All right. I got the feeling that you were making a disingenuous attempt to suggest that the only reason that I didn't accept the extinction hypothesis (in light of all the evidence that supports it) was that I didn't have the courage, taking refuge in a "whatever I want" belief that I found more comfortable.
Luckily for my integrity, I was not saying that. I was simply attempting to accurately portray what appeared to be your position, based on what I had seen of what you've said. The belief that happiness is a valid criteria for determining what is useful to believe about reality, for example, is a rather common belief among those who hold the cited position.
As a general matter, even if you did hold that position, I would neither look down on you for holding it or even care that you did. I don't tend to care what people believe, with the minor exception of beliefs that directly affect me. I do, however, care when bad arguments are put forward in support of a position. Without rereading all the relevant material to verify, I may have been partially confusing your position with a somewhat similar position held in a different thread by someone as I was likely rather tired around the time that I posted. As it was, it quite appeared that you were equivocating between the quality of logic required for mathematical proofs and the quality of logic found in the arguments for why there's any reason to accept either that there's an afterlife or that there's any reason to accept that any unsupported and unfalsifiable arguments are particularly worth accepting as either the case or worthy of concern.
In other words, to inject a popular straw man into the argument and then reduce it to the ridiculous. Perhaps you didn't do this intentionally, and if you are saying as much I apologize for my reaction.
I'd argue that I didn't do it at all, though I admit that I can see how you might make the mistake of thinking that I did. I can freely admit that I don't know whether there's an afterlife if asked, for the record. I would likely add that I really can't care whether there is, though, if we have no reasonable ways of knowing anything about it or whether it exists in the first place. That said, the extinction hypothesis that you referred to is the most logical position to hold, based on the evidence, or lack thereof, and parsimony, and thus is the best option to act upon as if it is the case.
It's worth pointing out, as well, that "know" is frequently used in somewhat different ways. Absolute certainty is a nice way to use it, but bears little relevance to ways that it's relevant for practical purposes. Absolute certainty is not really a reasonable requirement for anything, after all, and is certainly not worth becoming uncomfortable about. As fallible beings, we do tend to be wrong about all kinds of things. There's no shame in that, but there's also no reason to act as if the most logical position, when taking the whole picture into account, isn't the best one to hold.
But it is you who are injecting the concept of belief into my arguments. My position is "we don't know," yes. People can believe whatever they want, too. But I say we don't know if those beliefs are true or not. I believe that people create beliefs about what happens when we die in order to alleviate fear of the unknown. Perhaps we agree there. But again, my entire position is that what happens after we die is unknowable. I don't manufacture "any belief I want to" to fill that void. I don't find that comfortable, either, but comfortable is overrated anyway.
My apologies if I actually did inject the concept of belief into your argument, though I think I've presented reason for how I reached that conclusion. Hmm. I think that I've addressed all the other points that I had that are particularly worth covering in response to this part earlier in this post, so I'll be a bit less verbose here.
