The Christianity I grew up in claims that it is the answer to man's fear of death.
Since then the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise partook of the same; that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death (that is, the Devil), and deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
(Heb 2:14-15)
Truthfully, I could never find resonance with this doctrine, for it seems to me that Christians have more reason to fear death than any non-theist. Here's why...
For the Christian, no matter how much he tells himself that he can be sure of going to heaven, his assurance must always be tainted by the niggling question...What if I don't measure up? What assurance the Bible gives, it also takes away.
But Christ was faithful as a Son over his own house; whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was grieved with that generation and said, They always err in their heart, and they have not known My ways. So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest." Take heed, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end,
(Heb 3:6-14)
How can anyone be certain that he will not fail to measure up? Is my faith strong enough? Am I holding firm enough?
To me, the idea that Hell exists, and that the vast majority of human beings will spend an eternity being tortured in its flames, if far more terrifying than the view of the rationalist. Here is Epicurus on the subject...
Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.
Consider the fact that I have absolutely no evidence for the existence of an afterlife. None. Christians will claim so-called eye-witness accounts of Jesus' resurrection as evidence, but such "evidence" is laughable. What judge would allow such hearsay? With no opportunity to cross-examine these "witnesses," there is no way to know if they have any credibility whatsoever.
A rationalist will consider the evidence and conclude that Epicurus is most likely correct. Death is nothing to us.
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