I'm Roman Catholic. Grew up loving the art, music, and philosophy but it's only the last few years since really I got into the practice. The more I read the Gospel and the meaning behind it, the more I'm blown away. I really think the reason why Christianity has transcended all cultural barriers and epochs is because Jesus Christ really was the Word Incarnate, revealing the logic behind the cipher of the human paradox. I also really believe that if you try to orient yourself towards the kind of life He's describing, you absolutely nurture a closer relationship between yourself and the objective truth/good - God. It's awesome watching your spirituality grow when you take the time to study scripture, do good works, and to meditate and pray.
As far as an afterlife, I trust the Word, so it seems to me we might go to sleep after death, there really is oblivion, but at the end of time, we're reincarnated and some of us will make it to the second Creation while the rest evaporate forever. The sole entry criteria is how you treated people worse off than you. That's not to say it's the only motivation behind my charity and volunteering. The Gospel teaches that many people less spiritually-inclined or who came to religion late will absolutely get in before I do.
As far the free will discussion in this thread, it just seems blatantly axiomatic to me that we have it. We wouldn't be typing about it on an online discussion forum if we didn't. From a naturalistic point of view, it doesn't make sense that the only animal that evolved to have self-expression wouldn't in fact have a self to express. The idea that the soul is blind to itself is completely nonsensical - we can easily apprehend our behavior and our motivations and change ourselves to become better. Prey that's really bad at evading predators can't go to a self-help class to become a better escapist - it just dies off and its genes are discarded from the population. It's important to note that I don't need a religious argument for free will. Catholics don't believe in the theology because it's been dictated to us from the bishops - we believe it because it's true. The notion that we can use logic and reasons to understand the universe is not a secular scientific ideal - it's entirely premised on the Thomistic science and Augustinian philosophy of the Middle Ages.
I just don't see how things like language, abstractions, creativity, and civilization otherwise came to be - these entirely artificial ecosystems we've created according to our sensibilities as much as our environmental necessity. Too much of what defines us is completely unhinged from our survival programming and indeed goes against it. That's why I think the Cross, among other things, is the ultimate refutation of determinism. It's incontrovertible evidence that you can choose to supersede your survival programming, the social pressures of your culture, and even the laws of a legitimate state. That's not to say it's natural or easy for mankind to break our inclinations - the first among the apostles lost his shit when Christ told him he was going to Jerusalem to sacrifice himself.
I suspect the attack on free will is wholly motivated to support the fallacy that science undermines religious meaning. This view is woefully mistaken - marine biology and thermodynamics have no stake in your inherent value or purpose in life. The vast majority of neuroscience is devoted to the altruistic endeavor of recovering mobility and cognition in people suffering from disabilities. It's only these weird public personalities cultivating a commercial brand that misconstrue it to opine on metaphysics, without any training or credentials to back up their agenda. And even then, free will has no inherent bearing on religion or meaning. My wife is Buddhist-Taoist-Confuscist. She believes in all kinds of crazy supernatural and superstitious stuff. She honestly believes her Taoist masters have magical powers to see the future and into the afterlife. But she scoffs and ridicules videos I watch about free will.
The life and teachings of Jesus Christ have permanently and irreversible changed this world for the better. Those who attack the philosophical foundations of our society do so at the peril of us all.