This is what religious beliefs are essentially: imaginary friends.
With a very complex backstory, of course, but imaginary nevertheless.
The purpose of your brain is to avoid death. When it learns that death is inevitable, it falls into a "bad state". The human brain has built-in protections against "bad states", known as defense mechanisms... which are essentially your brain lying to you so you can feel better. The reason these defense mechanisms exist is because people that had them were more likely to survive and reproduce instead of becoming depressed and losing interest in surviving and reproducing.
The belief in an immortal soul and an afterlife in heaven is the byproduct of such lies. It's your brain telling you: "don't worry bro, just keep surviving and reproducing and everything will be fine, I promise". It's not true, but as an evolutionary strategy it has worked well so far.
PS: The belief we will survive an imminent cascading ecological collapse without us doing anything is also a delusion created by defense mechanisms.
With a very complex backstory, of course, but imaginary nevertheless.
The purpose of your brain is to avoid death. When it learns that death is inevitable, it falls into a "bad state". The human brain has built-in protections against "bad states", known as defense mechanisms... which are essentially your brain lying to you so you can feel better. The reason these defense mechanisms exist is because people that had them were more likely to survive and reproduce instead of becoming depressed and losing interest in surviving and reproducing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanism
The belief in an immortal soul and an afterlife in heaven is the byproduct of such lies. It's your brain telling you: "don't worry bro, just keep surviving and reproducing and everything will be fine, I promise". It's not true, but as an evolutionary strategy it has worked well so far.
PS: The belief we will survive an imminent cascading ecological collapse without us doing anything is also a delusion created by defense mechanisms.