People can wish for anything but honestly, try to think of it from a rational standpoint. Life, as you know it, is merely the result of the proper functioning of the various organs that make up your body. There's nothing like a soul or spirit in us as far as my opinion goes. Once you're dead then nothing remains. I mean, what reason is there for us to believe in an afterlife save the need we feel to deal with our fear of death?
I'd have to disagree here. A "rational standpoint" doesn't necessitate non-belief in soul or consciousness. I can relate to your position (even though I don't agree with it), given naturalism is the "orthodox" worldview of the academia nowadays. But the concept of mind-body dualism is something that has been hotly debated by scientists and philosophers of repute for quite some time, and by the way things are looking, one can't waive off the dualist case as easily. Some people say progress in Neuroscience would gradually come to replace philosophy of mind-related discourses. But many philosophers have argued convincingly (to my mind, at least) that the question of dualism is something that lies beyond the scope of neuroscience, or any science for that matter. This doesn't mean that testable hypotheses cannot be constructed for or against its favor, however. For a basic introduction on this issue, you may want to take a look at
this book, or google "substance dualism" in general.
Second, there is a growing public awareness about the
empirical evidence for the existence of consciousness. Studies about what is colloquially referred to as paranormal events e.g. Near-Death Events, Visions, life-recalls etc, have been published in peer-reviewed literature. I've partially surveyed the evidence, and they are by no means anecdotal- and at least a good chunk of these events stand irreducible to naturalistic explanations.
These two lines of evidences make it far from clear that the non-existence of soul or consciousness is an obvious, non-controversial issue. I leave it to you to judge the evidences for yourself, but I think the cumulative case does argue strongly for the existence of a soul or consciousness.
That being said, a minimalistic belief in life after death (i.e. there is some sort of life after death, only I don't know how it is) seems pretty warranted. What is the exact nature of that life- that's where something all philosophy and speculation stops short. This is the only way (I think) we could make progress: instead of judging the merits of different hereafter models in isolation, we should judge the worldview that entails such a model. For example, I don't believe in Valhallla because the worldview that entails this concept- Nordic religion- is something I know to be false. So if a worldview can be shown to be true, and if that worldview is inclusive of an answer to the "what happens after death" question, then that's the answer we should adopt. Not because of the answer itself, but because of the rational justification of the worldview that entails it.
I personally believe in a traditionally conceived theistic afterlife. Death resembles disembodiment, and the soul is judged on the basis of it's virtue to enter paradise or hellfire. I'm an agnostic about the length of hellfire though.
