DiscussMormonism.com

I don't want to be reductive about it, but I think all of our visions of the afterlife come from our fears about death, either our own or, in particular, those of our loved ones.

We don't want to imagine that they're gone and that we'll never see them again. But, you know, when I was young, I grew up with this Gen X childhood of a world full of mysteries of the unexplained. You know, Time-Life books about who built the pyramids and UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle and all this stuff.

And I always was just fascinated by the idea of life after death, because it seemed like it was the greatest one of these mysteries ... Unlike Bigfoot, you know, it was universal. What does happen to me? What is life beyond death, if anything? But it was also just so tantalizing because, presumably billions of people who had gone before now either know the answer or don't. And yet word has not gotten back to us. So I realized then that a lot of our fascination with the afterlife is not just us working through our issues about death. It's not just neurosis. It's also the fact that we love a mystery. And this is the biggest mystery of all.