Aspects of religion may be comforting.. But the deal is, you’re expected to buy into the rest of it… By that time, you don’t understand evolution, geology, or scientific principles and procedures. You’ve given over your intellect and energy to a single book of myths.

I’ll take the fact we decay, as does everything else ..over a ‘comforting myth’ any day ~

I would share that my feeling is that my afterlife is the residence I'll take up in my loved ones happy memories, and that my strongly held values and opinions might play a part or at least get a vote in the actions taken by those loved ones going into the future. So, therefore I'll live on as part of their conscience, perhaps being passed on to future generations I'll never even meet. That is the only heaven I need.

Yes some do get comfort from thinking that and that is ok too, as long as they don't try to force their beliefs onto others and you do the same. We can agree to disagree.

That comfort is a big reason why people believe in the afterlife, and it's hard to knock them for it. Nor would I want to. I don't like knowing my passed on loved ones are simply decaying in the ground like the rest of the no longer living organisms on this earth. But it's real, it's true, I don't want to delude myself. My comfort comes from being grateful they got to live, and knowing the joy they got to experience and share.

Some physicists believe that due to causality, we do not exist at one point in our time-line . . . . it all exists and is just there . . . It does not imply life after death, it only implies an existence of the whole time-line from birth to death . . . . some pretty wild-ass shit to consider. I would not consider it impossible, because these are some of the most knowledgeable people in the field of physics, and I am an agnostic, so I don't just poo poo it out of hand, even if I have some doubts.

I think just as you said; that people find comfort in it, and then sometimes use that as a foundation for a belief system. In The Kominsky Method on Netflix, Alan Arkin's character talks to his recently deceased wife regularly, freaking his friends out but providing him with comfort. He knows she's not there, but they talked through problems for 40some years and he sees no reason to stop. My wife is still alive, albeit in hospice and not cognitive; but I could easily see myself doing the same thing (and occasionally do), and why not? I know she isn't/ wouldn't really be there, but it would be a conversation with someone I trusted/trust, whom I know/knew always had my best interests at heart, and I don't think I would turn it into a religous experience, just a comforting one. And I'm ok with that.

I can understand how comforting it is to believe in an afterlife, but I simply do not see any evidence to support such wishful thinking. Personally, I think that after I die, it will be much the same as it was during the 14 billion or so years before I was born. I won't know, and I won't care.

I think we will become part of cosmic consciousness. I don't think this consciousness has a personal nature.

I can see how people feel that way about lived ones waiting for you in heaven. It comforts them. They don't want to acknowledged that we die and that's it. I think that's why so many believe in religion, besides having someone to blame for their troubles.

Unwillingness and denial of accepting finality and would rather believe a warm and fuzzy ending to life, leads to a concept of heaven.

As a freethinker I think the concepts of before and after are illusory mind tools. There is no after. There is the continuum of life and of conscious awareness.

Our sense of self as a separate individual in a body is just imagination. Hoping for eternity in heaven for yourself is a foolish and unworthy endeavor. We are in heaven right now and would see that if only we looked.

The only 'life after death' that occurs, as far as I know from my experiences in the fields of medicine, is the bacteria, worms, etc, that live, thrive and breed from and in your body as it decays away.
Eventually, if you are buried and not cremated all that is left of your corporeal being is bones until they too break down and join the minerals, etc, in the soil or become fossilised.
There is, imho, nothing to fear from or in death, it is just the next stage in natures way of re-cycling.

Utter nonsense is my opinion,...however, it seems evident that some people need this belief in order to get through bereavement and the grief of loss. It is no different from believing in guardian angels, or Saints, or ghosts, or fairies, the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus! In other words, any fantasy at all, just like having a religion and believing that Jesus and god are real and looking out for us. It is another crutch that people invent as a coping mechanism, those who cannot deal with the reality that death is final, and that we all have to face bereavement and loss at some time in our lives. It is comforting to believe that our loved ones are still with us in spirit, it is like a comfort blanket which children need when left to sleep alone in the dark, but which we have dispensed with need for when we reach adulthood. It is harmless in the short term perhaps, only delaying facing the reality of loss, but long term, delusions like these can seriously affect the mental health.

I wonder what time of day these people are checking in...when we're in the bathroom, having sex, etc? The thought of my dead relatives watching me do these things would make me feel like boundaries are being crossed.

My opinion is that it's a lot of bullcrap.

People want answers to questions that sometimes cannot be answered. The more knowledge you have, the more you understand you do not know. Someone who thinks they know everything is usually ignorant, typically a theist who has 'found' the answers. A truly wise man understands how little he truly knows and is humbled by the fact that there are many things we cannot know. In this understanding it is much easier to accept thinks unknown. Think about the unknown, unknown.

It is one of the strengths of religion. It is a major reason why it still exists.

Life after death is such a misnomer, how can anything be alive after it’s died. For those that believe, wouldn’t a more apt description be, “existence after death”?

Does the light bulb have any power once the electrical supply is shut off? Better yet, that light did not go anywhere as it was simply a manifested reaction to applied processes. Light a match and see the fire, then blow out the match. Did the fire go anywhere? No. It was simply a chemical reaction in the first place. One problem is that we dream and we do not understand sleep. We can do anything in dreams so therefore it is easy for mankind to imagine that they have a "soul." This is silly. You do not have anything except for life. Even in the Buybull it says you "became a living soul." I can only assume you can also be a dead soul as well. At this point all of the believers enter in and start lying to you. They just keep making it up.

there is no logical way to justify belief in an afterlife. i too understand why people are desperate to believe in such a thing and may eschew logic for the sake of their peace of mind, but it just doesn't work if you think too hard about it. fortunately for me, in terms of missing loved ones, i dream prodigiously, and have often dreamt of my dead parents and my dead best friend (and even my recently deceased cat, golde). the first time i dreamt of my mother after she died, she appeared to me floating in the air about two stories high, and i looked up and said to her, "but mom, you're dead!" she made a funny face that i would say was unique to her except that sometimes i feel myself also making that face -- it was a face she used when she thought someone had said something ridiculous, and it was her version of an eye-roll. she retorted, "i am NOT dead. i'm a LATE person!"

g

Whatever gets you through! No need to dwell on it. We’ll all find out soon enough.

People have trouble with the permancy of death, and it's just a poor coping mechanism to mitigate grief.

Which cult does your family belong to?

All religions must answer that eternal question,
we live a long life in a with a long childhood it is very difficult for us to imagine non existence, when I was in the fifth grade I remember arguing with my classmates that's death is an Oblivion we remember as much as we remember before we were born.

Saying you don't believe IN life after death means you're an atheist rather than agnostic. Some people say there's little difference between the two words, but this example shows yet again there's a big difference. I'd at least be able to offer the comfort "maybe" it's so, that nobody knows for sure. If an atheist wanted to not further aggrieve those mourning, probably the best bet would be to remain silent.

I like to help people when i can as many have helped me in the past