"The tragedy here is that I'm also enough of a scientist to know that the odds of there being any kind of afterlife are vastly against us." You presume, of cou

"The tragedy here is that I'm also enough of a scientist to know that the odds of there being any kind of afterlife are vastly against us." You presume, of course, that these things apply to the dead. But when dead, materially, you can reason about nothing because the bases for reason, perception and memory, no longer exist. Seeing yourself as disanimated material after you die is a trick of the mind, and not one that comes naturally, but that is learned in training as a part of survival in your time and place. But in many ways, to yourself, you are unlike anyone else, and in these ways you can conclude nothing about your dead self from your perception and memory of all others that have died. In short, you can conclude nothing about yourself when dead. Even the laws of physics and nature are not a help to determining the nature of your dead self; these are artifacts of perception and memory. I do not claim that we have hope for life after death, whatever that means; I only claim that for the living it is, and will likely always be, the "horror of the shade", the mystery of mysteries, and why music and poetry are as important to human beings as science and reason.