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I'm hoping that by publishing a webpage with these
thoughts, I might help a few people who might be
having the same anxieties. (I've read essays about the
personal sharing that can occur on the web as the
key to the next step in our cultural evolution; I'm not sure
I'd go that far, but it
is the most accessible universally-available publishing medium ever.)
I'm also creating this page as a resource for my
future self, a place to come back to when I
again feel my anxieties rise. (If I started to think
in these anxious terms when I was 25, what's
going to be like when I'm in my 40s? My 70s?) I've targeted this page at skeptics for a reason. If you have faith, real faith, in a solid religious doctrine, you should be able to find your solace in your conception of the afterlife. I don't mean to dismiss this as an easy task: our animal nature leaves us with instinctive fear that even the most spiritually trusting may find difficult to overcome. (One thing I find sad is that I'm afraid to bring up my fears of death with some of the people I love the most, because I don't accept their answer of trusting in God.) Also, for the believer, having a comforting philosophy might be a reverse form of Pascal's Wager, a comfort in times of doubt.
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