I love your skepticism, Radical... It's much more open than any skepticism I've seen before.
Well, since everybody has their own variation on what will happen when they die, I might as well put my input in. I'm not saying that this must be true, only that out of the options that I've looked at, this is the one which fits closest to my beliefs.
First, there are two main choices... there is either life after death, or there is no life after death. Since believing in an afterlife will not affect my death much if there is, in fact, no afterlife, and not believing in an afterlife could potentially have major traumatic effects on me if there is, indeed, an afterlife, it is safest to assume that there is an afterlife and act accordingly. It isn't a matter of skepticism and following all of the evidence no matter what. I'm just hedging my bets.
Since there is an afterlife, or I am at least living as though there is one, I have to decide on a model to believe in so that I can act accordingly. In order to keep from offending people who have come to different conclusions than I have, I'll leave out the 'why' of my decision... It is deeply personal, both to myself and to other people, and a huge part of my belief system is to allow others to make choices for themselves. To sum up my beliefs as simply as possible, we exist as ego-based creatures in order to experience things from a singular point of view. This means that I can not believe in evil as a tangible thing any more than I can believe that my shadow is tangible... From an individual perspective, it exists, and it is as real as anything else that I can observe. From a purely objective perspective, though, it doesn't exist, and is in fact the state of something not existing, and we can't, objectively, say that something not existing is actually something.
Without evil, there can be no sin. This doesn't mean that choices do not have consequence, which seems extremely evident... It means that evil is only a way to perceive and describe things which cause us suffering, just like a shadow is a way to perceive and describe a lack of light. Choices still lead to consequences, and poor choices lead to suffering, so there is still plenty of motivation, both fear based and love based, to do good in the world without the need to add extra fear with the concept of sin.
All of this has lead to a very glorious vision of both life and the afterlife. Experience is what you make of it, and life can be just as good as any eternal paradise, and can only add to its glory. Is the paradise that I'm picturing eternal? Only for those who choose to make it eternal. I would imagine that most people would rather come back and continue to experience life from different perspectives, to continue to learn and grow. Nothing that happens here can damage our spiritual bodies, so there is no fear in being incarnated. If we wrong someone, they will have the perspective to accept that neither of us were living consciously, and with such a highly conscious perspective, anger and fear would be unnecessary.
Anyways, I feel that I'm rambling now...