Well, my approach is (would be) different. Why would you be losing the dying person when he/she simply just moving into a different place where they eventually gonna meet again? Isn't that some kind of selfishness? For the dying the afterlife is (supposedly) definitely a better place. What is a few decades compared to eternity? In some cultures there is actually a religious CELEBRATION when the person dies, and that makse way more sense to me... And when the dying person is old and/or sick, let just him/her go. That's why I don't get the Christian standpoint on euthanasia, but we are getting seriously offtopic here...
Whether it's chicken bones or a deity, putting faith in superstition is essentially a means to avoid doubt, a way to not address actual circumstances where true courage may be born. Doubt provides objectivity and is the basis for enquiry led knowledge. But in the face of doubt, the faithful are supposed to be down on their knees with eyes shut. Apparently to keep moving forward, but in faith, which fundamentally is to doubt doubt itself. Yet still there is Creationism, Birtherism and other fantasies. Even when a Universe's short form scientific birth certificate and a President's Hawaiian one would be normally considered worthy enough in their own right.
The birther argument is silly. Glenn Beck of ALL the people in the world even says stop with the birther thing. It makes the GOP, especially conservatives, look retarded. The birther thing is so retarded that clinically it is actually a reaction formation. An American black man is President. This flies in face of what some believe to be a "real" American. It is a form of trauma, and it is fascinating to watch. First they try to emasculate him, which goes to the heart of a whole other topic, then they try to say he is not a "real" American. It is an amazing thing to watch play out here in the microcosm that is ET. I would love to get a detailed demographic analysis of some of these folks.
You have faith in atheism...that's a fact. It is a necessary fact to maintain a disbelief in God for the atheist. They must ridicule the concept of God in order to maintain their belief in non God. Sorry, but you are just the flip side of the same coin...
You have your approach, others have theirs, apparently you think your approach is superior. I suspect that if you had a dog you loved, and the dog died, you would miss the company of your dog. What to say of the love for a child for a parent and vice versa? Perhaps you have never deeply loved... Again, the grieving is not for the person who is gone...but the grieving is about the person who has lost a loved one and misses them.
good question. If we hold the bible teachings aside.... I am confident time is an illusion. I suspect this whole idea of space and universe is very limited. So I really have no idea how to take what I observe in a very limited manner and cast big judgments about something I have zero knowlege of.