Is there life after death?

Besides its existential meaning, I feel it’s an excellent question and timely one too, as we’re smack on Halloween night, All Saint day and a bunch of celebration of death and the thereafter. Recently, I watched a documentary about folks who are visited by dead people they once knew. 

While I’m highly skeptical of these revelations, they perked up my interest and made me wonder once more about what’s waiting for us once we get to “the other side”. When confronted with that question, I think: “Why should there be anything?” and calm myself by saying that there’s no good reason for it. This promise of after-life was cleverly packaged by organized religions to make them more attractive, like furniture retailers offer “free delivery” or tire shops offer “free installation”. 

At least, with furniture, it’s been proven, time and time again, that a truck eventually shows up to your residence with a table or a bed! Sure, in the middle-ages, it was a bonus offered to all these serfs that had to build cathedrals and castles without pay so they’d keep going waiting to cash-in when they’d fall from the scaffolding or die of exhaustion. 

I also don’t buy the separation between mind (or soul) and body, so it makes it hard for me to believe that as my body is destroyed, my mind has the ability to float around for a while and then go on its merry way. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die and would love to have the option of life after death, but I have found out that there’s no free lunch and that if an offer is too good to be true, it probably isn’t. 

What’s amazing to me though, is that so-called religious people are as spooked by death as we all are. They should instead be delighted to go on an all-expense paid vacation forever without having to worry about taxes, inflation or a second death! There’s there a huge contradiction between what they feel and what they say the believe; no one is a natural candidate for dying. 

As for me, I’m in no rush to die either, and when that moment comes, my chances for after-life are in every way as good as the most religious person on this planet. Isn’t that a healthy sign of healthy and positive self-image?