alt Hacker News> the belief in no afterlife or one that is not influenced by your current behavior strengthens individualism.
This is just another way of saying that you don't think people (meaning you) would be moral without the threat of a bad outcome (hell, bad karma, reincarnation into suffering, etc).
Most avowed atheists would tell you that the finality of death is precisely why we have a responsibility to each other, because there's no one up above coming to fix our problems or right our wrongs. That humanity has to *be* better to become better.
Being religious doesn't intrinsically make one more or less collectivist or individualist, it all depends on the philosophy of the religion (or non-religion).
I am both an atheist and a strong proponent of individualism without disagreeing with your comments on how this naturally comes with responsibility, more than many spiritual constructs do where you can pass some of your responsibility to a third party such as fate or God or karma. Collectivism is a shared brain, individualism is a hivemind.
To not believe in an afterlife is also a belief. We cannot know. The truth is we don’t know.