Do we all believe in the afterlife because we can't comprehend the idea that after death you don't exist?
by 
eric_the_barbaric7
ANSWERS: 3
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As far as I have heard, only atheists don't believe in an afterlife of some sort, whether it be re-incarnation or heaven and hell. Those are only about 4% of the population.
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A key part of believing in the afterlife is believing that the "self" is some sort of persistent entity which has a reality independent of the body, ecosystem, etc. The fact that there is no evidence whatsoever to support this idea doesn't dissuade us from believing it, so that's a pretty interesting phenomenon, I think. My own view is that we believe in the persistent-self concept simply because we're not paying very much attention to our actual experience. We accept abstract ideas as if they were real, this is called "reifying" an abstraction. If we were to actually study our own experience, we would find that the "self" comes and goes quite a bit, that it assumes different and often contradictory forms, and that it is constantly changing. We would not entertain the fantasy of a persistent self, and would not then project it out into the imagined infinite future. So believing in the afterlife (if you accept that view) is a form of relatively harmless malfunction resulting from weak observation skills. Not understanding our own experience, we weave myths and fantasies around a very basic but persistent illusion.
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In my opinion, I can only think of four reasons why 'we' want an afterlife. - Humans need fear to operate correctly. - Life seems hard, stressful, boring and overpopulated; it's only natural to desire a better world or utopia. - Most of our religeons expect us to believe. - And, what you already knew, we can't accept death.
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