A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything in a person’s life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A racist? These are merely species… - Sam Harris

A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything in a person’s life.

I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we would do and should want - and, therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may on day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind.

Finding ourselves in a universe that seems bent on destroying us, we quickly discover, both as individuals and as societies, that it is a good thing to understand the forces arrayed against us. And so it is that every human being comes to desire genuine knowledge about the world. This has always posed a special problem for religion, because every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which it has no evidence. In facet, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable.

If your denial of death is sufficiently explicit and persuasive that you believe death isn't real, then what you deny isn't death but the significance of life.