I think there's a pretty solid analogue here in atheism, though. I'm genuinely baffled by how my fellow atheists keep going.

Under atheism, you are going to die. No matter what you do, no matter what you achieve, one day you will cease to exist. Gone. No afterlife, no reincarnation, no other side. At any moment a swerving car, a random killer, a sudden malfunction of your body, and that's it. Everything you are is erased forever, never to return.

I don't think most people believe that, not really. If you really accepted and grasped that was the case, you would either do nothing but work on immortality methods for the rest of your life or do nothing but scream- imagine if the inevitable death was coming in 20 minutes. You'd be insane to do anything but try to save yourself or cry. And I think that is the case- under atheism, it is irrational to do anything but work on ways to live forever. You're dying, for gods sake! You can get back to enjoying yourself once you've dealt with that .

But they don't. They talk about how "eternal life would be its own hell" and how "death provides meaning to life" and so forth, all things we know wouldn't be worth a damn if the oncoming death was a train rather then mortality. They don't really grasp how unimaginably horrific it is that they're mortal mortal.

And I don't know how. I do try investing money into those who work towards human immortality, but I can't do much, so i have to continuously distract myself from just spending my life in utter terror and hopelessness. Even I can't actually grasp that I am mortal- if I did, I would do nothing but lie here paralyzed with hopeless fear until I ironically died.

There are other such things that both sides can agree on. Whatever you're using to browse this on- laptop, phone, desk computer, doesn't matter- was created by child slaves. Odds are so is whatever you are wearing, and eating. You are knowingly complicit in unimaginable evil by existing in our society. The world is ending- global warming continues at a wild pace. There are 8 men in this world who have a button that, if they pressed it, would bring the human to a firey end. The state could pass whatever oppressive, abusive laws it wants and no-one could meaningfully rebel against it- it has happened before, it is happening now, this could be a dictatorship in ten years and it doesn't seem anyone would care.

The world is full of horrors we know, believe and then ignore because to actually accept them as true would lead us to do nothing but scream forever. I don't begrudge the abrahamic faiths one more.