Curious on others thoughts about this, why do so many people run to a faith in their remaining years or even on ones death bed?
because they're scared. we assume that our consciousness dies with our body and they don't know how to deal with that. it's not true, but we don't know any better.
@maturin1919 awareness doesnt die with our body.
@maturin1919 awareness is all one big morass. we're only individuals by the illusion created in these minds. absent those we go back to the ether.
@maturin1919 I don't see it that way. I believe as awareness our only sensation is change - sensed as oscillation.
@maturin1919 yep, there's not. you're right. yet I stand by my thoughts.
@maturin1919 don't we all?
@maturin1919 as far as we understand right now. I am all for blackboxing certain items pending further scientific discovery - including theoretical physics. Faraday visualized magnetic fields and their interactivity without being able to do the math. Einstein could visualize the physics but needed help with the math. I'm not willing to concede this as our final form yet given the fact that the universe operates in billion year increments and we only tally 70 years in this form. And if I'm wrong I miss nothing. I'll be just as angry as I was prior to being born.
Fear?
An atheist friend of mine went to a funeral in Kentucky for his aunt’s wife. They didn’t describe her that way in the obit because they were worried about picketers.
But also, the dying woman started taking visits from a pastor who convinced her to “renounce her lesbianism” at the end of her life. Her wife was her sole caregiver, for YEARS, and in the end she got demoted from wife to “nurse” because the pastor convinced a dying woman that she was going to hell for being gay.
That is the most fucked up thing I've read this week. Holy shit (and I mean that literally).
@Kafirah yeah it was bad. Religion sucks.
Why do people of faith run to the hospital when near death? Why not just pray? Or go to church? Drink some holy water?
Why doesn't 911 have a priest answer?
Why doesn't the ambulance take you to the nearest church, synagogue, mosque, temple, sept, or sweat lodge?
it's like the old song: "everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die".
I believe it's all due to fear of death. I work as an organist in a church, oddly enough, and see many people in older middle age begin to attend church more regularly. Perhaps they never gave faith a second though while they were young, but maybe in older age returned to it in order to "get right with God", and to have a place for a funeral when they die. It takes courage to be agnostic or atheist!
maybe they have nothing to do on sundays. probably don't golf anymore.
For the same reason so many believers lie about nonbelievers' deathbed conversions.
Like others, I question your premise. I have looked for studies and found none. I think calling it a religious trope is about right.
Dementia is more prevalent now and I can see how that might affect memory and reasoning leading a non-theist who was formerly religious to present as a "deathbed conversion". I cannot imagine anything other than brain disease causing me to revert to my religious upbringing.
I agree. But I'm suspicious that some may pretend they are converting just to please family members at their bedside.
Do you have statistics to back this up? Because spreading FALSE stories about deathbed conversions has been a Christian trope for centuries at least. I suspect it's far fewer than Christian apologists would have us believe, people generally get wiser as they get older, not more superstitious.
It’s not too difficult to imagine. Being mortal can be scary sometimes.
I go even further: how come even believers get scared when, for instance, a possibility of a crash while driving? As we only have Death and taxes assured, I think I understand, although, if we take rationally, it doesn't make any sense.
Well they are afraid of death. I believe the big hook all religions is the offer of immortality. Make them feel better and able to accept the fact that they're going to die.
Only person I knew that “changed “ was my Dad. I have no idea if he believed growing up. He never said. I was raised atheist although my Mom had a love of history including religions, so I learned a lot about most of them. Near the end of his life, he suddenly said he believed in god. Still didn’t go to a church, so I think it was a personal god of some sort. He did say “My god” a lot. It didn’t stop him from taking his own life and no religious sorts showed up to say they knew him after.
I’m not sure this is true....do you have any stats?
Exactly, it's widely believed and promoted, but that doesn't mean it's any more real that God.