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Comment by socceroos | Hacker News Reader

I love that this is a discussion here. How profitable! There are very few questions that are of greater importance than the one you have alluded to.

I'm a Christian and, oddly, don't suffer from the same existential dread as most admit any more, but I used to be consumed by it.

The simplest way I could say it is this: once you are shown what is behind the curtain and you place your trust in the one who's running the show then dread gives way to overwhelming peace. That's what happened for me and I guarantee that anyone who seeks the same true God will find the same peace.

Easy to dismiss, I know, but I guarantee it's true. Odd, eh?

Part of dealing with your existential dread is accepting the fact that you're right to be afraid, but not for the reasons you first think. This will be a bridge too far for some, but a discerning reading of this could be the catalyst some need: https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/edwards_jonathan/Sermon...

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Thank you for sharing this. I’m a Christian as well and have found the same peace about death. At the same time, I get stressed out easily about work and probably have an existential dread about negative reputation or “wasting my potential” - clearly my work-related identity is an idol (in Christian parlance).

I was watching “Hustle” (Adam Sandler basketball movie) yesterday and strangely enough a line he said resonated with me: “they can’t kill you if you’re already dead.” (The context in the movie was that the youngster protagonist missed his official chance of playing in the NBA by failing the combine, and thus was “dead.” He had nothing to lose when he got a random last-ditch chance to demonstrate his skills in another venue.). As a Christian we believe that our old selves have died and that we are born again in the Spirit, even while we are here on earth. This gives those who believe this the confidence to face any fear or challenge in this lifetime, as we have already died anyway, there is nothing to lose since our new lives are secure in Christ (even after a physical death process).

I'm Christian, and feel likewise - no existential dread. We recently had various deaths and mortal health scares in our family and among friends. I hadn't really confronted death before that but I realised that because I had complete faith in the fate of the departed (or the person who was unwell etc), it was the people around them that I worried about more, but even that was tempered by the fact that I knew they'd be taken care of too.

Well that's obvious, right? Of course people who believe in an afterlife don't fear dying, as they believe they will respawn/go to another place

Imagine playing Minecraft on hardcore... And now imagine dying for real...

It's a bit more complicated than that. Imagine playing a game of Minecraft where the game was constantly being updated to help you get the most out of it, and where you experienced something much deeper as a result of engaging in that process.

The problem with Christianity is that all this stuff about God, Christ's sacrifice, and letting yourself have faith is all very nice, but the ethical side of the religion is, to me, quite deplorable.

Could you please expand on this? Full disclosure, I am a Christian myself and am genuinely interested in which ethical parts of Christianity you find deplorable.

To me, the ethics essentially come down to mirroring Christ in my own life in everything I do; the moral compass is Christ himself in the Christian life. I fail often but that's the goal / struggle. With that, I'd like to know what those outside of the faith find deplorable about the way Christ lived His life?

And I do understand that deplorable ethical decisions have been made by those or the body calling themselves Christians (and sadly, myself too at times). I would say this is a sin / shortcoming of the person or group and not of what Christ has asked that person or group to live like.

James 1:27: "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

Well, some things in the bible are quite deplorable, right? Like slavery, or killing people who love people with the same gender?

Please explain. I'm not on either side but you've left a very strong claim without backing it up. At the very least someone who responds will likely have an entirely different version of what you said than you do

I do not think a God that allows his children the option to damn themselves for all eternity is morally good. That is pretty much my main ethical issue in terms of the basic theology. I think the morally correct action for God would be to override the wishes of humans. I do not think that "free will" is a good excuse to allow people to be damned forever. A parent who allows his child to touch the stove is a bad parent.

I don't think it's necessary to believe in eternal damnation in order to be a Christian. Hans Urs von Balthasar and David Bentley Hart are two preeminent theologians who would agree. That's just from the little I know on this subject.

I mean it’s surely possible to find theologians that don’t but it’s the official doctrine of all real existing sects, and regardless, even if you forget about eternal damnation then is still implies that you aren’t saved unless you put faith in Christ.

My other issue with Christianity is that Jesus comes off as genuinely unhinged sometimes. For example, when he tells the Jews that the only way to be saved is to eat his flesh, and when they say “surely that’s just a metaphor, how do we eat your flesh?” he says “no, I’m being totally serious”. There are a bunch of times in John where the stuff he is saying sounds crazy even to his disciples. Let me ask you, if someone today came and said those things, would you believe them? The only difference between him and a modern person on drugs is the records of his supposed miracles

What should an open-minded nonbeliever do to maximize the chance of seeing what's behind the curtain and find the peace you describe?

You don't need to eat the whole cake at once. It's astonishingly tough to give advice on this sort of thing. A couple of starting points which might work for some people:

1. Dwelling on the utter absurdity of the universe appearing from nowhere without the intervention of a power well beyond our means to understand is a good start.

2. Try to move from the dominant paradigm of scientific analysis (nothing wrong with it, in its place!) which breaks things down into smaller things, to a narrative or holistic view of the world. They're both equally valid, and both can be considered fundamental. There are things happening in the world and to you. Those things are all imbued with meaning. Nothing is meaningless. What is the story of your life, what is your mission? If the events of your life were trying to tell you something, what would that be?

Alternatively, the fact that we don't yet know how the universe came to be doesn't imply that there has to be some great power that created it. Things are happening all the time, of course, but there is no need to see meaning anywhere. Humans have a strong need to seek meaning, and will even go so far as to make it up where it does not exist.

> doesn't imply that there has to be some great power that created it

Ah but it does! There's lots of modern apologetics around this, not in the least the Kalaam argument, which go into it.

If everything that exists has a cause, and a higher power that created the universe exists, something else must have caused it to exist. What caused God?

This is one of the ontological arguments for the existence of God. Any intelligible first cause must have a prior cause. Therefore the first cause is unintelligible. The thing which caused the universe is beyond our understanding.

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