Perhaps there's no answer to be found

I don't know how likely vaccines are very beneficial or very harmful.

4.) Note: What I'm going to explain will lead up to the 4th reason being revealed: When it comes to controversial topics, there are experts in their specific fields. For example, there are paranormal experts (those who've done years of research regarding the claim of the paranormal), and there are professional skeptics (those who've done years of research regarding the natural world and scientific materialism, which is the idea that consciousness is nothing more than brain function, aka: "Once the brain dies, the mind goes with it.").

Regarding vaccines, you don't need to do research. All you need to do is think about all the doctors and journalists and medical researchers who've been forced to research this before you, and then consider that if, at minimum, most vaccines didn't do more good than harm, they'd be warning you about that. Then you can also consider that the purely greed-based corporations that create the vaccines would also have a strong incentive to make vaccines safe so as not to send their stock plumetting into the underworld. For this reason, it'd make sense for someone to consider the effectiveness of one specific vaccine, but considering the idea that most vaccines aren't doing more good than harm is only slightly more rational as considering whether or not Earth is flat.

That said, I think you're wise to acknowledge that the experts are typically going to be smarter than us. That's what they're there for: so we don't have to think about every little thing. We just have to do enough thinking to determine that they're trustworthy.

Paranormal experts, however, if they're being honest, pretty much only find questions rather than answers. They've spent years on that, but they've found nothing that suggests their ideas have merit. They've just searched - not found, so that's not comparable to doctors finding cures to diseases and things that prove their hypothesis correct.

It's worth noting that even if consciousness is more than brain function, it'd be quite another major jump between that an an afterlife (a fact that people who tell themselves an afterlife exists often unconsciously skip over due to emotional bias, most likely, to make the concept of an afterlife seem more plausible.)

The main reason why people who think upon the topic without bias don't believe in an afterlife is merely because, I can alter the way my mind works through environmental effects, so it seems like if me scrambling my physical brain somehow can hinder my thought process, then ending my physical brain's activity would end my thought process.

Now, people who consider the prospect of an afterlife often propose that the "soul" is something like a signal that goes to a radio, with the body being the radio, and so even if the radio is destroyed the soul remains...but that's pre-supposing the existence of something we have no reason to believe exists yet nor to make assumptions about how it works, much less that our "soul" radio signal that supposedly remains after our bodily "radio" is destroyed in any way resembles anything you'd describe as "you" or I'd describe as "me."

So really, any belief in an afterlife is going to be rooted in a whole lot of nothing but mentally skipping over things that should not be skipped over if we want our hypothesis to be plausible...which is a common tendency when god and religion-related thought is involved due to all the bias associated with it.

In response to those Christians who'd say your supposed ignorance is inexcusable, I'd point out A: God has several traits that no patterns in reality point to being true, and therefore God's existence appears to be impossible, and therefore significantly less likely than another possible explanation of people throughout history just being wrong. I'd also point out that even if everything in the Bible is true, that could all be accomplished by non-divine aliens who don't need to have any of the impossible traits of a God (like telekinesis or thoughts existing outside of a brain) and therefore flawed, mortal aliens having done all of that for some reason using technology would be the more plausible explanation than God being real.

Regarding your statement: "Why not stop trying to put a label on whatever your position is...and simply live with that position?"

In my youth I did that, and it felt wrong...like people didn't know the full me. I will be single for life, but if I had a significant other I'd without question want her to know my religious beliefs (although I have relatives that that's not a big deal for, who don't discuss it...but that wouldn't work for me. I'm too interested in deep discussions about things like that to not have talking about that be an important part of a relationship between me and someone I'd share a life with). But also...I think there are definitely strategic advantages to society for atheists to loudly claim to be atheists. God-belief doesn't come through logic, so we need to contemplate other possible sources, and one very likely partial source is: "Everybody else believes it, so perhaps I should believe it too," and so the more people who claim not to believe it, the less convincing that may be, so I think it can be good to contemplate and define our beliefs.

I think "atheist has a pretty commonly understood, but vaguely understood meaning, which is a lack of belief in Gods. The question is, what is a God? I think "God" also has a pretty commonly understood, but vaguely understood meaning too. I'd say a monotheistic God is a sapient, singular, universe-ruling entity that was not designed through technology and who possesses illogical traits.

It likely sounds like I'm being rude when I define God as having illogical traits, but I think that's just a historically necessary part of what most people think of a God as. If its existence is pointed to by the patterns we see in reality, it just won't be called a God. It's going to typically be called an alien or unintelligent nature or something. So, I'd say humanity has typically defined God as a powerful, sapient, universe-ruling entity whose existence is impossible, and we just typically ignore the impossible part and find some way to convince ourselves that its existence is possible based on ignoring the reasoning processes we use to typically determine whether or not things are possible.

So, that's what I mean when I say "God." I figure it's like, people imagined aliens after thinking the reasonable process of "humans exist. Therefore other tool-using life might exist on other planets." and then proceeding to contemplate how they might behave and think. They can do many similar things as Gods, but unlike gods, there will be reasonable explanations.

Gods, alternatively, being largely defined by their impossibility, simply use magic, such as Zues transforming into a swan.

Another shorter definition of a "god" I've used in the past has been: "a subcategory of alien whose existence is impossible due to having impossible traits." I think that would apply well if we're referring to polytheistic gods, who of course are not just one singular God. The main difference between polytheistic gods and aliens, I'd say, is pretty much just that I'd argue aliens are possible and polytheistic gods are not, which we can tell based on the traits they have.

So, there could be some kind of super-computer controlling our universe as a computer simulation, but that would be possible, so it's not a god, but rather an alien (if it's sentient) or an alien construct if it's not.

There could be aliens with the ability to inhabit new bodies, such as through uploading their consciousness into them after centuries of research, but because that's possible, they'd be aliens, not gods. Zues, on the other hand, who can simply shapeshift into a swan without explanation, is therefore an impossible being, and therefore Zues is a god rather than an alien.

Now, of course there are a lot of people with more broad views of God than that, like Baruch Spinoza and Einstein who ponder the existence of gods who might exist (because the beliefs of Einstein and Baruch Spinoza may well have been nearly indistinguishable from the typical beliefs of atheists), but I don't think those are the types of gods that atheists are referring to when they claim a lack of belief in God.