a question for atheists

Greetings,
Any atheists on here;
I am interested to know what does an atheist tell to their child when a loved one dies?  Do they offer nothing of comfort to the child?
Thanks and salaam.

You do not need to be an atheist to realize that for them they first of all see it as the difference between telling a lie about a fantasy and the simple truth -- as much as a child can absorb.

Also, there's an implication that death is bad -- when maybe it is just the way people react to death that is bad.

In my experience both religious people and those without religion are saddened by death -- or not.

Many atheists celebrate Christmas or other holidays, simply for the fun.

Comforting a child can be done in many ways -- depending on the child and the maturity of the child.

For instance, "we can tell all of our favorite stories of Grand Ma" or "Let's look at the pictures of Uncle Fred and remember how much fun we had."

I would be for more worried a child would find out about the Islamic vision of Hell fire and Damnation.

THAT IS SCARY to those who come to believe in it.

@Caringheart
I will tell you what I told my 10y old son when my father passed away:

He's gone, we will never meet him again. Try to memorize the stories you know and experienced about him, they are and will be part your history and self-understanding. We all die every day, things we considered as important yesterday may not be important today anymore. Intense memories you had yesterday may be much less intense or even forgotten today. Forgetting is the brother of death. Every piece of information we lose is a little death, or call it transformation rather. You know the [German] proverb: "every goodbye/farewell is a little death". The biological death is just the end of this transformation.

Although he has passed away, in a certain sense he is still alive and he sits right in front of you [my son]. When I look in the mirror, when I watch myself doing certain things I realize that I am more my own father than I want[ed] it to be. His life was not in vain, it brought me to life and eventually you as well. He is literally part of us.

We are all mortal, but we have two weapons of defense:
The first and by far the most powerful one is having children. They will live on as we die and they are the closest copy of ourselves we can get.
The second one are the people around us. The more we exchange [with them] the more traces we leave [of ourselves]. This is one of the many reason why friends are important.

I didn't stop there but it may give you the general picture....

May be I should give you my view on death. I do paragliding (in the US you call this parasailing sometimes).
If you see a tree in the middle of your landing field you have several options:
A) You concentrate on the tree. In this case you are likely to hit it [there are many studies about the famous self-fulfilling prophecies]
B) You ignore it. The likelihood to hit it is again very high but for different reasons.
C) You realize its presence, you integrate it in your flight strategy but you do not get overwhelmed by it.

I try to stick to C).


Now, Caringheart, may I ask you two counter-questions:

The first one is about resurrection: If I get resurrected, which Airmano will be resurrected: The toddler, the little boy I was at the age of ten the youngster later or may be the Alzheimer debilitated person I may be one day. This is not a rhetorical question: I have changed direction so many times in my life that I dare to say that a normal 10 year old boy is closer to what I was at the age of ten than I am now to my 10 y old ancient ego. (I hope this sentence is understandable).
Please don't chicken out in your reply by telling me stories of "the soul being the essence of a being": again, I see myself as a different person than the one I was when I was a toddler.

My second question is even more vicious [and I address this one explicitly to our Muslim friends as well]: I don't know whether you have kids or not. Let's assume you have. You end up in heaven but one or more of your kids end up in hell. Heaven is supposed to be a place of eternal happiness.
Honestly, could you be happy knowing that some of your children get tortured every second till eternity ?
A frightening thought, either way.



Airmano

Edited by airmano - 07 May 2016 at 2:21pm

"...sentiments here could not be inspired by a God-less world. The great sentiment among humans, love, I think can be inspired by God only."

There is nothing wrong with this belief, and it is your belief, but it is also without evidence.

This is in fact the essence of religion in contrast to science:  At it's core, Religion is belief without evidence.