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The concept of afterlife differ to different people. It can include the belief that we need something else in our material body for us to be alive and it comes from the outside. It can have the concept that our body and our mind or spirit or consciousness is separate and is connected when we are alive and go their separate ways after death. It can include the thought that our birth is not our actual beginning or that death is not our actual ending. It can also have the concept of a spiritual world.
We have been using advanced methods for studying us, other organisms and our surroundings for some time. There were people who thought the cause of diseases were angry gods, people who thought that solar eclipse was caused by a frog swallowing the sun, people who thought organic compounds could only be created by mysterious forces that create life etc. But now we know real explanations for why these happen. Things that we thought to be beyond our senses and understanding got clear explanations with the increase in our knowledge about ourselves and our surroundings. There is nothing supernatural about anything. The laws which govern everything is the universal laws and everything can happen only according to it.
We are a complete package. A package that can survive on earth in its environment. Mind and imagination is not something that is outside of our bodies. It is very much a part of our existence, part of our body. It doesn't exist without the brain. We are born with hereditary memories, say cry when hungry, pull away from hot surfaces etc. It is not spirit which is responsible but genes that gets passed on to us. We also learn a lot in our life. We learn about food, water, learn to imagine, learn language and how to use it etc. We learn the workings of societies and our environment. We learn the real reasons or made up reasons or both for things happening around us. Our ability to learn and pass on genetic information can't be attributed to a spirit.
If we can copy all the atoms or molecules of our body and its arrangement, we have made a perfect copy of a human. It has nothing other than atoms, molecules and its arrangement. After death you either get eaten by animals or microbes, or get burned to ash etc. Vitamins and minerals in our body become available for other life forms, but it doesn't mean we continue to live on in other living organisms. Looking around us we can see many living organisms dying and we can't notice anything particular about it. And since we are like them in so many ways, there shouldn't be anything particular about our death too. We will not get connected to something and live on, there is no us or our thoughts after death. We only have this life and no part of it exist after our life, apart from its constituent vitamins, minerals etc.
Earlier some people were afraid of earthquakes and were very curious to know what caused it. They didn't know the reasons behind it, they didn't know about tectonic plates or about the molten interiors of our earth. But they couldn't accept they didn't know. So they kept on trying and their imagination and cognitive biases, came to their rescue. They made up facts and stories, and they began to believe in it. There are some things common to all of us. We share a fear of the unknown, we are curious, we all have cognitive biases and we have imagination. So other people didn't find any difficulty to relate to their findings. So they also began to believe in it. And it is how many beliefs come into existence. This is why the ideas of spirits, spiritual world, afterlife etc can be found in many human cultures. Some people believe in these things simply because so many people believed in it for generations and many people still believe in it. But it is not a valid reason to believe in anything. We should know that our ancestors tried with what they had and it is wrong to use our limitations for finding answers. Since we currently have much more information from credible sources, we can satisfactorily do away with stories. We don't exist before our birth or after our death. There are no spirits. There is no spiritual world. There is no afterlife.