The questions we ask are just as important as their answers. Consider:

Over the eons, mankind has searched and searched, utilizing all the tools of his wondrous mental faculties including logic, reason and imagination. Alas, no definitive answer regarding the afterlife has been discerned. It would seem that some questions are unanswerable.

But that's just the beginning of how we acquire knowledge. Thomas Edison was famous for (besides inventing the light bulb) asking the wrong questions literally thousands of times before he finally hit upon the right one (and then a light bulb went off above his head, literally).

There are two other questions, that although they are perhaps just as unanswerable, may shed some light on the human "condition". Both sound a lot more approachable than the "grand question", but upon digging into them, they're not much more tractable. However, due to the fact that they are legitimate, valid questions (not malformed in some semantic way), they actually do "shed some light" on the nature of being human.

First is a question that sounds somewhat similar to "is there an afterlife?", but it really isn't:

1) Why are you here?

Now I don't mean that metaphorically - I mean this question literally. Allow me to explain --- Why were you born in the specific country, city, even the hospital or clinic that you were in? Out of all the countries, states, hospitals, even taxicabs, why were you born where you were (which sets the path that will define much of your lifes experiences)? The odds of you experiencing reality (as you) out of all the people on the earth are staggeringly small. (Currently about 6,000,000,000 to 1 or so).

And second;

2) Why are you here, now?

Again, I mean this literally, at this point in time (which is really quite long - many billions of years have passed, and many billion more will follow...). Why were you born in your particular year, and not at the dawn of the caveman, or not 10,000 years from now? If the odds of being born as you (versus the other 6 billion of us) are long, the odds of being you out of all the people you could have been, or people who will come... The odds considering all of time are even longer.

But nevertheless - there you are, as you!

Scientifically, it doesn't make very much sense for each of us to be born where and when we were. However, virtually nothing is arbitrary in science, everything has cause (a basic premise of science).

But perhaps there is one branch of science that would purport to account for this anomaly; quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics subatomic properties are (at some levels) unpredictable. Electrons "pop" around atoms within certain areas, but cannot be pinned down to a single point. The math clearly defines it will be in an area, but it also clearly defines that you can't predict it will be in an exact spot.

One of the more recent giants in quantum physics, Richard Feynman, led off one of his lectures with an interesting observation, he said something like "As I drove over here I was trying to think of a good way to begin my lecture on quantum mechanics and probability. I thought and thought the whole drive, and had nothing. Finally, as I waited to pull into the campus I noticed the car in front of me had the license plate 475-23Y. I thought to myself, wow, that's weird, what are the chances that as I pulled in here, the car right in front of me would have the plate 475-23Y? The odds of that happening are astronomical! But the truth of the matter is that no matter what license plate it was, the odds would be equally astounding."

That's a very interesting observation, Dr. Feynman, but it really doesn't address the "spirit" of my point. It more or less addresses the overall statistics and probability aspect of it, and not the specific, localized effect each of us experiences "as one particular car".

So lets re-frame the idea to something a little more physical than a license plate number. Consider a raindrop falling down a window during a rainstorm. It zigs left, then zags right. Perhaps it zags right again, who knows which direction it will go - it almost appears to choose its direction. However, science tells us that due to tiny imperfections in the glass, the presence of more water (and its electrostatic forces) in one direction or the other, wind or other factors, the raindrop follows rules, even scientific laws.

And science tells us that is the case for you - (so say Darwin, Feynman, and others). You're a raindrop, following scientific rules and laws. Why are you that particular raindrop (here and now)?

As Dr. Feynman basically said, "someones got to do it - someone has to be the car in front of us".

For many of us, that's just not good enough for questions of this importance.

So, like Edison, we keep asking... Science tells us that all matter (like raindrops, cars, humans, nuclear bombs, etc) behaves exactly the same, based on a legion of scientific principles, rules, and laws, such as Newtons laws, Einsteins theories, and so forth. It really does seem as if science has worked out all kinds of behaviors and properties of matter and energy, space and time at this point (in time). But there's one extremely bizarre scientific oddity about the behavior of matter that may shed a little bit of light on that raindrop, and a whole lot more on the nature of ourselves.

According to the latest science, there is nothing more happening within our universe than basic quantum and macro physical processes occurring. However, within such a universe there is no capacity for what the quantum physicists call "observation" or observers (since even human observers too are nothing more than the same type of physical processes as those being observed within the universe - in other words, everything, or nothing should be an observer).

Whew - the first part of that is easy... but the second part, in italics? Don't worry, it's not the main point, just an "observation" along the way.... We've finally made it to the core of quantum mechanics, which relies entirely on the premise of "observation". Some readers may be familiar with the old "Schrodingers cat" thought experiment. The same concept also applies to the famous "double slit" coherent light experiments - where the simple presence of observation affects the experiments results.

In these double slit experiments (verified many, many times at this point), light behaves differently if a human is watching the experiment, than if a human is not watching. It's a truly stunning and unexplained behavior of matter in our physical world. It's definitely worth a little time to personally investigate all the details, as we're just going to go over the observer related aspect fairly quickly here.

In the "Double Slit" experiment mono-chromatic light (light of one wavelength/color) is shined on a wall containing two small slits on it. On another wall past the slits there is a distinct lighting pattern created, called an "interference pattern" (appearing as many bands of light and dark). This pattern is caused by the light "interfering" with itself, producing the light and dark bands. However, in dissecting how this occurs scientists discovered that if they try and determine which slit a particular photon of light passes through - the interference pattern disappears, and the back wall is lit normally (no interference pattern at all).

And yet it gets even stranger - If the experimenter detects which slit the photons go through, but then erases the observation before the light hits the wall (so no one will ever know which slit), the interference pattern returns!

From the wikipedia article on the Double Slit experiment ("quantum version" section):

"Reason, as applied to the events of our ordinary macro experience, tells us that a particle must pass through one slit or the other. The experiment tells us that there must be at least two slits to produce an interference pattern, and that anything that locates the particle before it hits the screen will destroy the interference pattern. Recent experiments have tried to identify which of the two slits a particle is coming out of on its way to the detection screen. Doing so will also prevent interference. Even less in line with the expectations of human scale interactions with nature, if the information about which slit a given particle came through is "erased" before a photon has time to interact with the detector screen, interference will be restored."

Hmmm... Collecting the data, but then erasing it (so it's never seen by a human) makes the light behave like "normal" again... (Told you it was strange....)

It seems another good question is presenting itself here. How could the behavior of light change based solely on whether a human observes the experiment? (versus all of the other ordinary matter that follows all of the same physical rules and laws that is also observing the experiment) What could possibly be different about us humans observing these tiny (but important) details of nature, versus the floors or walls of the detector, the air inside the apparatus that the light must interact with and transmit through, the dust or the screens which are also present inside the apparatus?

This effect gives us a significant discrepancy between man, and ordinary matter in regards to these types of experiments. Logic seems to point to something beyond our physical universe being involved, because logically, any type of ordinary physical matter should affect (or not) the experiment in the same way (regardless if it is air molecules, a potted plant, or a human).

(Some would point to quantum "field collapse" as the answer, however, various aspects of the double slit experiment wouldn't work properly if the probability waves collapsed randomly.)

And given that the effect only occurs due to human observation, then that something could very well be the missing non physical observer, from a quantum physics point of view.

Further, it would seem the source of this "observer" effect could only be caused by something not made of our universes matter, something essentially "not of this universe" (because ordinary matter in our universe does not cause this observation effect). Again, ordinary matter hanging around (interacting like the air molecules inside the apparatus, or observing the experiment such as dust particles or walls inside the apparatus) the experiment does not affect the results, only human observation does (even if it is indirectly done later, by reading the data files from the detectors well after the experiment has been completed, as has been documented).

And this something is what I've come to call spirit; it is that which enables us to observe, and experience our universe in the highly specific, arbitrary way (when and where) that we do.

And so if we were simply the product of physics, we would no more experience life, than say, a raindrop would experience its own journey. Your existence would just happen as run of the mill chemical reactions, and you wouldn't observe or "experience" it all, and definitely not any more than a raindrop observes or experiences it's own journey.

And regarding the earlier questions of why here, and why now? Perhaps the answer to that is the same answer as for Schrodingers cat, or the photons in the double slit experiment. Perhaps, like the photon and the "car in front of Dr. Feynman" (and "Schrodingers Cat" et al), without the external observer, each photon seems to simultaneously go through all possible paths, and any/all cars are possibly in front of you, (and Schrodingers cat is both dead AND alive). With an external observer, photons follow a certain path, and you're the specific car with license plate 475-23Y; you are you.

Science tells us that to go from a quantum state, to a specific state simply requires this external observer. And so science tells us that for you to be able to choose one door instead of another, one path from many, there must be an external observer. And again, this is what I call "spirit".

And so all of this leads me to believe that walls and floors, raindrops and photons are not "alive".

But I do believe in us.

PS: Please go look up Schrodingers cat, or the Double Slit experiment... It's very enlightening. Oh, and if you made it this far, and any of this made sense.... Kudos to you my friend, and don't forget to give my little hub a bump up. Thanx :)