I dug the following up someplace, read it twice and I think it makes sense... Maybe, maybe not? Do you know? Sigi
In the beginning life was simple. Amoeba and such ruled
the earth, and all was well.
Evolution caused ...what... evolution, of course! Life evolved, diversified,
grew with great abundance. After milltions of years, life forms got more
and more complex. Eventually, they reached a point where they consisted of a
number of specialized parts which had to function just right in order to
keep th eorganism alive. Thus, a central coordination element was "invented"
by evolution - the brain.
The brain was the ideal instrument to coordinate body functions, and as species
advanced, theyr brain grew in size and complexity to keep pace with the
development of their bodies. Then, one day (actually, during the course of
millions of years,) all body functions reached a state in which they
guaranteed optimal function of the body. Nature went from constructing
animals to refining them. Carnivores evolved to be better able to kill, eat,
and digest other animals. Herbivores evolved to make optimal use of plants
for food, and so on.
A few highly evolved species were a tiny bit better equipped, or so it
seems, to deal with their environment. Some mammals were now in a position
where they would not send all their waking time for the advancement of
their species. Nature invented something we have all come to love -
leisure time.
Those same mammals, man's earliest ancestors and, later perhaps, whales and
dolphins, had time to play, to be idle, to explore. As a result, their
brains started growing beyond what was required.
Until one day in our distant past, some early form of homo erectus had
enough brain mass to reach and exceed a critical point: (s)he "became aware"
that (s)he existed.
From that point on, brain capacity and what we now call intelligence
increased steadily. Usage of the new brain functions caused it to grow,
which in turn advanced its use, and so on. It's a process much like the
famous snowball effect, and it is still going on today.
We can thus say that awareness, better called consciousness,
begins at a moment where the brain increases in size (actually in number
of neurons?) to a point where the minimun amount of brain mass required for
survival is surpassed significantly. A human being obtains his/her
consciousness some time before birth, and it loses same at the point of death.
Let us consider an example. Surely, this is not a very scientific example,
and neither is it what many of you would expect, but in the history of
mankind, many bad examples have been told and many more are preached
on Sunday mornings. Let us liken homo sapiens to a candle. At some time,
the candle is lit and the wick burns away slowly. Later in time, some wind
may blow the candle out, or it may burn all the way doen and the flame will
extinguish due to a lack of combustible fuel.
Blowing out a candle has been researched scientifically. When blowing it out,
the flame is actually detached from the wick, and thus deprived of fuel.
It flickers off and is gone.
The theory is that man's consciousness (let's not use that famous word
soul, since it suggests something metaphysical which clearly
does not exist) at the tim eof death simply extinguishes, vanishes,
much like the flame of a candle when blown out. There is no rebirth, no
reincarnation, there is only the process of exceeding critical mass at the
beginning, and extinguishing at the end.
Thus, we live only once and when we die we're gone for good. Life
after death is the great promise of all religions. In thruth, life
after death is merely remembrance - people remember those who have died,
and it is in their minds that the dead "live on." No souls move
from one dead body to the next unborn. There is no heaven and
there is no hell, despite what those who for centuries, millenia even,
have done their very best to keep people in the dark, are preaching constantly.
There is only us and we exist only once. And most of all,
there is no final judgement after death because there is nothing.