What do you think happens after death?

Sure. I agree completely. I didn't intend any criticism of you and, if it came across that way, I apologise.

What I'm saying, I think, is that the reason you offer for holding the belief you do is not a particularly compelling reason for holding that belief. And that raises the possiblity that you may, in fact, hold the belief for other, unacknowledged reasons, which might be worth considering and exporing.

Again, this is not a criticism of you or of your beliefs. The reasons why any of us hold the beliefs we do are often complex, and often poorly understood, even by ourselves. This does not invalidate the beliefs, but it does open up a field of enquiry that we usually neglect. The psychology of belief is worth unpacking.

"there is also no proof of there being no afterlife" is about as credible as saying "there is also no proof that when we die we all become flying spaghetti monsters"

If you want to demonstrate something is true you should present some evidence of same. Saying no one can prove a hypotesis isn't true demonstrates nothing other than an inability to provide any evidence that it is in fact true.

I seen this thread pop up on the main page and it made me give the question some consideration.

I would be happy if there was something beyond this life, something inconceivable to me now, something that is wonderful and I can meet people who I've lost.

Unfortunately, logic suggests that this is all there is. Hopefully, this conclusion is just the limitations of my mind.

A random series of events in the infinite universe. I'm not sure there is any grand design.

Hopefully I'm wrong.

But then some kind of afterlife could also be the outcome of random events in the infinite etc etc.

There's nothing illogical about the concept of an afterlife. There are other rational objections, but I don't think this is one.

I'm not sure. I haven't seen any real evidence of the supernatural. I am currently an agnostic rather than an atheist.

But evidence and logic are unrelated. You can reason logically without any evidence at all. Conversely you can have loads of good evidence, but reason wildly illogically in drawing inferences or conclusions from it.

I am sceptical of some of the Old Testament stories like the exodus, as the archaeological consensus is that it's fictional. The story of Esther, Queen consort of Persia, being Jewish, is rejected by scholars. She is not mentioned in Persian sources. Xerxes was married to Amestris, who was not Jewish. Herodotus described her as as a cruel Queen.

These stories may well be unhistorical. But as they are not stories about an afterlife, they don't cast much light, one way or another, on the question addressed in this thread.

The above statement is interesting in this regard as it firstly shows the questionable veracity of the starting assumption needed for there to be an afterlife and introduces a personal preference or bias. I strongly suspect most people who believe in a life after death very much want it to be true, to the extent they have historically placed those who categorically state it to be true in positions of power and severely punish those who contradict their belief. This isn't logic, it is confirmation bias and fear often leading to cruelty.

WEll as the same statement shows, even people who don't believe in an afterlife might also want it to be true that there is.

I'm not so convinced by the notion that afterlife-believers have historically put their co-believers in power, and severely punished those of the opposite view. The implication is that afterlife-believers are positioned so as to be able to decide who will be in power which, historically, is a bit of a stretch; access to power has been a bit more complex that that, and afterlife-belief hasn't generally featured as a decisive criterion. And, while you will find historical examples of afterlife-believers in power who have punished those who disagree, you will equally find afterlife-deniers in power who have punished those who disagree.