if there's a God, why would there be all this suffering?" and things like that. Well, at that point the perspective of God is from religions themselves, that God is all powerful and omnipotent.

I think anything is possible.

There could be a God who's just not in control of what happens here, and an afterlife.

There could be a God but no afterlife.

There could be an afterlife but no God.

There could be no afterlife and no God.

There could be reincarnation.

Lately I've been trending towards there being no God but that there is an afterlife, possibly just in the form of reincarnation. And other dimensions/worlds/universes.

I think that on a long enough timeline, like eternity, whatever perfect set of atoms and molecules and whatever it was that formed our consciousnesses, will form once again. I don't know if it's good or bad or leading towards anything, but it's my belief that eternity is just way too long for that to not happen again.

 

[chris8000]

Nothingness, that sounds like a pretty good result to me. No birth means no suffering. "Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering" - Some one wiser than I said once.

I don't believe in God as a kind personality with absolute power, for one thing, they allow all these terrible things to happen in the world so it does not make sense to me. I'm inclined towards believing in an after life and reincarnation, for a number of reasons, I don't have time to go into.

How does suicide fit into the Buddhist belief system?

I did actually study this for some time, there was a famous Western Buddhist monk who lived in Sri Lanka who committed suicide due to illness. He describes it is a minor offence according to the scriptures. However he also mentioned, and this is a major point, several times in the texts Buddhist disciples take their own lives in the presence of the Buddha because of severe chronic illness, and the suggestion is, this is in some cases acceptable.

Buddhism is an atheistic religion, but it still has ethical rules, as pretty much any person does. The problem is when we take rules to an extreme, and say killing is always wrong. Which comes back to a trade off between rules and what action maximises individuals well-being or the Utilitarian perspective? So, I see these ethical rules more as guidelines.

 

[ish]

We are people thanks to our self-awareness.
It sets us apart from other animals on earth
communication ability - spoken language and writing.
These possibilities are nothing but a manifestation
LIVING GOD (living forever) in humanity.
Thanks to these possibilities we think abstractly,
we come up with absurd concepts such as -
"life after death", "afterlife", etc.
Paradoxically, thanks to rational thinking
people consider and in certain situations
they commit suicide.
A peculiarity is also the fact that man
despite having self-awareness, ministerial
speech and writing can consider himself an atheist.
The atheist's attitude is due to his ignorance.
Religion is a matter of man's individual faith
and none since the beginning of human civilization
religion had no monopoly on
TRUTH.
Nowadays it is available both
knowledge of different religions and research
scientific, you can search alone and by yourself
draw conclusions.

 

[Majin K.]

I became atheist, because believing in things which aren't proven is illogical and pretty much all religions (including the monotheistic ones) have long been debunked. The mere thought that there must be some type of after life for us humans simply because we're smarter than other animals is peak human arrogance. As for how I cope with the thought of nonexistence? Impossible. It would mean that time is a meaningless concept and that the length of our lives is irrelevant. Once we're dead which is unavoidable it would be like we were never born in the first place. In other words whether I live or die is irrelevant. But at least by choosing when I die, I can still die with some human dignity and end all of my suffering.

 

[porfin1234]

Not an atheist... which makes it even harder to CTB. I'm too prone to superstition spirituality and even magical thinking and scared of possible punishment if I CTb. Reincarnation... etc. I don't think it's the end.

 

[Roger]

. . . . . . . . believing in things which aren't proven is illogical . . . . . . . .

What's your take on Goodbye threads ?

 

[Tempeste]

The best part of being agnostic is you can believe whatever you want to believe about afterwards. Who says it's all or nothing. Make your own afterlife, and when things end maybe that's what it will be for you

 

[Majin K.]

Tempeste certainly you can believe in things which are highly unlikely, but science has answered so many questions without calculating in some type of all powerful being. There's no evidence to suggest that an all powerful being even created us let alone the universe or that it granted us souls and an afterlife. It's all very wishful thinking. There's also no theory to suggest that the Big Bang could have birthed an all powerful being.

What's your take on Goodbye threads ?

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply here, so I don't know how to answer the question.

 

[Merith]

Non-religious to atheist, and finally agnostic. I fully believe nothing happens after death.