Impossible or Just Unpleasant?

In comments, TMcD suggests that "the impossibility of cognizing the experience of death rationally" makes "the religious imagination a human necessity." But is it true that it's impossible to cognize (not sure what work "cogniz[e]" is doing) the experience of (again, not sure what work "experience of" is doing here) death rationally? Or is it just the case that the thought of our personal extinction is, well, unpleasant? It seems to me that it's easy to conceptualize death. Go to the wall and flick the light switch. One second the light is on, the next, it's off. The off position is death.

Btw, there's an article in The Atlantic this month offering a cognitive science explanation of "the religious imagination." Now, generally, I'm hostile to cognitie science explanations of complex/symbolic behavior, because such studies usually focus on the locus of brain activity rather than any explanation for the content/meaning of that behavior. (Or, in other words, we cannot bridge "the structure of the brain to contents of the mind" gap. Not yet.) But maybe human beings are just hard-wired to not believe in our own mortality.

But even if that's in our wiring, that doesn't mean that we are immortal. I think that that needs emphasis.