The concept of an afterlife is appealing to me as an atheist, but that doesn't make it true. And that's really the core problem of religious arguments: wishing very hard for the laws of the universe to change doesn't make it so. Ever the technocrat, I would take that innate wish for an afterlife as an unconscious manifestation of the desire for humans to transcend their biological existence and move on to something better. And that's certainly something worth pursuing. But just sitting on a rug and insisting it's already an option, provided you adhere to certain mystical rules of course, now that's just unproductive nonsense.