(December 22, 2014 at 12:37 pm)abaris Wrote:(December 22, 2014 at 12:24 pm)robvalue Wrote: I think it's much more that people like to think, or even need to think, there is an afterlife.
The afterlife is the whole purpose of religion, any religion. That's what's so sad about it, since people are sacrificing their here and now on the altar of some reward waiting for them after death.
It's the purpose of Christianity and Islam anyway. But if you want to know why Christianity spread so quickly, that's it: immortality. Many religions didn't have any belief in an afterlife: Judaism and most of the pagan religions didn't or at least not in anyway that made the afterlife the point of the religion. Help in this world, not the next, was the original point of religion as far as I can tell.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.