Big Giant Question

This question is asked often, pondered on by all kinds of different races, creeds, and religions. Although the question is unanswerable it is always interesting to look at how each culture views it.

What is death? Why does man fear it?

The first question will never truly be answered, untill a person dies it is impossible to tell what will really happen to us after we die.

However the second part of this question is a practical question. Most people fear death, Why? Whether its the uncertainty of what lies ahead or the pain of leaving the world behind, at some almost every human being has been terrified to die.

For me I have always wondered what happens after death, or while a person is dying. When I was very little I was terrified of the dark, I thought that I could not see anything (there was difference in what i saw from when my eyes were closed to when they were open) that I was dead. I slept with as many lights on as my parents would allow. For me this is the stem of my curiousity about death. Everyone has an experience that has led them to question death, and what it means as well as what happens.

I have always wondered what death is, who hasn't though? It is a common asked questioned, commonly debated, and wondered about. However, I have never really considered why people fear death. It has only been very recently that I have myself come to grips with the fact that death can't be all that bad. Since my realizing that I am not afraid, I have been curious as to what causes people to be afraid of death.

This question always brings up great discussion. If you sat down to lunch with all your school or work buddies and brought up death, you would find many different types of views on it. Each person with a different religion or no religion at all will have a different reaction to this question:
Catholics and most Christian Religions would say that there is a heaven, with pearly white (or golden) gates that St. Peter guards and decides who gets into heaven and who does not. However each person in this religion might have a different view on what exactly Heaven is. Golden paved cities, eternal happiness and riches (and not necessarily riches of the material kind). Christians also generally believe in a hell (and the occasional Catholic believes in Purgatory). Hell also has many different views, the circles of Dante's inferno is one of them.
Jews in general believe that there might be a heaven, but the Torah specifically says that after death you will rejoin your ancestors (Abraham, Isaac, Moses, etc...) and the "wicked are cut off," They believe in both a Heaven and a Hell, and don't believe that one has to be Jewish to enjoy Heaven. Jewish belief houses several different views of heaven one which includes, golden tables feasts and sex, while the other focuses on purity of emotions and self. However, the Jewish view of Hell closely resembles that of Catholic Purgatory.
Buddhists believe in reincarnation or transmigration, where the soul of a person undergoes continuous birth and rebirth until the soul finds Nirvana which is liberation from this cycle of rebirth. The actual details of Nirvana are mostly mysterious, whether it is Heaven or nonexistence.
And many people who claim themselves to be Atheist or Agnostic simply believe that when the human body dies, and the organs and nerves that allow a human to function and be an aware being, the conscious unconscious "self" becomes non-existent, much like what a human is before it is conceived.

And these views are only a handful of religious beliefs of what happens after death. Not to mention all the beliefs that are not affiliated with any religion.

This question about death is very nebulas, And although it can never be answered it can be studied in literature and culture.