more on the afterlife. (a small concession to the religious)

Humans create electric current.  It is a scientific and medical fact. And when we die, that current does away.  It is also a scientific fact that energy cannot simply disappear. Nothing can disappear. When you burn things you get soot and smoke; when you vaporize things you get vapor, etc etc etc.  So when we die, some bit of electricity is released.  I don't know where it goes.  Maybe it sticks around as static and zaps people who walk on shag carpet in their socks. ("Grandma, are you fucking with my hair again?")  Maybe we kill off millions of human souls every time we put a Bounce sheet in the dryer.  Maybe the strongest tool at the Ghostbusters' disposal was a can of Static Guard.  Or maybe we just hang around forever, occasionally having big old soul orgies and zapping lightning rods.  Either way, something goes on after we die.  I want to clarify that I do believe that.  I just don't think it has a face and consciousness.

The religious folks might not like this one

It'd be so nice to believe in an afterlife. To believe that I will see my mother some day even if/after this cancer kills her, that I will see my dad someday at all.  But I don't.  I don't believe that there's a Heaven, or a Hell, or anything like that. I think that when an animal dies, any animal be it insect or human, it's just out like a burnt out light bulb.  I have family who walk around funerals saying annoying things like "I'm going to miss him from now until I see him again in the Kingdom" and "it's not goodbye, it's just 'See you later'".  I'm sorry, but we are no more complex or miraculous than any other species. We are, as a species, relatively weak and vulnerable. Our mastery of tools is really the only thing we have that they don't, and until you can give IQ tests to fish there's no way to know we're all that much smarter than animals either.  SO the idea that a God made us, and gave us souls, and that those souls are so super-special that they can never die, is just arrogance. If biology is enough to explain cockroaches, it's enough to explain us.  We're organic life-forms capable of dying, not never-ending invisible spirits who will live on forever with our friends and family depending arbitrarily on our behavior for a mere 80 or so years in the beginning. 
I will miss my mother when she dies.  I miss my dad now. And when I die, my kids will miss me. But it's not "See you later".  It's "goodbye".  And even though I truly believe that, I hope I'm wrong.  I also hope wishing on shooting stars will work, too. But I don't think either of those are likely or all that plausible.  But it would be really nice if they were.

Better sorry than safe

There's a chance that there's a god, I suppose, although the more I think about it the more I suspect that the only reason a supernatural creator even exists as a possibility is because you hear it nonstop from all directions. I mean, if we weren't constantly brainwashed to believe it, would it occur to us to assume there's some invisible anthropomorphic being pulling the strings?  Anyway, I guess it's possible that there's a god.  And I guess it's possible that he gives a shit about what happens in his ant farm. And I guess it's possible that he has put down some random arbitrary rules of conduct to make sure we stay in line, and that he only lets people who follow the arbitrary rules into happyland later. I also guess it's technically possible that he would design a horrifically terrible place full of pain for people who don't follow the random and arbitrary rules.  I suppose that each of these things could happen.  And I guess that's the reasoning behind the "Better safe than sorry" argument for worship (which only makes sense if there's only one religion, but you never hear of someone who worships ALL gods just to be safe).
But even though a very distinct possibility exists that the Christians have it right and that I will eventually regret living my life outside of the cone of protection afforded by choosing a religion and hoping it's the right one, I cannot help but fall back to playing the odds.  There's a slight chance I'll go to Hell and wish I'd done things differently.  But what if I lived my whole life in self-denial? What if I refused to do things I wanted to do, and refused to love people I wanted to love (as in the case of gays who remain celibate because of their churches), and followed all of the rules both explicit and implied, and then it turned out to be nothing? What if, in my last moments of life, right on the cusp of death, it became clear that all we have is our one life, and I had wasted so many opportunities? What if life is just a series of small pleasures and happy moments, and I had walked away from some of them in hopes of a reward that would never come?
There might be an afterlife, but there is a life.  I've known people who don't allow themselves to fully experience one in the hopes of being allowed to experience the other.  But we're guaranteed to have one, and only vaguely suspicious that the other one exists. (Sure there are folks who claim to know, but the whole point of faith is believing in what you can't really know.)  So when people (family) say "Better safe than sorry", my first instinct is to throw back the whole "What if the Jews are right, or the Buddhists, or the Shintos?" argument, but the real reason I'd rather be sorry than safe is because if there is a god he gave me this life, and I don't want to squander that gift on the off chance that he weighted it down with a ton of random and arbitrary rules.
Also, even if St Peter is the bouncer turning people away from the club, what's to say he's forcing people to go into another club instead?

I wonder

I have a deeply philosophical question. I plan not to debate any of this at all, because it has just occurred to me and I'm just interested in hearing other viewpoints and options.  Here it is:
If it turns out that there is no afterlife, that at the moment of death everything just goes dark and shuts off, which is the worse consequence?  Is it, A) that we will never again see loved ones?  Or is it, B) that there is no universal justice and that horrible crimes committed in life and never caught will just never be caught, such as a serial killer getting away with it?
Discuss.