Question about people who are no longer religious after the death of a loved one.

[Anonymous]

I'm not trying to sound insensitive, but I don't really understand this. Presumably if you were religious to begin with you knew that all people died eventually. So is this reasoning usually just people who never reconciled the idea of death within their religion? I'm also not talking about people who say "there is no god" in the heat of their grief, but people who 20 yrs down the road still don't believe in god because of a specific person's death.

[Anonymous]

Not sure it was just one death. But my dad went from considering becoming a minister in his 20s, to working with an incurable disease throughout his career, to being essentially an atheist when he died a few years ago.

Could have been all the suffering and death he was around.

Or maybe it was due to being a scientist.

Maybe I'll ask him when we meet again someday.

[Anonymous]

My husband had a terrible illness and I was all alone. All the "Christians" in my life used that time to talk to me about their religion when I needed that time to sleep or take a shower or do something productive like eat a meal. I did not need to be woken up after being up all night for some sort of bible study. Visiting my husband was really tough unless you were the attention seeking type. The hardest time for me was once we were discharged from the hospital. It was way less glamorous to bring us meals or help us during the recovery. It was really awful to see such hypocrisy. To date I've never met a good person who also identified loudly as religious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To date I've never met a good person who also identified loudly as religious.

They do exist. I've met some while doing various charity work.

-atheist

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband had a terrible illness and I was all alone. All the "Christians" in my life used that time to talk to me about their religion when I needed that time to sleep or take a shower or do something productive like eat a meal. I did not need to be woken up after being up all night for some sort of bible study. Visiting my husband was really tough unless you were the attention seeking type. The hardest time for me was once we were discharged from the hospital. It was way less glamorous to bring us meals or help us during the recovery. It was really awful to see such hypocrisy. To date I've never met a good person who also identified loudly as religious.

I am very sorry. I hope your husband is better.

[Anonymous]

Long term illness and death often makes people more spiritual but less religious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To date I've never met a good person who also identified loudly as religious.

They do exist. I've met some while doing various charity work.

-atheist

Not pp, but LOUDLY as religious? There are good religious people, obviously. But it seems like the loudest religious people are often them most crappy.

But to answer OP's question, I think for a lot of people, it makes them wonder how on earth a loving, compassionate god could allow people to suffer so horribly with a terminal illness. Or take away the parent of a child. Or allow a young child to get cancer. Or all number of things involving a lot of pain and a short life.

Or for some people, the seeds of doubt where there and had already sprouted before the death of a loved one. It just helped speed up the process of no belief.

[Anonymous]

A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

+1 We were devout Christians growing up and then one day I came home from school and found my father dead. It was an unexpected death, but I found no comfort in God after that. I never felt his "presence". For years I waited and looked for signs that there was a God after my father's death and I never felt one bit of difference. Add to that that my mother spiraled into alcoholism after his passing and I came to the conclusion that there was no God. Nothing up to this point has ever contradicted this assumption and this was over 16 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

Not OP but wasn't that obvious before? Everyone knows bad things happen to good people. If someone is religious they have to somehow make sense of that. Why should their feelings change just because it hits home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

Not OP but wasn't that obvious before? Everyone knows bad things happen to good people. If someone is religious they have to somehow make sense of that. Why should their feelings change just because it hits home?

Funny, I've been wondering the same about my Republican friends for many years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

Not OP but wasn't that obvious before? Everyone knows bad things happen to good people. If someone is religious they have to somehow make sense of that. Why should their feelings change just because it hits home?

I had a similar experience to the PP's friend, except it was my cousin who died, not my spouse. I was already walking toward doubt/disbelief in God but his death put me over the edge. It's not that I was unaware that bad things happen to good people...it was the fact that so many people were praying for this person and we were so sure that the miracle was just around the corner, and then it wasn't. It just all suddenly made sense -- God didn't intervene because God isn't real. Sometimes it's hard to really see that until you're in the situation yourself.

That said, I've known people who are religious and experienced tragedy who have their faith in God deepen. I'm sure they're baffled by why someone could turn away from faith in God during a tough time. Whereas I have a hard time understanding how someone could have MORE faith in God after watching a beloved family member die. We're all different and we all experience life differently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

Not OP but wasn't that obvious before? Everyone knows bad things happen to good people. If someone is religious they have to somehow make sense of that. Why should their feelings change just because it hits home?

Isn't that the reason we have a term like "hits home?" Death was somewhat theoretical, then someone they loved died, and the difference between what they thought and what is real became clear. It's fine to acknowledge that bad things happen to good people, but when those bad things deeply affect you directly it can be difficult to hold on to the notion of a benevolent god.

[Anonymous]

My father was a deeply religious person, and died in terrible pain from cancer, blind, unable to speak or communicate with the loved ones around him, and I believe begging God to release him from pain because he was using all of his strength to hold up his arms in supplication. He was in his early 60's. I have had a very hard time believing in God since then. I makes me extremely angry to hear from others (though I say nothing, of course) about how God has "healed" them or performed some other miracle on their behalf. If there was a real, benevolent, or just God, he wouldn't pick and choose. Nothing good or positive came out of my father's death for himself, my mother or siblings, or his grandchildren. Life would have been 1000x better if he was still here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend told me that when her husband's died, it was like beimg awakened from a dream. Reality hits you in the face. It stripped away the religious belief that she was raised in.

She said that God did not prevent her husband from a horrific death. God does not stop bad things from happening to believers or non-believers. Instead, she realized that God and religions are myths made up by people to cope with life.

Not OP but wasn't that obvious before? Everyone knows bad things happen to good people. If someone is religious they have to somehow make sense of that. Why should their feelings change just because it hits home?

I had a similar experience to the PP's friend, except it was my cousin who died, not my spouse. I was already walking toward doubt/disbelief in God but his death put me over the edge. It's not that I was unaware that bad things happen to good people...it was the fact that so many people were praying for this person and we were so sure that the miracle was just around the corner, and then it wasn't. It just all suddenly made sense -- God didn't intervene because God isn't real. Sometimes it's hard to really see that until you're in the situation yourself.

That said, I've known people who are religious and experienced tragedy who have their faith in God deepen. I'm sure they're baffled by why someone could turn away from faith in God during a tough time. Whereas I have a hard time understanding how someone could have MORE faith in God after watching a beloved family member die. We're all different and we all experience life differently.

I agree with the above -- people are different. I don't understand how people can develop a deeper connection with God after something like this, but apparently they can. People find comfort in strikingly different ways and logic may or may not enter into it.

Meanwhile, I do think our society pressures people to believe in God during times of suffering and loss -- Assuring them that they will find comfort that way. Some people simply don't, so I think that practice should be stopped. Can you imagine the opposite -- if after senseless suffering and death, people were pressured to believe that they would find comfort in accepting that there is no benevolent supreme being who continues to care for them and their departed loved one?