Life after Death (Consciousness)

Science does not understand how the mind works (contrary to how the well known psychologist, Steven Pinker, misleads us). There is no mechanism for how the brain can generate thoughts let alone how consciousness could come about. Brain cells have not been shown to give us thoughts and consciousness. Having a soul would explain all this if we choose to or deem it necessary to invoke the soul.

® We are conscious of our existence but also are capable of being conscious of our mortality or immortality, and coming to the realization that it is all for naught if we do not have eternal life – one could kind of think of this as the next level beyond consciousness. Considering we have such a high level of consciousness, I think we all have (to varying extents just like other traits) some part of our brain (coded for genetically which was probably designed for although it could have evolved also) which somehow stops us from thinking about the possibility we could cease to exist. Because the anxiety would be too great and would be such a detriment to us. For there is no evolutionary benefit to having such a level of consciousness if this anxiety comes with it and in fact would be a really harmful trait to have for any species with this accompanying burden. To later evolve a compensating trait (this ‘filter’ to stop us from thinking about ceasing to exist) would not make sense in terms of evolution – it would have to come about at the same time as the jump in consciousness and this is so highly improbable (much like an irreducible complexity scenario). Otherwise, this level of consciousness would be filled with such anxiety that it would be too much of an impediment for survival and would not be passed on – it would be a very negative mutation indeed.

The other possibility is that to keep us from being too anxious of our own mortality, our consciousness would have to be held back and evolve to this higher level we now possess in a series of steps. In between somewhere along the way to this advancement in mans consciousness, before it got to the point we were aware of our mortality/immortality implications and the state of hopelessness we would have been put in, this limitation on such thoughts would have to have evolved. Of course this would mean evolution is planning ahead and this is not what it does and we should not have to put it down to evolution being very lucky. Nor does the evidence showing the evolution of our consciousness show it occurred in a series of steps and instead the evidence shows a one time big jump in consciousness.

® From birth to say the age of 5 there is such a jump in our cognitive abilities and consciousness and thereafter at a much slower rate. It seems as if the brain develops just enough to allow some of our consciousness through (otherwise the ‘reducing valve’ is too strong – for example, prior to the age of 2). Consciousness is what likely gives us this “jump” to our brains. It hardly seems it can all just be attributable to some extra neural connections and accounted for by the brain alone. Thus, it looks like we start with a blank state for memories (along with life experiences) but not for consciousness. As we develop (and get older), further neural connections formed in the brain, allow us to utilize our consciousness better.

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