I’m also going with a big fat “no” for belief in the afterlife. I prefer to trust in the scientific method which recommends that we always opt for the minimum working hypothesis, the simplest explanation for the available evidence. So I comfortably dismiss a bunch of mysterious phenomena; ghosts, dragons, UFOs, the afterlife, and ( sorry to break it to you so brutally Trollheart) Leprechauns.
In fact I have two problems about the notion of an afterlife – one frivolous and one serious.
For the first, I’ve never been convinced by anyone’s logistics about heaven. As some posters have suggested, being with your loved ones for eternity isn't necessarily Paradise; tbh, a week with them at the beach is usually sufficient. So let’s say instead that my Heaven would be “Marlon Brando, Pocahuntas and me” sitting around listening to Neil Young cds. Does that mean they’d have to sit through eternity with me? What if they don't like NY's songs? But if they get to choose a heaven as well, chances are they'll have different plans that don't include me at all. So all of a sudden, it looks like everybody is gonna need a heaven of their own….
And my serious issue with the afterlife is this: on the basis of scant evidence, more as a question of faith, religious leaders have used the idea of an afterlife to blight millions of lives. More specifically, (and also adding to the implausability) they have encouraged the idea that your conduct in this life affects the quality of your afterlife. The tradgedy of this misconception is that it has led some people to sacrifice happiness today in hopes of an eternal reward later. There are, for instance, monks in Tibet trying to log up karma for the next bardo, Western religious orders intent on denying or chastising the flesh, and suicide bombers prepared to die because of the virgins they’ve been promised in the afterlife: thousands of lives over hundreds of years that could've been lived differently if people took a more rational approach to the afterlife. It's immeasurably sad imo.
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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953
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