Haha, ok, seriously: any answer I give you that you don't like and I haven't contemplated enough?
It's not a deep question at all, it's super superficial: the afterlife is a ruse to keep the gullible beholden to various power structures. It's a man-made construct that requires at a minimum something extra-dimensional for which there isn't a shred of evidence. How people live if they believe or if they do not believe is entirely up to them, and if they would live in a different way if they didn't believe in an afterlife means they've bought into the lies. I'd much rather people make their decisions eyes wide open informed by an ethical framework that does not rely on fairytales or outright lies.
And yes, pretty much everybody in my immediate circle except for one believes that we live only once and that one is a catholic priest of whom that would be expected. But I can't look in his head so who knows what he really believes...
It sounds like you're not up for a discussion whatsoever. And I respect that. I just dislike when people dismiss thousands of years of history because they themselves have no inherit experience with something.
Hacker News is sometimes crazy like that. You stumble into ideas/people who present to you concepts that perhaps are too crazy to take it all at once.
It's not a deep question at all, it's super superficial: the afterlife is a ruse to keep the gullible beholden to various power structures. It's a man-made construct that requires at a minimum something extra-dimensional for which there isn't a shred of evidence. How people live if they believe or if they do not believe is entirely up to them, and if they would live in a different way if they didn't believe in an afterlife means they've bought into the lies. I'd much rather people make their decisions eyes wide open informed by an ethical framework that does not rely on fairytales or outright lies.
And yes, pretty much everybody in my immediate circle except for one believes that we live only once and that one is a catholic priest of whom that would be expected. But I can't look in his head so who knows what he really believes...