You said, Bill: "I cannot really imagine what a 'consciousness' might be after the physical entity dies."

Yeah, I know you can't. ;-) But a great many people can. They can very easily imagine it. People in all cultures and times have imagined it. It depends on whether you think consciousness only arises out of physical form (therefore as a byproduct OF physical form) and can't exist apart from it...or whether you think consciousness existed both before and after the physical form, and that the physical form merely houses it and carries it for a while the way an automobile carries a passenger...or a radio receives and broadcasts an audible program.

I think consciousness built the physical form of every single living thing, molecule by molecule, with a definite purpose in mind, and that it was already there before the physical form could even be seen, and that it will still be there after the physical form becomes inert and dead in our terms of what we mean BY "dead" when we say the word...and after the physical form vanishes through decay and entropy.

I didn't say I KNOW this, however. I said I "think" so, meaning I think it's reasonably probable...it seems far more probable to me than the conventional alternative, which is the one you are sympathetic toward.

We cannot provide any physical evidence regarding this, because it isn't physical. It's a matter of consciousness (purposeful intelligence and awareness), and you can't weigh or measure consciousness or divide it into units of measure...though you can certainly experience it, and we all do. It can't be proven (in your terms of "proof")...it can only be experienced.

And we've discussed that any number of times before, you and I.

People's many "beliefs" are their habitual mental structures and the assumptions in consciousness on which they have come to rely in some way. They have their social beliefs, religious beliefs, cultural beliefs, ethical beliefs, personal beliefs about themselves and others, beliefs about life, trivial beliefs, and vitally important beliefs that run very deep. Some are beneficial. Some are harmful. Some do lead to things like martyrdom, self-sacrifice, heroism, folly, and the very greatest accomplishments as well. No person is without beliefs. To find out what their beliefs are, you need to observe them closely in a great variety of situations which test those beliefs.