Originally Posted by Oneironaut
Back when people didn't understand what causes consciousness, they called the source of consciousness the "soul" and proposed that it lives forever. We have since discovered the soul. It is a very real physical object, but its existence is temporary. We call it the nervous system.
Your personality, your memories, your emotions and your knowledge is nothing but a collection of trillions of neurons firing around in your brain. We know this for a fact. When somebody experiences brain damage, their personalities, memories, emotions and knowledge are also damaged. When somebody ingests mind-altering chemicals, their personalities, memories, emotions and knowledge are altered. This would not happen if the source of personality, memory, emotion and knowledge was in some non-physical entity of some sort. The soul is the brain and nothing more; the brain is temporary, and that means your time to experience anything is also limited. When you die, that's it. Your brain stops functioning and decomposes, ending all subjective experience you have and erasing your personality, memories, emotions and knowledge from the universe. You only have one chance at seeing the universe, and that's it, so make it count.