Why Aren’t We Afraid to Go to Sleep?

Some people, of course, are afraid of going to sleep, and for good reason: sufferers from sleep terrors, nightmares, sleep walking, apnea, and other maladies of sleep. Then there is the aversion to bedtime of small and not so small children. Maybe some of this is fear of sleep; more is probably because being awake is more fun. Eventually, it is outgrown. In any event, I am not addressing these groups. I also exclude from the “We” people who never remember their dreams.

My question is why those of us who are beyond childhood, not subject to sleep maladies, and remember some of our dreams are so blasé about going to sleep, indeed often positively relishing the prospect.

When a Catholic Archbishop Declared Birth Control to be Worse than Abortion

"Heinous is the sin committed against the creative act of God, who through the marriage contract invites man and woman to co-operate with him in the propagation of the human family.To take life after its inception is a horrible crime; but to prevent human life that the Creator is about to bring into being is satanic. In the first instance, the body is killed, while the soul lives on; in the latter, not only a body, but an immortal soul is denied existence in time and in eternity."  Archbishop Hayes of New York Christmas Pastoral, 1921. (Hayes was later made a cardinal.)

This is a departure from the usual "It's unnatural!" condemnation of birth control, and implies that on any occasion in which the contracting marriage partners elect not to have sex when they would have conceived, they have forever denied existence to a soul and have committed a satanic sin, worse than abortion. Inasmuch as those born out of wedlock also have souls, any random pair that could conceive but declines to have sex would be chargeable by the soul precluded from existence with the same satanic wrong.

Doctrinal Adam & Eve and Genetic Adam & Eve

Many of those who believe that the Book of Genesis is divinely inspired also believe in evolution, and, in particular, in the descent of humankind from earlier species going all the way back to the unicellular. “God behind evolution” and “guided evolution” are popular ways of expressing their view. Most of these believers take the Adam and Eve story to be a myth, albeit a myth bearing important spiritual truth. Some, however, take Adam and Eve to be actual, particular persons, even though they had biological parents. How well does this sit with the science of human pre-history?