Speaking of rhetorical tricks, you know as well as I do that you can't prove a negative. But as things stand, it's up to believers to prove an afterlife, not the other way about, and so the matter is held 'not proven'.

Empirical evidence is not idiosyncratic. It's the only real evidence. Everything else is conjecture or speculation.

Nor is conscousness a hard problem. All animals are conscious to some degree, and all have a nervous system, most have a brain. Plants are not conscious, they also don't have nerves or brains. Ergo, consciousness is related to the possession of a nervous system or brain. The more complex the nerevous system and brain, the higher the degree of consciousness. So the only question is, does consciousness arise in the brain or act through it? Is it matter or energy? A force or a field?

There are answers, we just haven't found them yet.