Is Consciousness Conserved and Is there Life After Death?
- Our description of the universe would be pointless if conservation laws wouldn't apply: it would be impossible to calculate what happens in the future
- Mass-energy, angular momentum and electric charge are all conserved.
- Consciousness is "created" when someone is born, and gets "destroyed" when someone dies.
- Is consciousness is a "quantity" that get conserved too?
- Humans have always had a hard time to accept that the "soul" disappears at death. Hence the various beliefs in metempsychosis and reincarnation.
- If consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon of physical brain processes, maybe it makes no sense to speak of it being conserved: when your brain dies, your consciousness dies too. Forever. It never existed before your brain was created and it will never exist again after your brain decomposes.
- If, however, consciousness is more than just a product of the brain, then one has to wonder where it comes from at birth and where it goes after death. And whether it is conserved like mass-energy and angular momentum.
- Does the new consciousness of a newborn come from pre-existing consciousness of some kind? Does your consciousness become available for something else after you die?
- Does consciousness fluctuate inside us, in and out, just like our weight changes when we eat or defecate, just like our energy rises and falls? Do we exchange consciousness with others the way materials exchange mass when they are heated or pressed?
- If consciousness is more "material" than religions assume, then maybe it does "survive" after death, and maybe there is "life" of some kind after death.
- Perhaps that is why humans need to kill so many animals. Not to feed their bodies, but to generate enough available consciousness of future generations.
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