I recently reconnected with an old friend via Facebook and discovered that he has, in the years since I last saw him, become a born-again Jehovah’s Witness type. We’ve communicated a few times since then and, as expected, he’s made several none-too-subtle overtures to bring me over to the Promised Land. I typically don’t mind it when people do this, as it gives me an opportunity to dust off my well-developed antitheist catechism and see what holes need sprucing up.

Another added benefit of engaging with the religiously minded is that it gives me an opportunity to ponder what drives some people to seek out religion and the comfort it can sometimes bring.

I recently received a note from my friend, imploring me to consider the horrors of “Demon Death” waiting for me someday down the road. Here’s my reply:

One thing I think that defines people who fall into the easy comfort of religion is an indescribable fear of death. My theory is that this fear is generally implanted at a young age by parents who fear death and/or parents who are caught up in some silly notion of an afterlife.

As for me, I never grew up with any notion of a fear of death and was never exposed at a tender age to religious notions of a scary hellfire afterlife. Who knows whether this helped pave the way for me to be a comfortable antitheist in my later life but it certainly didn’t hurt!

You talk about death as if it’s something to be feared. I, however, have no such fear. Never have. As a result, I don’t even have a frame of reference through which I could even begin to relate to the fear you are trying to sway me with.

To me, death is what it is: a final ending to a period of life that started with birth. Nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing in my experience that has ever led me to any other conclusion and there likely never will be.