Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God by Greta Christina

Author:Greta Christina [Christina, Greta]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Dirty Heathen Publishing
Published: 2014-12-09T23:00:00+00:00

Grief Beyond Belief: How Atheists Are Dealing With Death

How do you deal with death — your own, or that of people you love — when you don’t believe in God or an afterlife?

Especially when our culture so commonly handles grief with religion — in ways that are so deeply ingrained, people often aren’t aware of it?

An online faith-free grief support group, Grief Beyond Belief, is grappling with that very question. Grief Beyond Belief was launched by my friend Rebecca Hensler after the death of her three-month-old son. Shortly after Jude’s death, she discovered Compassionate Friends, an extensive online network created for all parents grieving the deaths of their children. But even though Compassionate Friends is not a religious organization, she says, “I often felt alienated by assurances from other members that my son was in heaven or by offers to pray for me, comforts that were kindly meant but that I do not believe and cannot accept.” And she knew there were others who felt the same way.

So about a year later, she started an online support group, Grief Beyond Belief. The group was created for atheists, agnostics, humanists, and anyone without belief in a higher power or an afterlife, to share memories, photos, thoughts, feelings or questions, and to give others support, perspective, empathy, or simply a non-judgmental ear. And it flourished — far beyond her expectations. News about it spread like wildfire, through the atheist community and outside of it; membership grew rapidly; and the group is going strong, and continuing to grow.

So why do so many atheists need and want a separate godless sub-culture — for grief support, or anything else?

Why do atheists need this?

Salt in the Wound

For some grieving non-believers, the comforts offered by religious believers are neutral, and can even be positive. These atheists don’t agree that their dead loved ones are still alive and that they’ll see them again someday: but they can accept the intent behind the sentiments, and can feel connected with and supported by believers even though they don’t share the beliefs.

But for many non-believers, these comforts are actively upsetting. They are the antithesis of comforting. They rub Salt in the Wound.

For many grieving non-believers, the “comforts” of religion and religious views of death present a terrible choice: Either pretend to agree with ideas they reject and in many cases actively oppose — or open up about their non-belief, and start a potentially divisive argument at a time when they most need connection and comfort. As Grief Beyond Belief member William Farlin Cain said, “I was still very much in the atheist closet at the time [my mom] passed away, and I was surrounded by believers saying all the things believers say, and I had to say them too just to keep the peace. It was hard.”

Religious ideas about death can also make atheists feel alienated — hyper-aware of their marginalized status, and of the ways that atheists in our culture are invisible at best. As I myself have told believers

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