Certainly any afterlife would necessarily be non physical, no? Alternatively, I would be delighted if you gave proof otherwise.
At any rate, I'm not arguing for mind dualism nor will I attempt to answer any of the questions you posed. I argue that it is completely pointless to speculate in any way about something which exists outside of the bounds of knowledge (science).
I was merely agreeing with the assertion of the OP:
> [faith is required] if the claim is that there is or is not an after life
An afterlife can not be shown to NOT exist even if consciousness if fully explainable by science. There is no special knowledge to be found in logic/philosophy that exist outside of science. Therefore, we only have faith in either case.
In the entirety of the human endeavor, everywhere we have looked the simplest explanation which explains all of the evidence has turned out to be correct. This Occamian world view has never failed us. Not once.
So yes, it would be quite a leap of faith to assume that there is some spiritual existence where our minds reside and which happens to line up perfectly with events in this this causal world. Doesn't mean it's wrong - this hypothetical modern version of the afterlife is cleverly constructed to be completely untestable from this side of death's veil. But it can be shown rigorously and mathematically to be a strictly more complex theory with precisely the same predictive power for this world (and with lots of odd answers when questions are pressed).
It's like positing epicycles for the motions of the planets. Personally I just find it easier and more satisfying to believe the Earth moves. I adjust all the other collected knowledge Occamian reasoning, so why not this too? I don't like being a hypocrite.
The reason is because the entire history of the world can not be used for evidence for an afterlife that exists outside of the world. No knowledge or intuition (from this world) can be applied to something that exists outside of it.
>It's like positing epicycles for the motions of the planets.
The two are not at all related, unless one of us claims the hand of god or some other metaphysical force is moving the planets. Such a claim would not be testable and the same caveats would apply to it, too.
Your intuition could be correct, but how would we verify it? We have no experience with the afterlife. It is impossible to test this knowledge in any way (apart from dying but then communicating the results are the problem).
The only thing we can do is acknowledge the fact that we can not say anything sensible one way or the other.
At any rate, I'm not arguing for mind dualism nor will I attempt to answer any of the questions you posed. I argue that it is completely pointless to speculate in any way about something which exists outside of the bounds of knowledge (science).
I was merely agreeing with the assertion of the OP:
> [faith is required] if the claim is that there is or is not an after life
An afterlife can not be shown to NOT exist even if consciousness if fully explainable by science. There is no special knowledge to be found in logic/philosophy that exist outside of science. Therefore, we only have faith in either case.