I was once in a delightful correspondence with a good-humoured Irish priest and told him that it is almost possible to envy those who believe in an afterlife because it is a comforting illusion from which they can never be disillusioned. When their eyes finally close and they go into that black nothingness, they will have no consciousness left to know that they had been wrong all that time.
He replied to say that when I die I might have a pleasant surprise, and find that there is an afterlife after all.
To which I said that it would certainly be a surprise, but how do I know it would be pleasant?
Since I would have to endure it for ever, one tiny fault or smidgeon of boredom and I would be driven mad after only a hundred years or so.
His final thought was "R------, in all my years as a priest I have talked to many people about the afterlife, but you are the first person to do a Consumer Survey on it."
Nice man.