I think the realm of afterlife nobody knows for sure it is all speculation. I have read very different perspective from some many places, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist. I want to give you the Muslim perspective
There is an afterlife but after we die our soul gets taken out of our body. Depending on whether you are good or a bad person, your soul could be yanked or taken softly. But after you are dead, your soul is taken is up to heaven like a registration and depending on whether you are good or bad you can get a VIP treatment up there or hobo treatment. After registration you are taken back to earth. You are in a place called Bazaar where you can meet other dead people. Some will ask about life on earth as they don't get information from earth except from dead people. In this Bazaar you kind of sleep most of the time but daily angels come to you and show you where you will end up. There are two places we end up after judgment Jannah the good place paradise and Jahanaman the bad place hell. There is no concept of reincarnation. You only live once then you die, you are resurrected and go to a nice place for ever or to a bad place forever. I am Muslim I used to be atheist.
I think Aitheist and Believers brains are different. I think physical science and spiritual science might mean the same thing but from different perspective just like different languages. It might mean the same thing but unless you speak the both language. It feels to you that they are saying something different. Like some atheist can accept simulation but deny any creator even though for you to be in simulation, there will definitely be a programmer or a creator who is creating the simulation. By the way the Quran says this life is like a play which says heaven and hell are more real than this life. To get to heaven you need two criteria
1) faith 2) be good
Some people say where was I before I was born, the same is going to happen after I die, from the Muslim perspective, all humans souls were taken out after Adam was created and some even suggest that God noted David out of all human. The soul is added to human after the second month of the pregnancy. Before that the zygote is soulless. So the soul existed long before you were born and it will exist long after you are dead.
But am conflicted am not Christian by the way, but it says in the bible God spoke to Moses through the burning Bush, some people have argued that Moses was on some DMT or mushrooms, I won't accept that but he also spoke to all Israelite on Mountain. Did they make this up or was it mass hysteria or hallucination. He also gave Moses the ten commandment, did Moses go up to the mountain and come down to deceive others. Is the bible perfect no, is the Quran perfect I will say no because humans evolve. In Moses time it was an eye for eye but when Jesus came down it change to love your neighbour as yourself. Meaning depending on where the humans are at the ethics and the law governing are different. Depemding on how evolved the humans are the ethics and the law governing them will be different. The law governing the Americans are different from the law governing most Scandinavian. Look at the prison system, it is definitely different because they are different and at different levels of evolution.
The Quran was revealed by Angel of God Angel Gabriel to be precise. Was there an Angel , was he lieing or was he hallucinating. I don't know you have to decide for yourself.
I think hell is just a deterence just like a prison is deterence most humans don't go there and in more civilised countries it is just not that bad place to be at not that anyone should wish to go to prison or hell.
Just like a phone and a computer have an operating system, apart from this body, we have an operating system and it is our soul and spirit and regardless of when you die. When your phone hardware is faulty, you can still have access to the software sometimes remotely. What about people with dementia or alzeimers, they might not be able to access their memories but the creator can access their memories. Just like good programmers can access your software even when the hardware has packed up.
I think the best thing about life is the variety as everyone has a dark spot, science makes the believers see areas they are unable to see and vice versa. Just like there is variety in life, there will be variety in the afterlife from some becoming ghost haunting the place, some roaming the earth endlessly, some going to a nicer place, some going to a worse place, some reincarnating to some just ceasing to exist for ever. It might be determined by an entity or be determined randomly. As you have no choice to coming into existence, I think we have no choice to what happens to us in the afterlife. Each to their own, science, believers or non believers, monotheist or polytheist might be right but we might be all wrong.
Somethings we will never understand or never know but somebody says never say never.