Is non-existence terrifying to you?
If so how will you explain to your children that they will have to die?
I am not sure kids fear death itself or even think about it until they attend a funeral.
This is one of those things that happen to others you know, reason why they take such chances in life doing things that others have died from.
All faiths and those with no faith have different ideas on death. Surprised to find the non religious that believe in Ghosts, evil spirits, and at the same time believe in the human soul, or that their pets have a soul.
Christians believe after death we go to heaven or hell, then there is the contradictory belief in the second coming and the graves will open and the dead rise. ---So will the souls in both heaven and hell be sent back to their earthly body's.? Will the dead that arise be soul less ????
Purgatory is another mystery, kind of reminds me of the Heathen practice of sending prayers to GOD on the smoke of a candle.
I explained to my kids that sleep, dreamless sleep is the little brother of death. One falls asleep time goes on, much like for those in a coma or who faint or get a good knock on the head. In death one may or may not awaken to another reality. A sort of where were you and your soul before the mother became Pregnant.
No one ever becomes non existent, our DNA lives and continues to keep us alive in the body's of generations into the future. So far we have not found a memory gene but we do pass on traits of skill and abilities that are connected to family members far in the past.
The more questions the stranger it gets--Past life regressions, people that come out of a coma speaking a foreign language and on and on.
Good question you ask as it leads to science , anthropology, the very nature of our being and the age old question of Where did we come from and why am I here.??????