Roko: The Sadducees were one religious sect with no belief in an afterlife. There are probably others (some Australian Aboriginal religions come to mind, but I can’t find a cite). Buddhism in its original and more austere present forms (if that counts as a religion) lacks #1 and #2, and promises #3 and #4 through natural law rather than a deity. Still, those beliefs describe the vast majority of religions.
My cod-psychology two pence: people like feeling part of something bigger and grander.
This isn’t just your idea, actually.
“[T]here is the pleasant life — having as many of the pleasures as you can and the skills to amplify them — and the good life — knowing what your signature strengths are and recrafting everything you do to use them a much as possible. But there’s a third form of life, and if you’re a bridge player like me, or a stamp collector, you can have eudaemonia; that is, you can be in flow. But everyone finds that as they grow older and look in the mirror they worry that they’re fidgeting until they die. That’s because there’s a third form of happiness that is ineluctably pursued by humans, and that’s the pursuit of meaning. I’m not going to be sophomoric enough to try to tell Edge viewers the theory of meaning, but there is one thing we know about meaning: that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are. The self is not a very good site for meaning, and the larger the thing that you can credibly attach yourself to, the more meaning you get out of life.”
Roko: The Sadducees were one religious sect with no belief in an afterlife. There are probably others (some Australian Aboriginal religions come to mind, but I can’t find a cite). Buddhism in its original and more austere present forms (if that counts as a religion) lacks #1 and #2, and promises #3 and #4 through natural law rather than a deity. Still, those beliefs describe the vast majority of religions.