How can you separate death from the process of dying? In order to achieve death, you have to die. And it all happens while you're still alive. It makes no sense to argue that death is irrelevant in human context because it obviously isn't, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it and wouldn't fear it.
And another thing I may have worded poorly is the emotional aspect of it. I'm healthy and overall well, so I'm unlikely to die any time soon, however I still acknowledge the fact that if I do, I will leave a lot behind and my subjective experience will stop. For example, I want to further explore the natural world and learn more about it (which I won't be able to do once I'm dead), I don't want to leave my lady and so on. Yes, it won't matter to me when I'm dead because I won't be able to think about those things, but they matter to me now, and it is important.
Unless I'm really missing something about the thing you guys are talking about, I don't see how you can dismiss that part of death. They are not separate.
I believe in conservation of energy, but not conservation of my own specific consciousness. all the little atoms in my body when I die will just be released into the environment for other living things to feed upon. ever since studying natural science, I became truly atheist and stopped worrying about afterlife.
the reality we can experience is already so wonderful and complex, so why do we even need heaven?
This is what I've also come to believe. What happens after death is unknown and nobody really knows, so maybe it's time to stop worrying about that and focus on what is NOW, what we can experience and try to get the most out of it?
I understand why people before us felt the need to invent heaven and all that. Life wasn't easy and they wanted some gratification, among other things. But in the context of modern civilization, it really is redundant. We know so much about the world that we know that we don't SO MUCH more, and it's incredibly exciting to learn about reality; but even for those who are not interested in such things, life nowadays is so much more than it was at the time of conception of ideas like afterlife.