Appreciate the response. I don't claim to know anything about God other than that he (default pronoun for simplicity) is the creator of all. God did not come to be. That would make him a part of his own creation. Something cannot come from nothing, so God was always there. I don't know our purpose either or whether there even is one. I also don't believe free will can logically exist.

Regarding the afterlife, I would point you in the direction of Near Death Experiences (NDEs). These are the closest things we have to scientific proof of an afterlife. I was originally a skeptic, but after watching UVa's presentation (linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KhtRnbl8ZE), I believe NDEs are real and a currently unexplainable phenomenon - not just anecdotal accounts of wishful thinking. It's likely there is some extracorporeal mode of perception that still feeds to our brain. This can seemingly be triggered by certain NDEs.

Outside of NDEs, I don't have a clue how an afterlife would manifest for us if at all.

I think science will continue to help us make breakthrough discoveries that offer sound explanations for what we observe. What we learn of existence will also help us on the way to determining God's nature. Just remember that the explanations provided through science are not empirical and can be disproven or revised in the future (I.e., Newton). Although, they are effective and practical - real for all intensive purposes. It is our collective observations that are empirical, after all, each individual's reality is shaped by their own knowledge and observation.