Something I've always thought: If there is no afterlife, by the time I find out, I'll never know, and I won't get a chance to yell at anybody about it! [grin]

Actually, the Jews do have a concept of the afterlife, at least some do. It's typically Jewishly exquisite. I've seen it called the Great Mercy and it goes like this. (Forgive me if I err--this is from readings about twenty-five, thirty years ago.) Maybe the Creator sees fit to grant something beyond this life. If so, that's his Great Mercy. If he doesn't, he doesn't. (At this point, I think, you give a casual shrug in Yiddish and say, "Enh!" or "Nu!") It doesn't change one's Duty in this life, to obey the Commandments, etc.

I really like that attitude so much better than the overmuch concern of so many Christians and others with personal salvation, which is, at base, just a form of selfish desire and fraught with a tendency to deny the importance of this life except as it leads to salvation, rather than just the assurance of faith in God's love and, well, Great Mercy. "This life, this moment, this is all the Heaven you get right now, so live as if you're already in the presence of God" sounds good to me.

And, whah! b'gosh! here it is right here in that fat blue book!

All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.

—Urantia Paper 188, Section 4, Paragraph 9, page 2017.

That's the commandment to keep!