(I will capitalize REASON whenever possible...I mean this in many senses, and capitalization serves as emphais!)
There is no machinery behind the facade. What you see is what there is.
What you feel, well, that's not necessarily what there is.
Feelings are a result of evolution of personality, and are all about our social nature, since we evolved to live in groups...they are chemistry too, as are the thoughts you are having while reading this...but they are all contained within your ears.
The separation we all feel, of our thoughts separate from our bodies, is an illusion.
There is no separation from our bodies by our thoughts. Thoughts are TOTALLY contained in the chemistry within our bodies. The separation illusion allows us to do "rote" tasks (like breathing, or walking, or a myriad of other activities) while we are thinking of something entirely different.
It also gives rise to the idea that our minds are somehow separate entities that can survive on their own! NOT.
Your nervous system does not control anything outside of your body, not now, and not when you die.
There is no REASON to believe that we have a soul, distinct from our bodies and mind.
Very useful to be a thinking creature, and mankind has been quite successful (in both range and total population on the planet, we are as numerous as any other large land mammal has ever been!).
We know the thoughts within our minds are contained in the chemistry in our bodies...encoded somehow (some say holograms...whatever) in the neural network of our nervous system, brain and bodies.
No one claims a REASON on how thoughts could be separate from bodies, since that isn't our experience.
We by no means understand exactly what thoughts are or how they form or for how long they last with or without reinforcement and how reliable they are etc. etc. etc.
But no one argues that thoughts are somehow extra-corpular, don't we all agree that thoughts are electrical potential within our nervous systems that allow us to experience shared reality?
This leads me to the question...where is the information storage for god in the universe?
On what particle of matter does god exist?
If god is not at all material, on what basis is the information encoded?
What allows god to operate at greater than light speeds (being everywhere and knowing everything...)?
What holds the thoughts of god?
As I said above, humans are social creatures, and we evolved in groups. In the extended family that is the basic unit of human existence there was an alpha. That leader was to be obeyed (unless one was a teenage male attempting to upset the harem or whatever), THEIR VERY LIVES DEPENDED ON IT.
So, obedience to a "father-figure" is "built-in", simply because of our social heritage, WE'VE EVOLVED IT as a means to keep the group under control. Therefore, evolutionary forces are at work, as the god belief is far more ingrained and widespread than simple indoctrination could explain. There is a place in our brain that accepts authority, the Chief's authority.
(The chief may not always have been a male by the way...in the really olden days...)
Having a concept such as "god" around is quite useful as a placeholder, something that we don't or can't know, and all of those things that are unknown are attributed to god.
Humans have evolved (SOCIALLY) to use a crutch like god to be more successful.
This happened a long time before agriculture and the current trend towards monotheism, which grew out of the fields!
The current idea of god as father figure (the traditional on a throne white bearded fellow) is only a recent rendition of god.
So, evolution of our social nature makes it easy to believe in god, a higher power, a boogey man for the kids, a catch-all bucket within which to put whatever is unknown...and by naming the unknown, we make it less scary and more under our control...even while "giving control to god".
The whole idea is childish actually and literally (somehow people actually think somehow the very idea of god is good for kids! I'm not much in favor of anything that doesn't help kids understand the REAL world.)
We're here because the universe, as it formed over time, brought what was needed to have life exist here, whenever and however it was created and formed.
No one argues (well, no cosmologist would argue) that the chemicals we find around us are made from elements that were fused within stars. We literally are made of star dust.
Whatever happened to float on by in this region of the galaxy was just what was needed to have life form.
I don't claim to have all the answers about how life formed or how evolution got us to what we observe today.
I know exactly how unlikely it was to have happened.
(This part of the Galaxy (not in the radiation filled center, where almost all the mass of the galaxy is!), on a rocky planet (not on a gas giant which are by far and away the mass of the solar system), that has a water cycle (not too common we're guessing, just the right distance from the star and just enough of whatever it took for life to form so that the oxygen and water cycles could ensue on the planet. Not too likely, any of it!)
The most obvious observation we're here, THEREFORE LIFE HAPPENED.
Although it may have happened in parallel multiple times until life "took" here on Earth...it only HAD to happen once.
I believe science will someday, given enough time and experimentation and observation, understand it all.
Why would an "intelligence" need to be behind any of it? I see no REASON.
If humans are around long enough…and, therein lies the rub… The universe selects against "intelligence" whatever that is...
We see no "Contrails of Advanced Civilizations" in the stars...we hear no telepathic chatter of disembodied highly evolved intelligences that float between the stars (I mean, we're already here 15 BILLION (BILLION IS A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME!) YEARS, SO WHERE ARE THEY?)
evolution selects against "intelligence"...
"NATURE" does what it does. Intelligence cannot avoid nature or stem Nature's twitch or shrug that will remove humanity from the Earth. There is no intelligence in the Universe, it cannot coexist with nature.
GAIA selects against intelligence... while using our culture and technology to follow our biological imperative to obtain energy from any possible ecological niche. Igloos and spears and ice saws, or poison darts to fell prey out of the rain forest, humanity is pretty good at exploiting a wide variety of ecological niches.
Our intelligence will wipe us out, long before we're star trekkers!
That's why there are no signs of extraterrestrials, since there aren't any, their intelligence wiped them out if they ever existed!
We (all life forms taken as a whole in this case) are simply fulfilling the GEOLOGIC PROCESSES of planet Earth.
The Solar System and Planet Earth formed with the potential for life.
It is simply part of the geology and chemistry of our planet and solar system and, as "luck" would have it, we're here.
We are no more than the sum of our chemical processes. The slaves of the biology and geology that reared us. We're much dependent on being Earth-Bound actually.
Some think bioforming or terraforming or genetic mutation will somehow allow humanity to exist for longer than geology and evolution would otherwise allow...
We encounter, ingest, and digest, and turn sugars and oxygen into heat and sound and motion and digestion and thoughts and "night soil" and sweat and whatever else our chemistry accomplishes, and then we no longer operate and so die.
Why is this so hard to believe? Seems evident. Seems obvious. It is what we see happening, nothing is not explained.
Life is Chemistry
Evolving into niches
Expend Energy
