It appears to me that belief in an afterlife is a rather unimportant part of a spiritual philosophy. If you are working for the retirement package it's pretty much a waste of your life. I don't think that any God would create people to waste their lives... I get the image of a giant sorting machine picking out the ones that "fit" and the ones that "don't". it doesn't seem very "God-like" to me.
Perhaps Belief in the afterlife is a crutch, perhaps belief itself is a crutch.
but then plenty of people have different crutches, being a workaholic for example, or an alcoholic or pretty much anything ending in "holic", many people live their lives with the hope that they will continue in some way, whether it be through their children, through their charities, through their artistic contributions, through pretty much anything they do... maybe that's a crutch too.
Hey, maybe everything we do is to distract us from dying. perhaps we only truly appreciate life when we know it is to end?
If belief (in the afterlife, in whatever) is a crutch... well I can think of worse crutches.
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