Arman asked 2 days ago � 18 Answers
Why do people believe there is an afterlife?
Because they're sensitive enough to recognize that the essence of life is beyond the physical, so the death of the physical body probably wouldn't signify the end of it. Maybe they've even had mystical/paranormal experiences that indicate consciousness can't possibly be just an abstraction of neural activity. Of course everybody's different. Some are indoctrinated with religion from birth, maybe some just want to believe, etc.

I could ask the opposite question, why do people believe death is the end of life? After all, life is all we've ever known, and it's impossible to imagine not existing. And when we think of ourselves, what we are fundamentally, we don't really think of body parts. We say we 'have' a body. So the view that 'we' die when our bodies die is theoretical and unnecessary. It's also cynical, or at least it's taken in by the physicalist ideology of our times that assumes (incorrectly) that everything reduces to matter..