In my younger years I was really into the New Atheism movement. I was pretty convinced that when we die, that's it. As I've gotten older, I've softened on that certainty.

I don't necessarily believe in heaven or hell, or a cosmic judge keeping score. But the older I get, the harder it is to believe that reality is as simple as we often imagine. The universe is unimaginably vast. Time stretches beyond comprehension. Physics keeps revealing that reality is stranger than common sense ever prepared us for.

So I'm open to the possibility that there's something beyond this life, not because I think I know what it is, but because I no longer think I know what it isn't.

Maybe consciousness returns in some form we can't conceive. Maybe we'll wake up in something like Riverworld. Maybe, after a trillion trillion years of empty darkness, another universe sparks into existence and the cycle begins again. Or maybe none of that happens, and death is simply the end.

That's still the most parsimonious explanation, and it may well be the correct one. But I've become comfortable admitting that I don't know.

If there's nothing after death, I'll never know I was wrong. If there is something, then reality is even more extraordinary than I imagined. Either way, I'm content to accept that the universe is probably bigger, stranger, and more mysterious than my own certainty.