There is a problem with saying things like, "There is no evidence of God," or, "There is no evidence of an afterlife," or even, "There is no evidence of things like ghosts or angels or whatever someone is claiming they have experienced or thought up or imagined." It is not true; there is evidence.

Vietnam is somewhat ghost-ridden, and the people are afraid of them: now I am in Cambodia and I hear nothing about them and when I ask, I get a smile and a comment I must be Vietnamese.  (Vietnamese rebirth theory says how successful you are at getting reborn tend to be associated with your karma level and therefore evil people become ghosts and are to be feared; the Cambodians I guess are less judgmental and think everyone is reborn within hours of death and therefore ghosts don't exist -- much).

Now all this is evidence.  It is not proof, but it is evidence.  Were I to take surveys about rebirth, almost everyone has a notion of what their past life was like, and many have rather clear memories or experiences of deja vu that they attribute to past lives.  In the West you also get a lot of this sort of testimony, even though, the religious expectations being different, one would not expect it.
I think the problem is the milk is sour -- in fact putrid -- because of religion.  Dogmatism ("My notions are right and yours are evil") has turned anyone with a skeptical or even curious mind off -- and no scientist would risk his career studying such things.  All you get are professional scam artists milking the ideas for money and professional debunkers pointing out the tricks of the scam artists (and it ain't hard to do).

Nor is it necessary to be a hard rock-ribbed "materialist" to disbelieve, or at least strongly doubt, that there is any reality behind all this.  I have I think developed a two-tiered personal level of belief -- a highly agnostic one teetering on disbelief when it comes to what I will defend publicly and a series of what I guess is more likely the reality but for which it is impossible to gather reliable evidence, the milk being so sour.

Nor, of course, is the ultimate retreat of the agnostic ("I don't think it's possible to know") an honest position -- it is a cop out -- we should at least make speculation and then test the speculation and I wish the environment were such that this were possible.  Maybe in a few hundred years, when the dogmatic religions have disappeared (not that is optimistic -- it may be that dogmatists will always be with us) it will be possible to explore these subjects more objectively.  Could  I only live so long.