This to me is a very interesting conversation. I was raised in a family where religious holidays were celebrated in a secular fashion, though as children we were exposed to different religious perspectives. As a teenager, I felt considerable peer pressure to declare some type of religious affiliation. I ambiguously declared to be agnostic until I took a course in Physics in college. Realizing that humans, and animals for that matter, are but specks on a spinning marble in space, I could no longer think in pure agnostic terms. As an adult I get great comfort in the idea that my body will be recycled back to nature in one form or another. As far as a belief in a spirit life, I just can’t buy into it. And I can’t buy into the idea that if a person does great, selfless things in life, but is an atheist, that they will somehow be punished in an afterlife.