If there’s no afterlife, this life is utterly critical. It is so rare and precious because it’s the only one you have. If you waste your life partying, you will not accomplish any of the higher pleasures.

If you live for an afterlife, in a way, you reject life. You reject life for death. Because you’re living for something that happens after you die. It’s quite sad.

I told him that while that was probably true, he would first end up having to spend time in Spirit Prison hell, perhaps a millennium or more, paying for all the unrepented sins he would have committed to merit a Telestial glory. I did mention that the pain was described by the Lord and Alma as exquisite (Alma 36, D&C 19) for those who do not repent.

Suddenly, his teen-smart look disappeared, and he quietly walked away to rethink his theory…

Even the weakest belief in something after, even close to none but not zero, is enough. A small chance that something of what you did survives forever is enough. I would guess that your own goodness toward others is motivated partially by belief that there’s something permanent about it.

I try to be a good person so that my life NOW will be good, so that the world we have NOW (and leave behind to future generations) will be a better place. I think one of the major failings of religion in general is all the focus on after we die. It gives us inquisitions, suicide bombers, and kool-aid distributing cult leaders. Or just earth-wasting self-absorbed religious followers who care more for their place in a theoretical heaven than the world they leave behind.

Someone said earlier that they live a certain way because it makes their current life happier/more peaceful…I think thats a much better reason…and even though I am no longer mormon, that was/is one of the things in the mormon worldview that I thought was a bit better than mainstream christianity.

I’m coming in late so I was really surprised that no one pointed out the problem with this part of you post. That problem is D&C 19 where God basically says “yeah I know I let those guys say punishment is eternal and endless but frankly they were wrong. I just let you believe that because it helped motivate some people”. Here is the passage:

6 Nevertheless, it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment.
7 Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory.
8 Wherefore, I will explain unto you this mystery, for it is meet unto you to know even as mine apostles.
9 I speak unto you that are chosen in this thing, even as one, that you may enter into my rest.
10 For, behold, the mystery of godliness, how great is it! For, behold, I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name. Wherefore—
11 Eternal punishment is God’s punishment.
12 Endless punishment is God’s punishment.

So we have something better than a dictionary on this subject — we have trumping modern revelation.

. . . Explain to any unprejudiced understanding the doctrine of eternal punishment in a hell of torture; let the idea only stand forward in its native deformity, wrapped in no deceitful veil, and seen through no deceiving medium—and human ingenuity is impotent to gain belief in it. . . . The orthodox god, the hidden, mysterious, Christian monster, shall rack and torture countless myriads of us sentient beings, without any object except to prolong eternally our capacity to know and to suffer infinite and excruciating misery! . . . Such a god is worthy of those hearts that first leaped in exultation at the device of consuming the body in the flaming faggot for the good of the soul. ‘Tis a horrible thing that the human mind should be reduced to such a state of prejudice and weakness . . .

—B[enjamin]. F. Powell, The Bible of Reason: Or, Scriptures of Modern Authors. Selected and Written by B. F. Powell. (New York: George H. Evans, 1828), 240-41.

I may see it differently if I ever gain an eternal perspective, but the way I see it now, if it turns out that there is no progression between kingdoms and that falling short of the highest kingdom will bring an eternity of regret, it will prove that God was never a good enough parent to be worthy of our respect and love. I don’t expect it to be that way. Either there will be ample opportunities for happiness and progress in the lower kingdoms, because people don’t all need to have the same role to be happy, or we will find that progress between kingdoms is possible after all. Doctrine and Covenants 130:10 seems to suggest that there are higher kingdoms than the celestial kingdom, and maybe some of us someday will progress into one of them.

Another possibility is that this is already the telestial kingdom, blessed with the influence of the Holy Ghost but not the continual presence of the Son, that the coming millennial rein of the Savior will give us an opportunity to live and progress through the terrestrial kingdom which the renewed earth will become, and that the celestial kingdom will be ready for us when we have changed enough to be ready to enter it.