Who is God?

Nonu...I'm not scared of being dead just the process of dying. I'm like to go gently and quietly in my sleep when I'm very old although as a fully paid up member of the 'God hates me' club I don't hold out much hope of that

I like your beliefs, vampire!

BTW Blue Moon tonight - second full moon of the month...

So may I be as bold as to presume none of you guys are afraid of death ?

My beliefs cover all eventualities ....I'm very fickle

If there is a heaven then theoretically I stand a good chance of getting in and have an after life. If there isn't then my ashes might merge with the earth and my spirit with the earth spirits and if they don't exist I still get to merge with the earth and help to make it more fertile.

Or I might just hang around as a ghost......but that's a whole different topic

I would think it more probable that agnostics, or those who haven't really thought about religion much, would be more likely to suddenly turn to a belief of some kind on their deathbed. I've never even thought about the possibility of a committed atheist doing it - although some may, of course.

Nonu I was responding to your query. The prospect of death was not particularly pleasing on the two occasions in my life when it seemed imminent, but it didn't make me want to turn to a god or gods or start praying. Not every atheist turns out to be a closet religieuse on her deathbed, but some probably do.

I haven't felt the need to start believing when going through troubled times, parents dying etc.

I take comfort from the vastness of everything and that everyone who has ever lived has died or will die.

My father told me that when his mother was dying she said he was not to worry because she was going to join his father. Dad explained that his mother didn't believe in an after life; she just meant that she was going to another state, of being not alive, into oblivion or whatever.

That's good enough for me.

ER , yea Absentgrana !?

Didn't have a problem in 1997 when faced with a similar situation. I wasn't ready for death but didn't need a "storm conversion". The anaesthetist was a middle-aged woman – to my chagrin.

When I was told that dying was the most likely thing and, inadvertently given the last rites (my mama filled in the hospital form), I didn't feel I was ready to die (I was only 20). However, the anaesthetist who came to check on my condition (dire, including lungs full of pleurisy) was such fun and a fellow admirer of John Donne, that I said to him "You may be the last person I shall ever see – but that's okay, I reckon." I was ill but not delerious and he wasquite dishy.

I would also reach out to my family - it would never occur to me to suddenly become a believer. I think I will just cease to exist like a battery that has stopped charging. Nor do I think that anything will be left of my thoughts or memories. My mortal remains, in the form of ashes, will return to the soil and I will live on for a time in the memories of my family and friends, and in my poems.
I thought it was rather patronising to be told once 'There were no atheists in the trenches' - I am quite sure there were.

As I said just wondering , I do think I have enriched the lives of those close to me . I"m curious about everything and I personally find it very very interesting to hear other"s points of view

Nonu, I expect I'd reach out to people I love and who love me. What matters is not where I'm going (I believe that would be nowhere) but where I've been and the richness of my experience in this life as well as - I hope - any way I've been able to enrich the lives of others.

I can only speak from experience of the death from cancer of my mother, an atheist. She said to us all that she didn't want to go, but she was content to leave us with our happy families and felt that she had had a good life. At no point did she speak of any fear or any need of a god.
As I have said before on here, my MiL a Christian, said "Dewsbury, Dewsbury, Shoeburyness. Poor Old St Swithun". Make of that what you will; it certainly had us puzzled.

Just wondering , what do people who do not believe in God or anything , do when they are in dire straights or maybe coming to the end of their life , call out to , or don"t they ? Just wondering , you understand

Authenticity and provability aren't the same thing. When I was doing research it always infuriated me that someone would tell me a story which had the ring of truth but because there was no "objective" support, it had to be treated differently from other kinds of evidence. Of course the Bible is a mishmash of different kinds of stories. I'm sure what seemed to our ancestors to be a factual account of some phenomenon is very difficult/ impossible for us, brought up on scientific method, to accept. But although science and religion are both trying to discover the meaning of life, they aren't approaching the question from the same point and through different processes. Quite right, Greatnan it's argument lively debate that keeps us progressing.

You sound more like a pantheist, VQ. When I was a teenager and reading Wordsworth at school, I was very much attracted to his kind of nature mysticism as expressed in the Tintern Abbey Ode.

And I have felt
A presence .....
...........................................................
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Your belief would scare me, VQ. I am not sure whether it is more scary to think that there are some other forms of life 'out there' or that we are alone in the universe. I was watching a science programme where they talked about eventually reaching the edge of the universe and I thought - but what is beyond the edge? Unfortunately, we have finite minds and cannot comprehend eternity. I suppose a belief in a loving god (not yours!) would be comforting, but which god? There are so many to choose from, and I suspect most people just go along with whichever god their parents chose.
How do the people of one faith know that all the countless millions who have a different faith are wrong?
Yes, you are hedging your bets, but if it makes you feel better, why not?

I think I would like to say that I have faith in and I believe in lots of things. I just don't believe in God (or gods or spirits) or any religion.

I'm not an atheist. I believe in a supreme being. He's just not particularly nice all the time and often gets it wrong.

However, having said that I also believe in the old spirits especially those in forests and wild places and the little people (fairies if you like) and leave offerings in wells etc (a few coppers into the water or a ribbon tied to a tree..not much).

Superstitious or hedging my bets....you choose

I am sure Lily is far too sensible to take any offence - she enjoys a good debate.

Whatever you call it, 'Lilygran', unless you believe the literal truth of everything written in the Bible, the stories in it go back too far for their authenticity to be attested. The stories in the New Testament may have begun as anecdotes and in the course of the centuries it took for them to be recorded in writing, they achieved the status of holy writ.
I hope we can agree to differ as I have no wish to quarrel with anyone.

But, Lily, it would not matter to me what anybody called it, I just don't believe in any supernatural being. The written history of the Christian church is fragmentary and it is likely that much of it was not written contemporaneously, and there have been problems in translation. I don't care what anybody else chooses to believe, and it may be that parts of the OT and the NT are genuine accounts of actual events, but some are, to me, obviously myths, or simple explanations of natural phenomena which the people at the time did not understand.
For example, the crossing of the Red Sea could refer back to some time when there was, in fact, some type of earthquake which did create a tsunami effect giving the appearance that the sea had parted.
Other bits are clearly allegorical - Lot's wife did not turn into a pillar of salt, did she? Are there still Christians who do believe everything in the OT should be taken literally? If so, why are they not following all the rules about slavery, sex, marriage, diet, etc.?

When I was studying research methods some years ago we were told that in order to test the validity of something using scientific/rational methods, it had to be falsifiable.

Faith is not falsifiable. It is not based on scientific evidence and so cannot be disproved.

Just saying

The 'anecdote' as feetlebaum has it. Deny the authenticity of the information by giving it a dismissive name.