Essay:The Morality of Life Without Afterlife

Oftentimes I hear arguments that religion, or perhaps The Bible in particular, is the only possible source of objective morality. I will for the purposes of this essay, ignore both the fact that this is an obvious appeal to the consequences and that there are numerous different religions each with different teachings; after all, how can we pick which one is the "correct" teaching? Instead I want to talk about is what morals we can construct in a world without an afterlife, as the primary incentive for good behavior, at least from the perspective of some wingnuts, is infinite reward in Heaven, or infinite punishment in Hell. I won't claim that these morals are completely objective, but I will claim that these moral lessons logically follow from a few basic assumptions.

Assumptions
Before we begin, lets start with some basic assumptions we will be making. I think that most morals can be generated from the first 2 assumptions.


 * There is no afterlife, after we die we cease to perceive or feel anything.
 * We are sympathetic and empathetic creatures, we desire to help others. (Essentially we should strive to follow the golden rule.)

Conclusions to be Drawn

 * If there is no life after this one we should strive to find the most pleasure we can in this life. (Unless we do so at the expense of others which is derived directly from the second rule.) Essentially happiness is one of the most important commodities we have as people. In contrast to many religious views, this suggests we should indulge ourselves. For instance this would imply that sex is not actually sinful or wrong, but rather important and good.
 * If there is no afterlife, we will not get the opportunity to see our loved ones after they die. Therefore, it is in our own best interest to spend time with people we care about, as we may not always have the chance to do so. So perhaps the first lesson is call your parents and spend time with family.
 * Similar to the last point, we should strive to be on good terms with those close to us. We should try our best not to be angry or upset with others because if the unexpected happens we will not be able to make amends later.
 * The most important conclusion however, is that we should not kill, or decrease the quality of someone else's life. If we kill we are essentially robbing a person of the most precious commodity they have, time. If there is no afterlife every moment of our lives on this planet is precious, we should not squander it.

Side note
This is a somewhat related question, but I was wondering if people really do have a strong faith in the existence of an afterlife. It seems many people fear death, perhaps more than anything else in the world. If a person truly had absolute faith that there was an afterlife for them why would they be reluctant to die? Perhaps they are not fearing nothingness, but infinite torment in Hell, I really don't know.