There is one point I am not clear on. I am hoping to hear from those leaning towards the atheist/no God perspective. My question is, "Even if there are no Gods, do you believe in the possibility of life after death or a non-physical/spiritual side to reality?"
While I don't believe in a soul or afterlife per-se, there is one thing I've always wondered about. Since
my belief is that consciousness arises from the brain, what happens if you take apart my constituent atoms and reassemble them somewhere else in exactly the same pattern? I think the reassembled atoms would remember being me, but would I personally experience a continuous existence before and after, like going to sleep and waking up? What happens if you copy/paste instead of cut/paste? Would I experience being in two places at once, or have a random chance of ending up in either copy? What about if you replicate the pattern in silicon instead of meat? I'm sure it'll be quite a while until we have definite answers to these questions, unfortunately.
As I have had experiences with communication from those no longer living, I do believe in our having a soul and a non-physical existence after death. So, I do have a bit of a different viewpoint on the brain/consciousness relationship. I see the physical brain as more of a receiver that translates non-physical thoughts and desires into physical action. I have questioned what is the source that initiates an original that? Neurons exist in a ready state to send a nerve impulse, but it is not random chance or a chemical cause that enables them to fire in a way that allows free will to function. Their firing is like the collapse of a probability wave function. I cannot explain how this is accomplished without the source being non-physical.
That line of thinking also leads to another fascinating question.
Am I the same person from moment to moment? If consciousness and memory arises from a particular arrangement of neurons and the chemical signals they transmit, will the me that exists in this instant exist in the next? Or will it be a new me that simply has the memories of old me? Have billions of me's come into existence, experienced an instant and then vanished into the ether while I was writing this post? Does it really matter, since I don't appear to notice the process? (Beyond a bit of introspective metacognition, anyway)
Great question! Physically all the atoms in our bodies are changed every seven years or so. But, we still seem to be the same person physically, more or less. Consciously, we are not the same as we were as a child or last year. We change with the experiences found in every moment. Although we are constantly changing, learning and growing, I feel that the overall essence of our being remains the same. So, yes you are not the same person you were a moment ago and yet you are.
Hmm...I know Stephen Hawking believes in ET's, who's to say they aren't gods to some? In that case, Hawking believes in God...
