All evidence is that there is nothing after death. No evidence otherwise exists. Live your life well. It's the only one you get!

But you have your own belief, and I respect that.

I have eyes and other senses, some of them extended by technology.

Some of us, possibly most of us, believe that we know things with no evidence.

And by golly he's gonna use 'em no matter how blunt and useless they are.

Inevitably the manipulation involves money and power.

Same old same old.

that most Christians managed to mangle.

reduced to their spiritual essence.

She'll definitely be a virgin, for Allah shall not abide a slutty 6 year-old.

Not exactly mainstream. Considered by many to be heretical or even non-Muslim.

Not one believer can say with any confidence at all what happens to us after we die.

in their concept of a life after death.

Now, since I cannot experience their thinking, I don't know if they are truly confident or, like some, have convinced themselves in some way, but they claim confidence.

On the other hand, death is a real thing. No confidence is required to see that death is the end of an individual's existence. I once happened on a Chumash burial site that had been exposed by a swollen creek following a rainstorm. A human skull, partly embedded in the bank of that creek, was newly exposed.

I contemplated that skull for about half an hour, trying to imagine how that person had lived, however long ago that might have been. Based on my knowledge of the Chumash culture and my knowledge of the area where that person had been buried, I could come up with a plausible image of that person's life.

However, no amount of imagination could convince me that that Chumash person still existed as anything at all. There was his or her skull, partly exposed by a flood, perhaps a few thousand years after burial. The skull was there, but the person it belonged to was no more. We have evidence of what happens after death, but no evidence that individuals continue in any way once they die.

For me, that doesn't represent a problem that I worry about. Here I am, after all. Living is the reward for being alive. I need nothing more than that to live as well as I can.

The focus should be on the here and now, and what we can do to make this a better place for those who come after us. That's the only direct evidence we have of life after death: the life that will inhabit the planet after our death.

as a rule. We hear religious leaders and even some politicians talk about "The Second Coming of Christ" as an excuse for not worrying about the future health of our planet or what legacy we leave for our great-great-great-great grandchildren.

It's unfortunate that people's confidence in a continuation of the existence of the individual beyond death leads to neglect of both the living and those who are to come. The followers of our dominant religions ignore all that, because they think they will live on, even after death.

What a bad idea that is for the future! What a limited approach to existence!