Not believing in an afterlife is fantastic! When I die my life is complete, and what I did during my life is all that matters. No worries about having to meet some arbitrary moral code or fighting for eternity or being reincarnated, just the void like before I was born.

Now living s And becoming more and more aware of how completely awful people can be, that is depressing.

science has probably proven there is no god / afterlife

Well, for one, you “probably proven” doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless maybe you’ve got a paper waiting on peer review confirmation. In any case, it is exceedingly difficult to definitely prove something isn’t for cases like this. Does every bit of evidence point to ‘no’? Yes. However, it’s still technically not proven to be false/absent.

Anyway, that’s not the actual important part here. One human lifetime is generally a long time. There are lots of meaningful interactions that a person can have in that time. I would argue that, since it’s not an eternity, the pressure is on to do something better with your life. That doesn’t require gods or afterlives. Volunteer, meet up about hobbies, find a social group, etc.

we inherently know this and want there to be something after death, because it feels right, or more meaningful

I disagree. For one, if you get do-overs on life or an eternity to do whatever, isn’t it inherently LESS meaningful since there are no stakes? Secondarily, I personally don’t like the idea of trying to exist for an eternity; that sounds like it always ends in boring monotony… at least so much as something ‘endless’ ‘ends’ anyway (English be silly).

Modern science didn’t have to prove to me that unicorns, elves, and fairies don’t actually exist. Somehow, I figured that out on my own and moved on.

Really? Science disproved God? News to me, could you tell me more?

I think probably more influential is the accessibility to global knowledge, so now it’s really easy to see how shitty everything is, and also find more things to worry about

For many, life feels meaningful when… you can achieve goals you desire, improve things in a meaningful way for others, work at a job where you feel you are using your skills to build something notable, or have meaningful, successful relationships with people.

But, at least in the US… education is ruinously expensive, and is far from a ticket to a meaningful job in many cases, and there is more data than ever showing that, basically, if you are not born wealthy, or absurdly lucky, you’ll end up doing worse than your parents.

The world is warming, previously absurd weather is now basically normal, infrastructure falling apart, scams are everywhere, personal debt levels are generally rising to the point that a significant number of people have to finance their groceries.

Divorce rates are high, huge numbers of people either cannot afford the time or money to put into developing a relationship with a life partner. Birth rates continue to decline.

Oh, and we appear to be falling ass backwards into theocratic fascism.

In my estimation, people are more depressed because their material conditions continue to deteriorate, and they realize they are less likely to achieve their dreams, much less what were considered ‘normal life patterns’ by the previous generations (home ownership, family).

The way I see it, meaning in life comes from agency, and beyond that, your ability to decide what is and is not worth doing, learning, cultivating.

Put more and more people in worse and worse conditions, lessen their actual ability to act, to achieve, and many will despair.

…

Personally, I think that religion basically functions as a crutch for those otherwise unable to mentally process the gravity of mortality, by simply telling the believer that death is not really death, everything continues, and if you are good, you will be immortal and happy.

If you take that away, you are left with the world as it is, your life as it is, and you must grapple with a reality that you are finite, in duration and capacity.

…

Its funny you bring up other ancient traditions.

The ancient Greek gods were said to envy mortals.

They found the limited lifespans of mortals made their every action and thought more meaningful, more consequential, more tragic when thrown away, more beautiful when they accomplished great deeds.

Na, it’s more likely that worker wages have not kept up with productivity or inflation, we are killing the planet because it is cheaper/more profitable than not killing it, and the people who we vote for to lead us to better times are doing fuck all.

A depression is an illness. “Feeling depressed” is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is a bodily malfunction that needs to be treated with appropriate medicine.

If believing in some “higher being” or “the afterlife” helps an individual to deal with the symptoms of a depression that’s great, but not believing such things does not cause a depression.

Yeah surely it’s the afterlife what caused my depression. Not the unemployment, my inability to find a job in the industry I’ve spent years of education, not my finances, not trying to figure out how to afford the dentist, not the state of my personal relationships and friendships no no no. It’s the afterlife

I’m depressed at the wealthy marching the planet off a cliff for profit at the cost of everyone else.

You can’t disprove something like that. You can make convincing arguments, but only to people that don’t really believe in the first place; it’s just arguments if their faith is good.

Seriously, you can’t prove an invisible, undetectable phenomenon doesn’t exist. You can only prove that it doesn’t give any measurable affects. And that’s measurable so you just go right back to arguing to a wall if the faith is there.

But, no, the rest of the premise is flawed too. There are plenty of secular humanists that aren’t depressed, and plenty of people in religions, including christianity (since that’s the bias the question has) are.

Besides, who says the idea of an afterlife is comforting? Or that any given afterlife would be if you accept all of them as possible? The idea is absolutely horrifying to some because you’re stuck with whatever it is forever. Eternity, stuck in some religion’s heaven or hell, and neither is exactly as rosy an outlook as you’d think before looking into what is canonical about the various heavens.

But even reincarnation is horrifying. Doing this shit over and over and over until you get lucky and get the right life to figure out how to escape the cycle? Fuck that noise.

Joining a universal consciousness? Just as bad. Stuck in that state, watching the horrors of the universe play out? Not even if I don’t have to remember being human, tyvm.

Life was absolutely not better when christianity was even more dominant and using whatever sick ideology of the afterlife they cooked up as a threat to obey.

Hell, just the idea that people weren’t just as depressed 100 years ago is bullshit. They just didn’t talk about it. But I had the opportunity to sit with people born in the 19th century, and can tell you that faith in an afterlife did not make them less depressed. It may have, on an individual level, helped them process grief, but that’s a different thing, and I can promise you that nothing tests faith like grief.

If depression is more common now (rather than being more reported and discussed, and I don’t know which it might be, or if it’s a combination), have you looked at the world lately? You don’t have to go looking for missing faith as a reason for depression when the absolute shit storm brewing currently is there.

And the younger folks? The kids and very young adults I know, their anxiety is very much linked to the world trying to be shittier instead of improving. Maybe that won’t happen, but I don’t know anyone under 21 that isn’t dealing with some degree of anxiety post covid. Hell, I don’t know many adults that aren’t.

Keep the afterlife lol.

No man. I am so happy that for what i did now have no consequences after i die. So i live as i see fit.

After I die, I’m dead. who gives a fuck there’s no after life? I certainly won’t I’ll be dead.

I was raised Catholic, but as time went on and I left it, I think one of the misconceptions people who are still deeply religious have is that atheists or non-religious people are continually thinking about NOT having religion as much as religious people think about their religion, but the fact of the matter is, sometimes MONTHS go by where I don’t have a single thought about religion, the afterlife, God… When you grow up in an organized religion you tend to feel the lack of religion is some kind of continual rejection of it, and it’s hard to imagine people for whom it just isn’t a presence in ANY sense. When you realize the presence of religion is neither necessary or sufficient for any part of life, you can start to see how life satisfaction or lack thereof has nothing to do with belief. There are horribly depressed devout worshipers and annoyingly peppy and positive atheists. It’s an entirely different axis.

Short answer: Yes! Partially!

Long answer: Belief is a feature that humans have that can give you confidence both in proven outcomes and in the unknown. It stems from our prefrontal cortex survival capabilities to remember past experiences and simulate future experiences. Aka imagination. We can believe in anything we choose to.

Yes belief is psychologically comforting. Certainly a lot more than worrying about the unknown. It’s even more comforting if the belief is shared by a social group, reinforcing it to each other.

Other aspects of religion make life easier too. Rituals, traditions, stories and social ties.

Those things can help with depression! Depression is a cognitive-affective response to a body that isn’t living the way our bodies were evolved to live. Key factors of that include: Daily socialization, getting the right nutrients, sleeping well, getting enough exercise, getting enough sunlight and having strategies to keep our minds from worrying. Belief can do the last one, as can meditation, or triggering flow states by engaging in activities. Religion can also help with the socializing one.

Hope this helps!