Oblivion Or An Afterlife

My body is vulnerable to many kinds of deteriorations, and I can see animals die or find the remains of their physical bodies.  Unless this decay or the observations of other creatures dying only make it misleadingly appear as if I will die (I could not know before it happened and might not even know after it happens), this life of mine will come to an end even if the universe it is lived in continues afterward, and my consciousness will either perish altogether or live on in some way.  The ultimate epistemological uncertainty of whether one's death will occur, though it seems extremely likely that it will, is something that could be ignored for a lifetime by non-rationalists.  They assume that they will die because they are told that they will or because they have assumed that what has happened to other creatures must also happen to them.

There are other things relating to consciousness, death, and the possibility of an afterlife (since this does not contradict logical axioms, even if there is not an afterlife, there could have been one) that could be neglected.  For instance, it is not true that there is nothing to fear about the logical possibilities of a permanent cessation of consciousness or its broad alternative of an afterlife, as Cicero claims in On Old Age.  While endless nonexistence means one cannot experience pain of any kind, it also means that one cannot experience any kind of joy, pleasure, or fulfillment, and it is entirely legitimate to lament or fear this even as it would bring relief.  One would not even be able to experience rest or peace in oblivion because one would not exist to perceive any mental state at all.

As for an afterlife, if someone does not realize that it could be or could have been the case that there is an afterlife of immense agony and terror, they are incredibly stupid.  The mere continuation or resurrection of one's immaterial consciousness after death would not by necessity be pleasant or relaxing.  There are many logically possible afterlives other than Christianity's reduction to nonexistence in the lake of fire and eternal bliss in New Jerusalem (both of which are loosely summarized by John 3:16), some having to do with morality and some not having anything to do with real or imagined justice.  It is possible that God's moral nature is not actually like that of the Biblical Yahweh even though there is much evidence that the uncaused cause is Yahweh, meaning any sort of justice in the afterlife could be more severe than the Biblical kind (though default eternal conscious torment is still inherently disproportionate to any sin), but other logically possible afterlives involve extreme suffering without there even being a moralistic intention behind it at all.

One does not even need specific examples of logically possible afterlives that are very painful in order to realize that there could be a great deal to fear about death or an afterlife.  Even knowing with absolute certainty that one would just immediately cease to exist as a mind could bring terror of its own if someone longs for eternal life in a blissful state.  The blissful part is a vital clarification, since eternal life is not intrinsically a positive thing, for there are many variations of it that could make someone wish they had never come into existence in the first place!  If more people realized this, they would take the possibility of various afterlives and the ramifications of both consciousness after death and soul oblivion far more seriously.

The very misunderstood Biblical contrast of a resurrection to be annihilated on the level of mind and body and an everlasting afterlife of resurrection to enjoy every nonsinful thing in paradise still ultimately amounts to a contrast between oblivion, just with a shorter afterlife before it, and life.  In this case, oblivion is justice, not a mercy or an amoral phenomenon.  Eternal life is not eternal existence in torment, but in perpetual peace, pleasure of nonsinful kinds, and harmony with the deity who wants all people to seek this type of immortality.  The Biblical afterlife and the nature of what is and is not logically necessitated by an afterlife, regardless of Christianity, are seldom recognized for what they are or regarded as sincerely as their nature calls for.