>Not hardly. Keep in mind that most people believe in some form of afterlife, so they don't actually think they're going to die at all.
I don't think people believe that "realistically" to that afterlife, including religious people. Else they would not be sad at funerals.
>If the approach to death is the ultimate test of a civilization's sophistication (which, frankly, is just a silly thing to say, even if it does sound Deeply Wise
Actually it's a common theme in philosophy and religion, far for a "silly thing to say".
One might hope for some Kurzweil like magic cure, but for several millennia of civilisation we had to make do without it (and will have to for quite a while). And people that couldn't accept that cycle made society hell. How a civilisation approaches death says the most about their way of life as well (e.g clinging to money, sex and stuff like it's the be all end all instead of creating things).
>then surely it would be the infantile civilization that deals with death by making up a bunch of fairy tales to convince itself that death doesn't really happen after all.
Nothing infantile about it. Those 'fairytales' are the basis of civilisation. They were forms of reasoning about the universe and existence, but their utility was not on their validity in the physics sense, but on the lessons they gave about current life. Put another way, they really were morals, philosophy and law, not physics and cosmology, even if they seemed like the latter. The important part of the Bible was not "god created this or that in x days", but the keeping-a-civilisation-together part (the creationist loonies in the Bible Belt mostly keep the first part of course).
So, if you think the 10 commandments are silly, you should have witnessed the society without them or something analogous. It's easy to pass judgement upon such things with some milleniums of hindsight and the benefit of a modern upbringing.
>I don't think people believe that "realistically" to that afterlife, including religious people. Else they would not be sad at funerals.
No, most probably don't believe believe in the afterlife, but they escape the reality of the situation by pretending, and if you point out that they are pretending, they will actually become more convinced that they truly do believe in an afterlife.
Arguably, though, they would still cry at funerals even if they did really believe, just as you might cry when a friend or family member leaves and you have no idea when you will see them again.
>Actually it's a common theme in philosophy and religion, far for a "silly thing to say".
Religion and philosophy are full of very silly things to say. My point is that there is no basis for the claim that the approach to death is the "ultimate test". "Ultimate" in what sense?
>And people that couldn't accept that cycle made society hell.
Evidence, please.
>Nothing infantile about it.
Roughly everything you said after this sentence is inaccurate, but more importantly it is all completely irrelevant. Whatever guidance religions may provide about morality will not change the fact that they also provide the primary approach to handling death for most of their adherents. And that approach is to hide behind fanciful lies and ridiculous stories built to replace the terrifying realization that your life is finite and can end at any moment, really and forever, with the feel-good belief that when you die, you will get to go and see everyone who died before you and spend eternity with blah blah blah.
You know how misguided parents sometimes tell their kids, when a dog has to be euthanized, that they are taking him to a "new home" where he will "play in the yard every day with all of the other dogs"? That's exactly how most religious people approach death, except in their case it is self deception rather than lying to a kid.
And if that's how they want to cope with it, that's fine. But don't try to tell me that it's "sophisticated".
I don't think people believe that "realistically" to that afterlife, including religious people. Else they would not be sad at funerals.
>If the approach to death is the ultimate test of a civilization's sophistication (which, frankly, is just a silly thing to say, even if it does sound Deeply Wise
Actually it's a common theme in philosophy and religion, far for a "silly thing to say".
One might hope for some Kurzweil like magic cure, but for several millennia of civilisation we had to make do without it (and will have to for quite a while). And people that couldn't accept that cycle made society hell. How a civilisation approaches death says the most about their way of life as well (e.g clinging to money, sex and stuff like it's the be all end all instead of creating things).
>then surely it would be the infantile civilization that deals with death by making up a bunch of fairy tales to convince itself that death doesn't really happen after all.
Nothing infantile about it. Those 'fairytales' are the basis of civilisation. They were forms of reasoning about the universe and existence, but their utility was not on their validity in the physics sense, but on the lessons they gave about current life. Put another way, they really were morals, philosophy and law, not physics and cosmology, even if they seemed like the latter. The important part of the Bible was not "god created this or that in x days", but the keeping-a-civilisation-together part (the creationist loonies in the Bible Belt mostly keep the first part of course).
So, if you think the 10 commandments are silly, you should have witnessed the society without them or something analogous. It's easy to pass judgement upon such things with some milleniums of hindsight and the benefit of a modern upbringing.