existence (if I can set religion aside, which I may not mentally be able to do). On one hand I feel like I would think like you, and fight for life like crazy if I am to believe that there is no life after this. On the other hand I wonder if life would lose its value if it were time-limited, and that I would be very much resigned to let it end, seeing no purpose and hope in clinging to mere milliseconds of life when compared to eternal decomposition and nonexistence.

As to responsibility to children, I fail to see any responsibility to promulgate the human race at all if there is no life beyond this. Is there some sort of honor or fulfillment in giving life to a posterity doomed to a state of perpetual manure? If I did have children, I would certainly want to help them avoid pain. But if death is the end, I don't think I bring any children to this world. If they have no more eternal value than the oxygen we breathe, we may as well plant a tree and snip the vas.