As a friend of mine told me, when you die it will either go dark and you are gone, or it will be light and you will be someplace else. Beautiful in its simplicity, cutting through all the bullshit. ☺

A nicely reasoned piece Derek! I like your light bulb idea. What I would say as an adjunct is, yes the light bulb is no longer glowing, but the electricity is still flowing. An apple tree blossoms, gives fruit and then rests in the winter. At the next spring the tree blossoms again. Is this the same blossom? Clearly not, but the tree is still moving through its wake-blossom-give fruit-inertia cycle. Consistency at the core with change at the extremities. Stillness at the centre? I've heard that somewhere before!

Classically the "soul" is who you are in constitution. The "spirit" is what inhibits the being, think person or personae in greek means mask. So classically speaking, and currently, the soul and spirit are different concepts metaphysically.

Secondly, the interpretation of spirit as and in being a metaphysical manifestation, is classical. However, in modern context through linguistic and etymological roots, as well as psychological philosophy, the term spirit is derived from the greek term psyche, having to do with mind or mental modality, spirit = consciousness. what is the spirit of being... love, hate, haste, envy, gluton, vanity, ect...

Pretty sure the classics thought and taught in this manner. Though it was aligned with the invocation of a deity, a god, godess, demi-god, muse, fate, fury, ect...

So Spirit and Soul are two distinct philosophical and dogmatic principles.

It's the same as before we were born.

As a scientist and agnostic/atheist, I do not accept the supernatural in any way shape or form. If a religionist asks me why I don't believe, that is what I tell them. There is a huge amount of history behind the bible, for example, I just don't believe the supernatural references. Likewise, when we consider the afterlife, I must believe that it is just like turning a light off. When you are put under for surgery for example, do you remember anything? No, because there are no processes going on in the brain. To suggest that there is something that comes after sends us into the realm of supernatural. All the weird crazy things that physicists have shown us, regardless of how unbelievable are indeed natural processes.
When some great, wonderful, intelligent person dies, I would love to think that somewhere their spirit is carrying on that spark that they brought to humanity. But alas, I think it is like shutting down a computer that has many gigabites of great photos on the hard drive. It's all gone when it is shut down. I would love to believe in reincarnation so that we continue this cycle on and on. I really hope that it is the case, but I am not going to bet my life on it. I live everyday with the knowledge that this is it. Everything that we can see, touch taste etc. is all that there is. And if I am wrong, and I come back as another person, well great! This would suggest that there is a natural order that we are not aware of. But at this point in our collective knowledge, this would fall under the category of supernatural.

I think Sam Harris addressed this succinctly and with humor...

I currently believe that what we are physically merely changes form upon death but who our thoughts think we are while humanly alive ceases to exist once we're dead except in other minds who are living.