All animals are the products of natural selection and it is unsurprising that one of the most important tasks of any nervous system is to identify circumstances leading to death or injury and to avoid them. Yet, as far as we can tell, humans are the only animals that are aware that death is sooner or later inevitable.

We can conjecture that when our ancestors first discovered this, it must have caused a debilitating fear. But to spend one’s life worrying about its end would not contribute to survival and reproduction, so mechanisms were selected to avoid this. The first is that we have acquired a wonderful ability to not think about it, despite its massive importance. The second is that we lower our critical judgement to accept fanciful stories about an afterlife.

Of course, the second of these adaptive mechanisms created an opportunity to practice the trade of shamans and priests. This is probably hundreds of thousands of years old, but I suspect that it became more organised when humans began to live in settled agricultural communities over 10,000 years ago.

We humanists have figured out that the priests’ stories are without evidence and the knowledge that we are the products of evolution makes it certain that animals simply cease to exist when they die. So what will it be like to be dead? It will not be like anything to not exist. If you would like to think what it was ‘like’ during the millions of years before you were born, that should give you an idea.

As I write this, I am approaching my 82nd birthday. I am using the defence of not thinking about it too much, and I will try to use whatever time remains as usefully as possible.