Will People Continue Forever to Waste Time Talking About the Afterlife

I'm reminded each Easter about how many people, who could spend their time doing something useful, spend their time talking about the Christian "afterlife." They write books and columns. They stand behind pulpits. They shame others.

There have always been some who argue they are happier in their lives knowing they don't have to die and will happier after they are dead. This tells me they are not really happy now.  

The link was written by a member of the Catholic clergy. He carries on, like endless articles about Christian death do, with hair splitting issues on death. Did the ancient Jews, including the Bible's main character, Jesus, really believe in a "heaven?" Did they believe people were inventoried in another location until the end of times and then got the afterlife award? It is all ridiculous. When we're dead, we're dead. Get over it.

That said, I'll admit the concept of an afterlife is helpful to many Christians. For many it is a way of avoiding reality. Countless times in my life I've listened to a grieving husband, wife or parent tell me with some relief their loved one is enjoying him/herself in heaven. In Christian talk the dead person "..is in a better place." Just last week I listened for perhaps an hour to a friend tell me the detail of what her dead husband, also my friend who had died a few days before, was enjoying at that moment. 

The notion of an afterlife was placed in this nice woman's head by her religion and was helping her through the experience. After the conversation I reflected on another of a young couple in our atheist circle. The wife, about 30, died suddenly. Her husband was as devastated as anyone would be. It never occurred to the husband she was still alive in some "afterlife." Dealing with her death as reality was no better, nor any worse so far as I could tell, than our recent Christian friend. It seems to me going forward in reality is better than in a fantasy. Preachers and priests encourage fantasy.   

Recently I heard an interview with a retired undertaker who writes books about death and dying. He repeated with conviction the ideology of the funeral industry people are helped by viewing their loved  beautifully embalmed in a casket. The industry has claimed for decades viewing the embalmed body allows those grieving to come to a reality of the death not available any other way. (If one were cynical he might note embalming and displaying the body are profitable parts of the funeral industry.) Yet, this "reality" in undermined at the funeral when the preacher reassures mourners the dead person is not really dead but somewhere waiting.

There is an entire subfield of sociology called Death and Dying with journals, books and courses. The topic is not simple. My thinking is religion does a disservice by insisting of fantasy instead of reality.