Because as far as I can see it, there is nothing in the history of recorded human thought that concludes that there is anything after death.
But enlighten us if you think otherwise.
[Edited on Oct 18, 2004 by gramsci]

Evidence:
1) Countless millions died prior to your existence. Therefore YOU are life after death.
2) I myself have survived a near death experience. Therfore I too am life after death.

Although the awakened concious mind falls victim to its own ego, the universe is much more vast than anyone can immediatley realize. Your mind filters its awareness in order to cope with material reality in an immediate sense, a broader scope of awareness is available to those who wish to understand more. It is not something that can be understood in a mere philosophical argument; rather it has to be experienced for one's own. It is one of the most difficult paths to take in life, but deep within us all, this question remains. What is the afterlife? IS there anything more? I elaborate...

Energy does not dissapear; life energy, and specifically conciousness is capable of creating anything. (Nanotechnolgy, Nuclear Physics, these things seemed impossible at one point in history) The power to create any reality is limited only by your mind. We are all part of a vast interconnected web of conciousness, at once immediate, and always eternal. Hence, the concept of God has developed. More recently the concept of afterlife has developed, and at one point has helped to deaden peoples realization of the power of their own conciousness, in a sense, binding them to a constricting outline of a material reality where they must live in accordance to a prescribed mode of behaviour, and if they do so, they may, if they are lucky, enter the afterlife (the Kingdom of Heaven, so to speak). The western mind has been inundated with this conciousness for thousands of years, and the oppression and supression of this system has resulted in a backlash, both individually and as a collective whole. Half of our society is vehement in its dissmissal of this belief.
Individually the mind rebels against this formula, initially formulating the opposing view: there is no afterlife! this is all we got ! live it up! This unfortunatley is only partly true. As a society, groups emerge with the incessant power to control, manipulate and even kill those that think otherwise; one of the reasons for war, and the acceptance of it. This has been humanity's legacy for countless thousands of years. And the individual carries this memory with him or her. You are the result of milions of years of people and all thier experiences have taken root in your mind. If not you would not have the ability to achieve what you are capable of doing. This is why it is each individuals responsibiity to trancend the boundaries of materialism and narcissistic individulaity, which runs rampant in our society, and to think collectively, moreso as in what will benefit the greater good of the entire human race. This is the struggle that we all face; shall we continue to evolve as a species, ultimately living more in harmony with the environment, or shall we, like parasites, continue to overpopulate and destroy mother earth, the goddess that she is? If we each take steps, perhaps there is hope? I myself am not so sure, but I have faith , I hope, and endure.

Enough mumbo jumbo, if you would like to read more check out Sri Aurobindo , and some of the excerpts therein, especially "The Human Aspiration" and "The Philosophy of Rebirth," or other Vedanta, and expand your mind a little bit. I also recommend the Dhammapada
and the works of George Feuerstein.

Sun and Flesh (Credo in Unam)

The Sun, the hearth of affection and life,
Pours burning love on the delighted earth,
And when you lie down in the valley, you can smell
How the earth is nubile and very full-blooded ;
How its huge breast, heaved up by a soul,
Is, like God, made of love, and, like woman, of flesh,
And that it contains, big with sap and with sunlight,
The vast pullulation of all embryos !

And everything grows, and everything rises !

- O Venus, O Goddess !
I long for the days of antique youth,
Of lascivious satyrs, and animal fauns,
Gods who bit, mad with love, the bark of the boughs,
And among water-lilies kissed the Nymph with fair hair !
I long for the time when the sap of the world,
River water, the rose-coloured blood of green trees
Put into the veins of Pan a whole universe !
When the earth trembled, green,beneath his goat-feet ;
When, softly kissing the fair Syrinx, his lips formed
Under heaven the great hymn of love ;
When, standing on the plain, he heard round about him
Living Nature answer his call ;
When the silent trees cradling the singing bird,
Earth cradling mankind, and the whole blue Ocean,
And all living creatures loved, loved in God !

I long for the tile of great Cybele,
Who was said to travel, gigantically lovely,
In a great bronze chariot, through splendid cities ;
Her twin breasts poured, through the vast deeps,
The pure streams of infinite life.
Mankind sucked joyfully at her blessed nipple,
Like a small child playing on her knees.
- Because he was strong, Man was gentle and chaste.

Misfortune ! Now he says : I understand things,
And goes about with eyes shut and ears closed.
- And again, no more gods ! no more gods ! Man is King,
Man is God ! But the great faith is Love !
Oh ! if only man still drew sustenance from your nipple,
Great mother of gods and of men, Cybele ;
If only he had not forsaken immortal Astarte
Who long ago, rising in the tremendous brightness
Of blue waters, flower-flesh perfumed by the wave,
Showed her rosy navel, towards which the foam came snowing
And , being a goddess with the great conquering black eyes,
Made the nightingale sing in the woods and love in men's hearts !

II

I believe ! I believe in you ! Divine mother,
Sea-born Aphrodite ! - Oh ! the path is bitter
Since the other God harnessed us to his cross ;
Flesh, Marble, Flower, Venus, in you I believe !
- yes, Man is sad and ugly, sad under the vast sky.
He possesses clothes, because he is no longer chaste,
Because he has defiled his proud, godlike head
And because he has bent, like an idol in the furnace,
His Olympian form towards base slaveries !
Yes, even after death, in the form of pale skeletons
He wishes to live and insult the original beauty !
- And the Idol in whom you placed such maidenhood,
Woman, in whom you rendered our clay divine,
So that Man might bring light into his poor soul
And slowly ascend, in unbounded love,
From the earthly prison to the beauty of day,
Woman no longer knows even how to be a Coutisan !
- It's a fine farce ! and the world snickers
At the sweet and sacred name of great Venus !

III

If only the times which have come and gone might come again !
- For Man is finished ! Man has played all the parts !
In the broad daylight, wearied with breaking idols
He will revive, free of all his gods,
And, since he is of heaven, he will scan the heavens !
The Ideal, that eternal, invincible thought, which is
All ; The living god within his fleshly clay,
Will rise, mount, burn beneath his brow !
An when you see him plumbing the whole horizon,
Despising old yokes, and free from all fear,
You will come and give him holy Redemption !
- Resplendent, radiant, from the bosom of the huge seas
You will rise up and give to the vast Universe
Infinite Love with its eternal smile !
The World will vibrate like an immense lyre
In the trembling of an infinite kiss !

- The World thirsts for love : you will come and slake its thirst.

....................................................

O ! Man has raised his free, proud head !
And the sudden blaze of primordial beauty
Makes the god quiver in the altar of the flesh !
Happy in the present good, pale from the ill suffered,
Man wishes to plumb all depths, - and know all things ! Thought,
So long a jade, and for so long oppressed,
Springs from his forehead ! She will know Why !...
Let her but gallop free, and Man will find Faith !
- Why the blue silence, unfathomable space ?
Why the golden stars, teeming like sands ?
If one ascended forever, what would one see up there ?
Does a sheperd drive this enormous flock
Of worlds on a journey through this horror of space ?
And do all these worlds contained in the vast ether,
tremble at the tones of an eternal voice ?
- And Man, can he see ? can he say : I believe ?
Is the langage of thought anymore than a dream ?
If man is born so quickly, if life is so short
Whence does he come ? Does he sink into the deep Ocean
Of Germs, of Foetuses, of Embryos, to the bottom
of the huge Crucible where Nature the Mother
Will resuscitate him, a living creature,
To love in the rose and to grow in the corn ?...

We cannot know ! - We are weighed down
With a cloak of ignorance, hemmed in by chimaeras !
Men like apes, dropped from our mothers' wombs,
Our feeble reason hides the infinite from us !
We wish to perceive : - and Doubt punishes us !
Doubt, dismal bird, beat us down with its wing...
- And the horizon rushes away in endless flight !...

.......................................................

The vast heaven is open ! the mysteries lie deas
Before erect Man, who folds his strong arms
Among the vast splendour of abundant Nature !
He sings... and the woods sing, the river murmurs
A song full of happiness which rises towards the light !...
- it is Redemption ! it is love ! it is love !...

........................................................


IV

O splendour of flesh ! O ideal splendour !
O renewal of love, triumphal dawn
When, prostrating the Gods and the Heroes,
White Callipyge and little Eros
Covered with the snow of rose petals, will caress
Women and flowers beneath their lovely outstretched feet !
- O great Ariadne who pour out your tears
On the shore, as you see, out there on the waves,
The sail of Theseus flying white under the sun,
O sweet virgin child whom a night has broken,
Be silent ! On his golden chariot studded with black grapes,
Lysios, who has been drawn through Phrygian fields
By lascivious tigers and russet panthers,
Reddens the dark mosses along the blue rivers.
- Zeus, the Bull, cradles on his neck like a child
The nude body of Europa who throws her white arm
Round the God's muscular neck which shivers in the wave.
Slowly he turns his dreamy eye towards her ;
She, droops her pale flowerlike cheek
On the brow of Zeus ; her eyes are closed ; she is dying
In a divine kiss, and the murmuring waters
Strew the flowers of their golden foam on her hair.
- Between the oleander and the gaudy lotus tree
Slips amorously the great dreaming Swan
Enfloding Leda in the whiteness of his wing ;
- And while Cypris goes by, strangely beautiful,
And, arching the marvellous curves of her back,
Proudly displays the golden vision of her big breasts
And snowy belly embroidered with black moss,
- Hercules, Tamer of beasts, in his Strength,
Robes his huge body with the lion's skin as with glory
And faces the horizons, his brow terrible and sweet !

Vaguely lit by the summer moon,
Erect, naked, dreaming in her pallor of gold
Streaked by the heavy wave of her long blue hair,
In the shadowy glade whenre stars spring in the moss,
The Dryade gazes up at the silent sky...
- White Selene, timidly, lets her veil float,
Over the feet of beautiful Endymion,
And throws him a kiss in a pale beam...
- The Spring sobs far off in a long ectasy...
Ii is the nymph who dreams with one elbow on her urn,
Of the handsome white stripling her wave has pressed against.
- A soft wind of love has passed in the night,
And in the sacred woods, amid the standing hair of the greeat trees,
Erect in majesty, the shadowly Marbles,
The Gods, on whose brows the Bullfinch has his nest,
- the Gods listen to Men, and to the infinite World !