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JoshuaZ comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong
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I'm curious if you actually put as much thought into this as you claim to. I'm also curious if you grew up in a largely Christian environment. This entire piece sounds a bit like motivated cognition. In particular, I have to wonder whether your justification for throwing out Judaism as being "almost impossible to convert into" reflects an actual attempt to investigate this matter. Depending on the denomination/movement, the time it takes can vary from a few weeks or months (in some Reform versions) to as long as 2-3 years (in Orthodox forms). It also seems like you didn't do much research because under your framework there are much stronger reasons to reject Judaism. In particular, the vast majority of forms of Judaism don't believe in eternal damnation, and those that do generally severely limit the set of people whom it applies to. You seem to have an associated problem in generalizing about Christianity and Islam in that there are universalist or close to universalist forms of both those religions. Not only that, but even among non-universalists there is a chance for members of other religions to go to heaven. (If one were just looking at the Abrahamic religions for example and trying to minimize one's chance of hell, Judaism might make the most sense since many forms of Christianity and Islam are ok with that). But you seem to have also simply avoided thinking about many religious traditions, such as Mormonism and the Ba'hai.
I'd like to think I put as much thought into it as I think so! :P I don't think I wrote down the answer first and then filled in the proof, but I suppose I can't be totally sure I didn't. I did get raised in a Christian environment, but we were hardly the type who'd go to Church every week.
One of my friends as a teenager had his mother converting into Judaism; apparently people who convert into the religion have to go through the diet strictures and whatnot extra-strictly. That's what I meant by "almost impossible to convert into". My understanding of the Jewish view of the afterlife is that they either go to Heaven or cease existing (Sheol) which is infinitely worse than eternal hellfire, and a decent Christian will still get into Jewish heaven since we'd follow the Noahide laws, so that way I'm covered.
Mormonism was rejected because the guy who founded it was a known con man, and the nature of the Book of Mormon is such that if it is true, you can't not believe in it and go to Heaven, and if it isn't, then you can't believe in it and go to Heaven. Since he was a con man and therefore it probably isn't true, it's probably not a good idea to believe in it.
I'll admit that I don't think I did much looking into Bahai, other than seeing that they were basically a religion that splintered off of Islam. Looking it up on Wikipedia, though, it looks like they believe in reincarnation? Bleh. My mind is who I am; if it gets deleted when I go onto the next world, there's no point.
One other thought: If you are as concerned about continuing to exist as you say you are then you should be much more worried about religions in which believers don't stop existing and non-believers do stop at death. In that case, your options become a bit more limited. I take it you aren't either a Jehovah Witness or a classical Karaite?