Asked on Quora: Would an atheist reject the afterlife? It's fairly typical of the questions that believers ask if they know nothing about any religious beliefs other than their own.

“Would an atheist reject the afterlife if offered?” Sorry, believer, you have to be more specific. Which afterlife are you talking about?

• Will I be reincarnated, over and over, until I finally reach nirvana?
• Will I travel the 31 planes of existence, Naraka, Tengoku, and “the pure land" — after I have attained Enlightenment, of course? (Pass the karma to me, Mama!)
• Will I remain in the spirit realm, a ghost, until I have learned some lesson or passed some test, possibly forever? Is my afterlife going to be scaring kids telling campfire stories or the inspiration for TV dramas like “Medium”?
• Will I go to what the ancient Persians envisioned as a king's happy hunting ground, “paradise”? “Paradise” was a belt of beautiful greenery around the flat Earth, basically a giant Hula Hoop. Photos from space have yet to find the bottom side of the flat Earth, the edge ocean liners keep falling off of, or “paradise.”
• Will I go to Sheol, as the Hebrew Scriptures teach?
• Or will I go to Hades, as the Christian Nicene Creed has taught since 325 CE?
• Will Anubis weigh my soul on the scale of Maat, and eat me if my soul is heavier than a feather?
• Will I go to Valhalla if I'm a mighty warrior, to be one of Odin's courtiers? Will I go to the realm of the goddess Freya if I'm just not warrior enough? Is the Klingon StoVoKor the same place as Valhalla, and is Khayless the Klingon Jesus or the Klingon Hercules?
• Will I go to Tír na nÓg, “the land of eternal youth"?
• Will my soul take on a body form based on karmas from my previous incarnations, over and over forever, as Jainists believe?

After 25 years of investigating hauntings, apparitions, instrumental trans-communication, electronic voice phenomena, mediumship, and other paranormal phenomena, Dr. Susan Blackmore came to the conclusion that we just don't have enough empirical evidence. And yet, if some mediums are real, shouldn't we have more empirical evidence?

I have to admit, the study of near-death experiences is intriguing, especially since my very own husband has had one — unexplainable if you think living beings are just animated meat. I myself have had more than one experience that has convinced me that there is a plane of existence that is usually beyond human perception, and that this plane has inhabitants who mean well by humanity.

But a determined skeptic would have no trouble debunking me for believing that when she lay dying, my sister saw and conversed with someone I couldn't see or hear. Those skeptics can bite me. I saw and heard my dying sister have a conversation.

And I'll tell you something else: whatever this other dimension might be and whatever those well-meaning individuals might be, I have no idea whether Katy saw an angel, a devil, Jesus, Mary of Nazareth, Hercules, a goddess, a god, a genie, a ghost, a unicorn, a leprechaun, a dragon, a banshee, a brownie, a fairy, a gnome, a vampire, a siren, a poltergeist, or Harry Houdini. And neither does ANY religion.

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