Okay, since you wrote something intended for me I'll make one final response. I've been informed that my expressed views contributed to your other thread being deleted. I don't want to contribute to the deletion of this one.
So... I don't find it hard to believe, I find it impossible to believe based on the fact that there is no evidence. As I said, I'd love it if our conscious mind went on after our body dies but I have seen no good evidence of that and yes I have read all the stories I could find on NDEs. It's true that energy never dies AFAIK so we will always be a part of earth in some form. Everything has cycles... mine started when an energetic little sperm won a race to an egg. I don't recall waiting in the wings for that zygote to eventually develop a fully formed and functional brain so that I could jump inside.
As far as the Christian view of an afterlife I can never believe that. Not only is there no evidence that anything supernatural in the bible took place, there are too many discrepancies in the actual authorship of what is known as the Christian bible.
But the real problem with that is that the basic ideas and philosophy were borrowed from older religions. If I was going to choose a religion I'd at least take the oldest one
But it isn't for me to convince you to give up your beliefs and I apologize if I seemed to be doing that. All I can do is give my beliefs that are based strictly on known facts and my own first hand knowledge and last but not least, my intellect. I have to live my life based on reality. I think it is unhealthy for anyone with a mental or emotional illness to stay as grounded in reality as possible for our own mental health. You are free to have these beliefs just as some of our members are free to believe that the government reads their minds or that aliens have implanted something in their whatever. To me it just isn't wise to encourage people in those beliefs so I don't. Do you understand what I'm talking about?