" The notion that the “soul” can survive the body is so obviously a holdover from primitive superstition that many theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries seem to have all but abandoned it. The belief is founded strictly on fear – fear of death, or, more particularly, fear of the oblivion that we all know in our hearts will follow death. Believers overlook that what the great majority of people want is not immortality of the soul, but immortality of the body: they want to continue living in their current bodies indefinitely – with of course, mental and physical health magically preserved. But since even the most naïve and self-deluded of us realize that this is hopeless, they conveniently transfer their wishes to some airy substance that will magically revive after the dissolution of our bodies and allow us to continue sensation and consciousness. "

― S.T. Joshi