I've heard this argument from a person recently, and being as interested as I am in Psychology and Philosophical questions, I've decided to experiment with my thinking on such a topic to discuss it's potential implications and how much merit it deserves; keeping in mind this is a completely subjective topic feel free to Change My Mind, in the comments below.
First time I've heard that my mind froze in wonder.
I've abruptly thought of this person's point of view as so
''My consciousness have been nonexistent for all eternity until i was conceived/born. We all have a lot of experience with this so i dont see why there is such mystery surrounding going back to nonexistence.
I think im gonna percieve the year 3030 just the same as i percieved the year 1717. Dead.
I cant see why accumulating memories and interacting with this world in our lives is going to affect the way we will percieve the nonexistence that we will return to when we die.
Life is the anomaly and nonexistence is just same same old business. I get that dying is a one way street and therefore we cant have reassuring accounts that prove any theory. My best bet is just that being dead feels the same, before or after life.''
However to break it down to him there is logic gaps in that very statement. one such being Being dead is no different from not having been conceived yet.
The same line of logic could be used to say that chemicals coming after a chemical reaction are the same as the ones that came before it. Its clear that the chemical reaction changes a lot, separate tanks of hydrogen and oxygen behave completely different than the water that their reaction creates.
This prompted me to shrotly reply to myself with :
There is a fundamental difference between the "afterlife" and, let's call it, the "beforelife." The afterlife is a secular concept which is strongly affected by our experiences. As we grow older and wrestle with our mortality, our views on it change. It may be scary, comforting, irritating, etc. It may be more than one of these at the same time. Ideally, we grow toward acceptance.
The afterlife is an experience we have a relationship with. The beforelife is a concept we can grasp, but does not have the same implications. It is in the past. We can have knowledge of the beforelife without it affecting our actions. You can't say the same for the afterlife.
To sum it all up, this statement/argument is almost flawless in theory as it cannot be proven wrong, the only way to disprove it is to expierence it which no living person could. However the thoughtfulness of the topic really encompasses the wide arrangement of possible outcomes that could change people so greatly. I.E the way you live your life based on your answer to this could determine how you'll do in it, whether you'll care enough to live until death or idly pass away in a stress free manner. It indulges in questions which we don't ask as they're inevitable to occur to us, however ones which should be deeply thought of to achieve freedom of thought for it when it's too late.
Let me know what you think and if you perceive this statement completely differently.