Is the bible just a way to cope with death?
No. This is demonstrably not the case. There are plenty of people like myself who have no issues with death or nonexistence and they find the Bible useful for a number of other things. This is certainly not one of the reasons I believe in any of this stuff.
Is the belief in life after death an important part of Christianity? Yes.
Do people use the Bible to cope with death? Definitely.
For me a fear of nonexistence is completely irrational. If that is true then why do so many people fear this? We are creatures that plan for the future and that can make the idea of no future disorienting to say the least. Doesn’t that mean Christianity is providing me a future to plan for? Yes. But we often make conditional plans for a future that may never happen. I do that a lot, in fact. I think there are many people who do. They think up possible futures and plan for them… even for fictional scenarios based on imagination or things we have read. For example… what would I do if I found myself in the traditional scenery of hell and am told that I have been judged? I ask myself questions like that and think about them. Thus it is easy to occupy that planning aspect of our nature even if you accept that nonexistence is the likely result of death.
yes! Indeed. I have a hard time accepting the idea of the ultimate victory of evil. The idea of personal nonexistence seems quite attractive to me, but for that. Our actions/choices having no consequences to ourselves is what disturbs me about this idea of escaping to nonexistence.
Indeed. And mine are not the usual ones. Perhaps one more that is not in this list, which I mention occasionally is that of identity – deciding who we are and what kind of person we choose to be.