Ian McEwan (author of the novel Atonement, an adaptation of it won the Golden Globe yesterday) in an interview:
it is crucial that people who do not have a sky god and don't have a set of supernatural beliefs assert their belief in moral values and in love and in the transcendence that they might experience in landscape or art or music or sculpture or whatever. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, it makes them give more valence to life itself. The little spark that we do have becomes all the more valuable when you can't be trading off any moments for eternity.
Rejecting afterlife has certainly liberated me in this life.
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Very true, Selva.
That is incidentally the core issue in religiously hot places like India where people devote critical time to supernatural beliefs, idol-worship and attempting to shape their lives based on them.
I feel it is foolish to analyse any afterlife when your this life is not accomplished. It is like ending up at a movie and ruining it thinking about the next one instead.
This is not however a flavour of atheism. That is the related issue to this one. There is more to god when godliness is practised through the heart for better relations with others than not to have genuine relations but go to religious places hoping to get 'favours' from the almighty for selfish purposes.
Yous see that happen everywhere, and in all religions.
Therefore, I choose not to believe in religion (except unfortunately when I have to enter it in admission forms to various academic centres).
True, there is more to science than what appears. You will see. As science progresses everything comes explained -- one day, even solving the mysteries of 'supernatural' and consciousness. And even clearly determine how stupid the concept of afterlife is.
Mind and spirit is the final frontier that science will seek to capture. Just watch!