Those deaths and people's reactions just got me thinking, and I want to have sort of a 'peer review' on my thoughts about religion and death. 

I am atheist, and the opinion I am about to share may be lacking in certain areas. But that's the point. I want to improve this opinion, see the issue from all perspectives, and see what other people think about it. This is also not a new opinion. But it is new to me.

I tend to be biased towards atheism and against religion, which tends to make my opinions unfairly harsh against religion. So please, help me be a more fair and unbiased person by giving me feedback on these thoughts:

After the recent tragedy, I noticed (on social media sites) one of the most immediate and prevalent response to the deaths (besides politics) was for people to pray and look to God for comfort and meaning. Most people I saw joined together based on ideas that "they are in a better place now" and "God will take care of them and their families". My reaction was mainly pure disgust and anger at the individual who committed the act. My mind went straight to the idea of just how much was lost/wasted. It is my belief that when you die, there is nothing left of you, and your opportunity at life is completely removed. Therefore the deaths of those young lives was especially maddening for me. For each individual, it is pure chance that the gametes of their parents produced them instead of someone else. Being able to live in this world is a very rare outcome. And to have that rare opportunity taken from someone makes me sick.

The idea of non-existent, meaningless, and permanent death is certainly stressful. And this stressful premise makes turning to religion to take the edge off of it very appealing. However, I feel that turning to a religion that promises eternal life is only dodging the issue of death. It makes people more distant to the idea of death, and makes it easier to bear. But by making the idea of death just a little easier to bear, it makes people just a little bit more comfortable with it. And when billions of people are a little bit more comfortable with death, it makes humanity just a little bit less likely to want to prevent it. This is not to say that more people will be okay with other people dying, it is just to say that overall, death will be just a little bit less harsh and sickening to most people, which will affect their motivations and decisions about preventing it. It will affect what people are willing to give up to prevent death, how motivated people are to pass laws that protect life that has been born into the world, and how much of a priority protection of life is to individuals.

I wonder how many soldiers go into battle with the arguable misunderstanding that they are only risking their mortal life, and that an eternal place in heaven is waiting for them. If they instead saw their own death and the deaths of those that they kill as permanent and wasteful, then maybe they will be less likely to kill and risk their own life. Maybe they would instead use their one and only precious life to contribute to society and make the lives of others to be born more secure.

I wonder how many people think that death is part of God's plan. That humanity's purpose is decided by God and that if death happens, it was likely approved by God. If they understood permanent and meaningless death sans-God, maybe they would be more likely to seek to help those at risk of dying, and understand that everyone's life is a rare opportunity to do something worthwhile and meaningful for others who may be at risk of losing their own.

If, instead of thinking of the countless deaths of too-young people on earth as a higher power's intentions, more people saw those deaths as countless wasted, incredibly rare, and now meaningless opportunities, people in general would be less comfortable with war or accessible weapons that can so easily kill. Maybe people would spend more time funding and researching medicine that saves lives or more time fixing socioeconomic factors that predispose large groups of people to early deaths.

My main point is that, along with the things we already employ to prevent death, maybe we should also spend some time rethinking our ideals about it. Maybe we shouldn't be sugar-coating death postmortem to help ourselves deal with it. Maybe we should be facing the facts and horrors of death head-on so that we can be more motivated to prevent it from happening. If gun control or access to mental health care is the answer to tragedies like this, maybe making people more aware of and motivated to remove something that can so easily deliver such a horrible and meaningless outcome (be that guns or a broken brain with access to one) is what will pass life-saving laws faster.

I argue that making yourself and others feel better about death with fantasies of eternal life may help you, but it does not help anyone else in the long term. Praying is easy, believing is easy, but it may be hindering people from wanting and acting to prevent death. I argue that accepting a disgusting and pointless idea of death will be more productive than believing in a convenient second immortal life, and that falling back to religion negatively affects the preservation of our biologically-gifted miracle of life.

Please share your thoughts.

[Edit #1]

I want to explain a bit further why this is a bigger issue than it comes across to be. This comes from a response I posted below, but I feel that it should be available alongside the rest so as to respond to a major criticism: How religion can have real negative effects in this context.

This equates to 1000 people dying due to religious people seeing death in an ever-so slightly less negative light than non-religious people. 1000 deaths in a developing country usually occurs without anybody really caring, as long as the organization managed to save the 9000 people. But, a failure to save 1000 is a hell of a loss of precious life, and one that could have been prevented if the employees considered death just ever-so slightly more important and tragic than what they might have had to do that day at work instead of doing a little bit more.

[Edit #2]

This is my explanation for why I think religious people are less compelled to deal with death. This is also taken from a comment below. Putting it here should save some time for those interested in following my argument.

Assuming you read the portion after the first [Edit], this is why I argue that religious people can, generally, be very slightly less compelled to prevent death. Please understand that I posit that this lesser compulsion occurs *subconsciously*, and is too small to immediately, consciously be aware of. This means that you won't consciously know that you are acting in this manner. So please, don't think about how you "would never think less of death just because I am religious", and focus on the psychological and statistical argument that I'm offering.

Again, this is based only in knowledge of psychological tendencies and compulsions of the human brain. If you would like to refute it, please don't do so with arguments about how you or other religious people still prevent deaths. That is not the point. The point is that lessened subconscious compulsion can affect how motivated *subconsciously* a person is to deal with something. You may not know that you have lessened motivation, but its effect materializes with many people in the long-term.

The reason for my assumption that biblical Christians are less motivated to deal with death draws mainly from knowledge about psychological tendencies towards certain behaviors and motives based on learned and believed subconscious premises. The brain makes decisions not only on conscious thought, but unconscious thought as well. If it didn't, it would be incredibly inefficient at making decisions. For example, if you encounter a person in ragged and dirty clothes on the street, without any conscious thought, your first reaction is to come to the understanding that the person is likely impoverished and in need of help. This emotional and automated reaction compels you to want to help the person. You can reflect on that stereotyped reaction and see consciously that the ragged clothes likely indicate poverty, and therefore a need for help, and therefore a conscious and logical compulsion to help, but that conscious logical reflection is not necessary for you to be compelled to help. Your brain makes the shortcut from ragged clothes to poverty for you, and automatically compels you to act in the way that it has learned to be fit. This is a good example of how your subconscious makes decisions of who needs help and who doesn't based on stereotype. Another example is historic racially-divided America. A white boy who is raised by a racist white family may learn that people in ragged clothes are impoverished and in need of help. He may also learn, through observation of, and teachings by his parents, that blacks are inferior and do not deserve assistance from white people. In this scenario, when this boy encounters a poor black man on the street, his first emotional reaction is one of disgust and he will not be compelled to help the man even if he needs it. In this case, the subconsciously learned premise that black people are inferior has overcome the subconsciously learned premise that poor people are in need of help. Again, something that he has learned or observed has affected his initial subconscious compulsions.

This analogy can be applied to religious people. If they have learned from childhood a blunted version of death that involves being lifted into the sky to live immortally in a heaven filled with white clouds and angels, that learned subconscious premise can certainly materialize by affecting the person's *subconscious* compulsions concerning the tragedy of death. Then, consider this simple premise that is observed in the human brain: The more stressful and frightening a thing is, the more compelled a person will be to change, fix, or deal with it. Therefore, if death is less frightening, then the compulsion to prevent death is lessened. It is obvious that if someone has less of a compulsion to do something, their actions will tend to be proportional to their level of compulsion. Now, if you have millions of people that are going to die without intervention and in need of help, the one who, subconsciously, is ever-so slightly less compelled to save every single one of them, is going to be ever-so slightly *subconsciously* okay with some of them going off to the cloud-bedded heaven with the angels. This is an uncontrollable reaction that comes about from what the person has learned.