I put it to you that there is no reason to suppose the afterlife is going to be better than this life. If God, or the Fates, or powers that be, don't care how much living things suffer, who would you suppose they would care about your suffering in the afterlife? In fact, we may suffer much worse in the afterlife than we suffer in this life. That's where the concept of hell comes from -- why can't it exist? It's not as if many people don't go through hell while alive, so why not after death? I know what you're thinking (yes, I'm psychic). You're thinking that after death there will be oblivion. But why should there be? We don't know what is waiting for us after death. Nobody knows this, from Buddha to Mohammed to Jesus Christ -- nobody really knows, they just have their own convictions and beliefs. Maybe it's oblivion, but maybe not. And if it isn't oblivion, there's no reason at all to think it will be better than it is here, in this world.