I made a post on Reddit in response to someone telling the story of how they had to break up with their girlfriend, because she lost her memory in an accident and no longer remembers him. I said: That is to say, even if there is an afterlife, will we be capable of remembering who we are? The way I understand it now, our memories are kept in the synapses and physical presence of our mortal brain. I don't believe in any religion. Each one tries to interpret our reality into their own story, for me it's just a distraction from discovering the real truth. There are anecdotes from personal experiences that I have led me to believe we are connected in ways we have not discovered yet. So, I do believe there is something more out there for us, but in the end, those anecdotes were only sensory responses and there really is no recourse.Things like this make me depressed, because it only confirms [in my interpretation anyway], that who we are as a person is not an inherit part of our psyche, but only the accumulated amalgamation of memories and experiences that can be wiped away as easily as a hard drive.
Each one tries to interpret our reality into their own story, for me it's just a distraction from discovering the real truth. This. I can't call myself a christian because I don't believe that one random jewish carpenters son was the fulfillment of divine will. I believe there is something greater than man out there, but to try and ascribe human characteristics and desires to something as incomprehensible as God just seems like the worst kind of species-wide ego-stroking.
I can't subscribe to any kind of thinking that implies we, as an animal on this planet, know how everything works. That is how I feel about religion and that it is exactly egocentric - like, we as a species are superior to anything on our planet and in our universe. Just thinking about how.. for example, we don't even see all the wavelengths of the colour spectrum, don't hear past a certain +/- amount of dBs, don't fly, can't breathe underwater, and a lot of other things I can list for an hour that some other animals are capable of - how can we be so certain in our understanding of life and everything if there are hard limits to what we experience?
Funnily enough there is a Battlestar Galactica quote that addresses this. I've only seen a few episodes personally but I came across this quote one night. Cavil: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star supernova? Ellen: No. Cavil: No. Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the universe, other stars, other planets, and eventually other life, a supernova, creation itself. I was there. I wanted to see it, and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull. With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, with ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air. Ellen: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible. Cavil: I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to — I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more, I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in this absurd body. And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way.