There you sit, looking out of your head and you wonder… how is it I am me.

    A person is a product of his environment. All of the interactions carried out in living this thing we call life go into making an individual unique. There are some innate things we are born with, a matter we call instinct, things not learned but done because organisms before us have done them again and again. They are innate in our genes.

    How is this possible? How can mere organic processes, brain cells, produce such an experience as consciousness? Human awareness is such that it seems indestructible, that it is separate from material existence… that even if we die, we think it, our consciousness, must go on. The answer to this is never satisfying.

    Humans are a product of at least three billion years, perhaps more, of evolutionary processes. A painstakingly slow advancement of continuous change and adaptation. Yes, humankind itself has been around possibly 2 million or so years, with various forerunners of homo sapiens having been around perhaps as much as 8 million years. However, we are not just a product of that line, but all that came before. Evolution, like some stupid inventor, making mostly bad additions, but enough good additions to the arsenal of life, has produced a being capable of self-appraisement, self-awareness.

    What does this mean? It means there is no purpose to life but its existence. There are no beings standing in the wings guiding evolution, nor a creator… humans are too imperfect to have been created by a perfect God. It means there is no soul. There is no life after death. Just like the animals we kill for food, or that live their lives in the wild, when humans die… that’s all there is. There ain’t no more.