Well, sort of. Religion teaches that you go to Hell if you kill yourself. This is because they need you because of money and the sheer number of believers they have.
Now I give the ministerial answer that to take you own life you might not have been in your right mind when you did this. God would make an exception for anyone not in their right mind.
Didn't work with me. Maybe I have too much depression, but the older I get, the less I fear death, maybe because life has beaten me down enough, or maybe I am just tired of fighting so much against the bullshit of other people and the world, who knows? But one thing I have become sure of, is that I fear suffering, for some prolonged period of my life, leading to my death, way more than death itself. I can accept death, and really don't fear it, just the suffering part before it, esp. if the terminal illness is dementia. I think most of us feel that way, that we fear that more than death. And if I get it, I really hope I have the guts to check out early in it.
Did they also create improperly used apostrophes to torture people like me?
What made all the other animals afraid of dying?
You can't read between the lines? The author of the meme doesn't even know how to use apostrophes, so to think they can word what they're trying to say perfectly is a high bar.
What it should say is something like, "Religions created hell to use humans' fear of death against them, and created heaven as a sanctuary you can only attain through them as a method of control." This would align perfectly with your comment of all other animals being afraid of death, but no other animals going to church and repenting to a sky daddy.
No other animal is afraid of death as far as we know. And all the scientific evidence is, ( Sorry. I know you don't really like science Skado, but I have to go with it. ) that most animals, apart from perhaps a few of the great apes and one or two other highly intelligent beings, like elephants, have no understanding or awareness of the self, being self aware, is rare in nature. And it is usually therefore taken as a given, that most animals can therefore have no understanding of their own mortality. Since if you are not conscious of the self, then there can be no awareness of the self ending. Which means that it would be pointless for evolution, to give animals an instinctive fear of something they have no perception of.
The further circumstantial proof of which is. That most animals often show deep instinctive fear of the agencies of death. Such as, other animals showing aggression, fire, pain, injury, snakes, and especially anything strange or new, (neophobia) and that these instincts are often quite separate using different parts of the brain, so each genuinely existing apart and not coming from a central fear. It would be a useless duplication therefore, for evolution to have endowed animals with a fear of death, when instincts to avoid it indirectly, already existed, and useless to give those instincts, if a fear of mortality would suffice. And evolution being a ruthless economist rarely does pointless duplication.
It is possible, that evolution gave those animals, such as the great apes and humans, who could understand morality, a fear of it. Though doubtful, because it would be another expensive duplication, and the time scale over which the great apes/humans have evolved, is very short for fine extras even if useful. It is however quite possible that fears such as neophobia, could become redirected in animals which became aware of personal mortality, and it is also VERY possible that the neophobia may have been exaggerated, and enhanced culturally in animals that developed a story telling culture. As in. What happens after we die ? Answer. Don't know. Result. Fear.
@ChestRockfield Sorry I have to disagree with you in this case but I have to make a point about skado's assumptions. See above.
@Fernapple Oh, I assumed he and I both generically used "fear of death" to mean what you more accurately stated as "deep instinctive fear of the agencies of death". Though this conversation does bring a funny image to mind of a squirrel that's had an extended life of overwhelming success, cowering in his little home, teeth chattering, rummaging through his medicine cabinet looking for his Xanax, all the while wondering how many days he has left until father time comes to his nest.
I didn't even think about how that generic form of "fear of death" doesn't even make any sense in the context of that meme. Good point.
AI art generators are crazy. I put that in the prompt and got the following images.
@ChestRockfield Love the photos.
Skado may of course counter this by say that, it is irrelevant what the fear is called or what part of the psyche it comes from. If it is religion or its lies, which help you face it. But that is not true, because of course, it is just some other part of the religion/culture which created the fear, enlarges it and promotes it, so that it sows the fear, in order that it can pose as the protector. Just as it sows guilt, the idea of sin, in order to pose as the source of forgiveness.
The final proof of which is that there are several isolated hunter gatherer cultures, which have no knowledge of the fear.