I don't claim to be normal in this respect, but I didn't stop fearing death until I became an atheist.

I have no idea whether this is common or not.

My fear of death isn't a fear. It's a selfish want to exist as long as I want to.  It's not a fear of the unknown as I have experienced 'nothing' before. In fact, many night I'll experience nothing at all. Simply an 8 hour passage of time.

I've always had this selfish want. You know, to exist. It's never been a fear to die since I've always associated life with existance and death with non-existance.

It's funny, though. I went to church as a child once and only remember going just the once. For whatever reason I was singing in the choir, but it wasn't a religious song. Something about a kangaroo.

HCG - Sorry to burst your righteous bubble V, but I came up with my four examples of "Why" from people I know in real life, i.e. empirical evidence, something theists can't seem to grasp. And regarding your comment on the Jung et al "insights", thank you for once again proving my point: theists love to trot out successful people who share their delusion in an attempt to validate the delusion via association.For me , it really doesnt matter if Carl Jung or someone famous enough believes/ed in God or not. What matters is I do. So dont state that we love to dish out names of intelligent ones. This is only done, when you guys generally club all the theists into an idiot group.   So this only confirms that intelligent or moron , rational or irrational doesnt have anything to do with God belief. All categories of people have many who believe in God. Secondly fine you looked at certain people and gave reasons why people believe in God. But the conclusions that you derive may be simplistic as to the reasons.  Where I am coming from is that for some reason unknown to all of us, a huge mass of humanity believes in God, experiences it , rejoices with it, celebrates life and enjoys the grace/peace/contentment it provides. But to club the reasons into categories will not give any 10-12 definitive categories. The sheer inconsistency of thought , the multitude  of reasons for God belief is proof in itself of a larger force at work ie proof for you , not for us , we believe and are very happy at it, experience grace many times during the same week also. Latincanuck - I find many of you trashing or questioning the intelligence and insight of our ancestors. This is ridiculous. Just because mankind has achieved huge tech progress doesnt mean that the earlier generations didnt have insight . Some of the world's greatest philosophers were from 18th century Europe, many believed in God , this at a point when Science hadnt even seen the heights that it sees now. However these people were extremely intelligent.  You go back in time and look at eastern traditions, we had tremendously great philosphers in 8th century , 12th century , 3rd century India, go back further, you go to the Greeks before current era. Humanistic Jones - It is not my arguement for why I believe.  I am indicating that one doesnt need a reason to believe. You made a mistake when you startd to look for evidence of your beliefs.  God is not a theory of physics/chemistry that can be proved by an experiment or by any other means.  A person who starts to disbelieve because proof aint there is an egotist and a person lacking insight. Infact  complete simpletons is what all atheists can be categorised as   Science the way it has developed has broken the universe into bits and pieces that can be studied  theorised , experimented and formulae, proofs etc come out.   Rationalist dont look at an over all picture . This is where the true philosopher comes in. So everything has to be proved. You are on the wrong road if you start looking for proofs the conventional way. Look at a larger picture.  There are lots of questions unanswered . Further these are fairly simple questions. 1. What is the purpose of life ? 2. Why are you an animate matter , but there is lots of inanimate matter around ? 3. Why shouldnt you be a dog instead of a human ?4. Where does the universe start and end ?5. How come an embryo starts at a tiny cellular level and in nine months come out as a 7 pound baby  (all you have is conventional explanations , from what you see, because you believe only what you see? How do you know there are no forces that you cant see or measure ? 6. How do you see , what is consciousness, infact what is life in you , can you define what is inside you that is your life ? 7. Who decides when you die and how you die ? 8. Are we the only ones in this universe to have the intelligence that we do ?  Answer - Science gives us what we can see, measure etc. It doesnt give us what we cannot see or measure.  The problems with atheists is that you have a belief that what you cant see or measure doesnt exist.  So it is just a belief like us that there are forces which we cant see or measure , but  exist.You may mention God of gaps here, I will counter  that Science is a human make believe of filling up minor gaps, but has left behind huge valleys (not small gaps) where you will just fall deep inside.Lets first crack very basic question about say what is life inside you and me and then go onto breaking up the universe and finding the 'ultimate matter' if it is there.As Carl Jung says in response to whether he believes God existed, he said he doesnt believe it , he is completely convinced about it.

HJ - So what you are saying is that there is no reason to believe in god and that god has never touched the universe in a way that anyone would ever be able to see, know, or observe indirectly through inference.  In other words God is in fact nothing. You have distorted what I say. I am not saying there is no reason to believe in God as an atheist would like to put it.  You can ask many theists this question that why they believe. Many will answer that have not thought of reasons or they havent rationalized in some manner and then they believed. Thus the God belief is not having a thought process behind it leading to the belief.   The belief is present without rationalization.  So to identify and categorize reasons for the belief is futile.  The second part of your statement reflects the simpleton thinking.  An assumption that what cannot be seen or measuerd , doesnt exist. Well it certainly may not exist like we exist, but then it is irrational to hold it doesnt existYou have bacteria in your stomach. It cant see or feel you. It is 200% sure  it is the only being around with other bacteria like it. Is it justified in holding this assertion that it alone exists. How do you know that you are not akin to a bacteria in a giant God stomach ? It is perfectly rational to hold that there are beings or forces that you and me cannot see the way we see. Taking this to other end , what you and me see through the dualistic subject/object divide that humans have created for themselves itself is an illusion.  When you shut off your senses and are fully aware of your Self within you , you realize that there is no space and time. These were in your mind only. You are the universe and the universe is you . This can be experienced by you if you try hard enough.  You will see the all pervading universal Self everywhere.  A higher level of truth of reality that pervades. So you see truth itself has various levels. What you see in your dream vividly was true in your sleep, when you wake up , it is false. So truth itself has not absoluteness about it. It is true in a particular frame only . When the franme changes, what was true becomes false. A child is born with absolutely non dualistic vision. It doesnt have the perceptual categories of space and time within its mind when it first pries its eyes open. Infact the perfect being it is. What it sees is a different level of truth . However that truth is distorted as it grows.  Coming to the answers given to questions. It reflects thinking without any profundity at all. It is very convenient to accept certain explanations because the further thinking process of the Why and How can just be stopped then and there.  This comforts you and is thus convenient for you not to think beyond that point.  Human/Dog question :So ok you have humans as parents , so you are human. But who are you really ? Your name is Jones fine, but who is actually the you in you. When you walk on the road, you observe various people, you know you have embodied a particular body that is your figure/face /features etc , why couldnt you have embodied another person or an animal. Or are you completely convinced that the body that you have is actually the you. If you are you as in your body , how can you see yourself separately as a body. Here the subject and object seem to be same, but how can that be . We are the subject and whatever we see is the object, which is separate from us. Thus when you see yourself, are you seing another person or body. So this leads to the conclusion that you are not really you as your body, but someone/thing embodying your body. Consciousness questionYou are matter and are conscious,  can you build in the lab matter that is conscious. No. Scientists are completely befuddled by human consciousness and all we have are unproven theories / or beliefs. Not a single rational explanation.Consciousness cannot be explained by materialism, however all that we see or measure is in background of that cosnciousness. If you arent conscious, you cant see or measure. So entire Science is based on an aspect of our life that is yet to be categorized as matter.  if Science is true, it is thus true that there are things which arent matter, since the basis of all human observation is the undefinable consciousness.Death questionAccidental death or death due to crime is unnecessary. Take basic natural death. You have control over lot of things in life, in fact you say you can decide the purpose of your life. Fine. But can you predict the time and cause of your natural death. No. Forget death, you cant even predict when you will get up in the morning. No machine can be made which can predict when you will wake up. So many basic things are not under your control at all.  But there is causation for death , and for waking up also. Causation means intelligence and decision making. Who is the causal agent and who has the intelligence to decide when you shall wake up or when you shall die naturally.  If you say there are no causal agents and that  it is nature without intelligence, it results into complete chaos. The regularity of life , the orderliness of nature would not have been and there would have been a complete chaos if there is no causal agent which is controlling. However rationalists shall bring up that everything happens by nature on its own and has no intelligence behind it. This sounds totally bizarre in light of the extraordinary orderliness of nature, the phenomenal complexity of nature , its beings etc.The probability of all this orderliness and complexity is unbelievably high and impossible if we are to assume lack of an intelligence and beyond all logic and reason , unless one brings in an intelligence controling all this.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand what science is (no capital needed). Anybody who claims that science knows everything doesn’t understand either. We definitely do not know everything yet and I can agree that there may be things we don’t know about yet, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t think rationally about claims with no evidence. Based on humanity’s track I believe that if it is possible to understand or measure something, we will eventually. In a nutshell: science is the study of the reality around us. Observe, think, build a theory that fits the observations, test your theory with new observations (possibly based on experimental data) and reject or modify your theory to fit with all of the observations. It is totally based on reality and not “human make believe”, that would be religion.

In response to Venkatrajan. By the way nice responses everybody. I’m going to answer the questions first, because they are fun. Sorry if they are not profound enough for you.

1. We give our own life purpose. I intend to keep learning and trying to improve myself and lead by example to help others to lead better lives. Does it make someone feel better for having a crap life if they believe that God is doing it to them on purpose?

2. I was inanimate matter and I will be again. If I was inanimate now I would not be typing this.

3. Silly question and HJ did well. Is it different if God decided I was to be human? I don’t think it would make any difference.

4. Time or space. Don’t know but there are some good theories based on real evidence. If the universe is so amazing, it is silly to suggest that an even more amazing being (God) existed all along.

5. We grow as all living things grow. As standard theory works really well there is no need to think that there is an outside influence.

6. I think you have bad grammar in this question. You can see the evolution of more complex consciousness by studying animal behaviour.

7. Weird question. Does it make you feel better to think that God purposefully decides when you will die?

8. Don’t know the answer to this question, but statistically I doubt it. What has it got to do with religion?

I don’t know where to start with the amazingly flawed logic of your next post V. So you say that it is irrational to believe in something just because we have no evidence? Look up Russell’s Teapot or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. According to that logic we should believe in everything!

Causation does not mean intelligence. If you put a ball on a slope it rolls downhill. Nuff said, I gotta go to dinner.

 Assuming you're asking why people believe in either gods or their prescripted religion, I'd speculate that it's mostly a product of social conditioning within their family and/or community.

Remember, people don't tend to condition their kids with logic or fact.  They tempt them with reward and punishment.   If you're really really good, Santa Claus will bring you toys.  

When you're little, Church might only make sense from the same perspective. If I'm good and sit through this service without causing trouble, I get to raid the hall afterward for cookies or donuts or something.   

All these things make sense to a little kid, because their views of the world have been mostly shaped by their parents at this point.  They figure there's something to this behavior reward mechanism, and their parents also tell them it's also part of life.  If you're really good, you'll cheat death and live with your dead relatives.  If you're not, you could go to hell and live with Hitler.

 So far your family's  advise has landed you toys and cookies, why doubt the other one?    If the church is lucky, this person never asks more questions.  They see behind the santa claus and easter bunny curtains, but assume there still must be something behind the god curtain and continue their lives without giving it much thought.