I am three-quarters through the book, The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time that Will Change Your Lifeby Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd. It is taking longer than usual because I am earnestly applying the exercises as they appear in the book. Which means I have to be ready to change my habits...but enough about me.
Zimbardo's argument throughout the book is that a person's time perspective deeply impacts their choices and their ability to be happy. Constantly re-hashing a miserable past, for instance, leads to misery. One time perspective that affects people is belief in an afterlife. Belief also that present acts good and bad can affect that mysterious future outcome (heaven or hell), also impacts people's behavior.
Zimbardo calls this belief, "Transcendental-future Time Perspective". Here's a chart from this book rating belief in the afterlife to religion:
This belief can be both helpful or harmful. Harmful for instance, for suicide bombers and those around them (believing that martyrdom promises eternal reward). Zimbardo also points out that such beliefs are impossible to refute as the afterlife by definition is unknowable, un-measurable by empirical means.
Evangelical Christians, take note of Jewish disinterest. Their religion focuses more on acts here on earth, leaving questions about the afterlife...to the afterlife. Consider tailoring your presentation to a completely different worldview. I bet also that many of the "Other Religions" have a vastly different view of the afterlife to yours; believing in incarnation for instance.
I betcha Jehovah's Witneses in this survey are firmly under "Other Christian".
So where do you sit on the belief scale? Has your perpective changed as you aged? How different are your beliefs to those around you?
Zimbardo quotes Sam Harris on the futility of debating this belief, "Sam Harris says that conflicting and untestable beliefs about the transcendental future are a recipe for disaster, In The End of Faith, he writes: "Give people divergent, irreconcilable, and untestable notions about what happens after death, and then oblige them to live together with limited resources. The result is just what we see: an unending cycle of murder and cease-fire. If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us...""