How Would Viewpoints Differ If Life or Mind Were Drastically Different?

An interesting question is: if life or mind worked very, very differently, would viewpoints change about philosophical questions such as the existence of God, life after death and whether life is purposeful -- and if so, how would they change?

Prelude: The Reality We Find Ourselves In

First, let me make a little sketch of the reality we find ourselves in. Some may disagree with some of my statements, but at least this little sketch will "set the stage" for some of the interesting thought experiments to come, in which I discuss alternate realities very different from our own. 

• Physically human beings are organisms of enormous physical organization and complexity.  Subatomic nucleons are organized into atomic nuclei, which (along with electrons) are organized into atoms, which can be organized into particular types of molecules (consisting of about 10 to 20 atoms) called amino acids, which are organized into protein molecules, which are organized into organelles, which are organized into cells, which are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems, which (along with a skeletal system) are the main large-scale parts of human bodies. 
• Human bodies arise through an extremely mysterious process. There is nothing mysterious about the earliest instant of this process: a single male sperm unites with a female egg at the moment of conception, the result being a fertilized zygote. What is extremely mysterious is how this simple cell (a zygote) manages to somehow progress to become a full human body.  Were it true that DNA contains assembly instructions for how to build a body, the nine-month process of human development might not be so mysterious. But since no such assembly instructions exist in DNA, the progression from a tiny speck-sized zygote to the enormous organization in the full body of a new-born baby is profoundly mysterious. 
• Human minds are extremely complex things with a huge number of capabilities. It is alleged that an organ in the human body explains such minds. But scientists have not been able to well-substantiate such claims. For example, we lack any understanding of how neurons could produce such things as thinking, imagination and self-hood.  And we lack any real understanding of how a brain can explain the marvels of human memory such as instant recall of complex facts after hearing a single name. 
• We live in a universe that has just the right characteristics to allow organisms such as ourselves to exist. Each proton has a rest mass 1836 times greater than the rest mass of each electron. Scientist Ethan  Siegel yesterday published an article yesterday on how life would not exist if the electron mass differed by a factor of 100.  He failed to mention a sensitivity of electron characteristics a billion times greater: the fact that planets would not hold together if the charge of each electron was not the exact opposite of the charge of each proton.  In his book The Symbiotic Universe, astronomer George Greenstein (a professor emeritus at Amherst College) says this about the equality of the proton and electron charges: "Relatively small things like stones, people, and the like would fly apart if the two charges differed by as little as one part in 100 billion. Large structures like the Earth and the Sun require for their existence a yet more perfect balance of one part in a billion billion." In fact, experiments do indicate that the charge of the proton and the electron match to eighteen decimal places. 

Alternate Reality Scenario #1: Minds Without Bodies

A very simple scenario to imagine is a community of human minds existing without there being any kind of corresponding bodies. We can imagine minds that would be like disembodied spirits, free to float around in any direction, up or down. People would need no food to eat or water to drink, and they would need no shelter to protect them from the cold. Such disembodied minds might exist on planets, or they might exist in a disorganized universe without planets (because such disembodied minds would not require planets for their existence).  A new disembodied mind might be kind of non-physically parented when two disembodied minds mutually willed to create a new disembodied offspring. It might even be possible for a single person to instantly have a child by willing very hard to produce a new disembodied person. 

How would such beings explain their existence?  You might think that such disembodied people would surely regard their disembodied minds as proof of a purposeful universe and the existence of God. But we should not underestimate how resourceful people can be when they are determined to believe that they are random accidents in a purposeless universe in which there exists nothing higher than themselves. It could well be that a large group of these disembodied people would teach that the existence of disembodied minds was simply "the way nature works," and not evidence of any planning or intention of some mind higher than themselves. Such a group might be encouraged by what would be a lack of any physical evidence (in their universe) of any physical bodies showing high levels of purposeful organization. It might be that in their universe nothing at all showed any signs of purposeful physical organization. There might be no organisms at all with bodies, and might not even be any organized planets or galaxies.  Even if their minds were very organized, organization in minds is not as obvious as physical organization. 

Alternate Reality Scenario #2: Low-Complexity Bodies Without Much Organization

An alternate reality scenario very easy to imagine is one in which people had bodies that showed very little signs of any complexity or organization. In such a reality there would be no DNA, no protein molecules consisting of thousands of well-arranged atoms, no very complex cells, and no complex organ systems.  The shape of people might be very simple. People, for example, might have a very simple ball-like shape. We can imagine humans without any of the very complex physical organization needed to have vision. Rather than having to plant crops or search for animals to eat, such organisms might get food by merely opening their mouths, and sucking in nutritious particles floating about in the air.  

In such an alternate reality, it might be that people would be less prone to regard themselves as living in a purposeful universe controlled by some power higher than themselves. If they saw no impressive signs of purposeful complexity in their bodies, and saw no great signs of purposeful organization in other organisms living on their planet, such people might be more prone to believe that they and their species were mere accidents of nature.  

Alternate Reality Scenario #3: Humans With Minds Like Ours, But Without Brains 

A rather easy alternate reality scenario to imagine is humans with bodies just like regular bodies and minds just like regular human minds, except for there being an absence of  any brains at all. Such human might look a little like the imaginary figure below, with no significant amount of flesh above the eyes, only hair. 

 

Would an absence of any brain cause such humans to recognize that their minds must be souls? Not necessarily. We must not under-estimate the great resourcefulness of people intent on denying the reality of a human soul. It seems that certain people are determined to believe that they are soulless accidents of nature, no matter what they observe.  Minds of this type would not be terribly discouraged by a lack of any brain in their body. They would probably theorize that their minds are produced by something else in their body. Maybe they might theorize that their skin produces their mind, or that their memories are stored in their hairs. Or they might claim that their livers have three functions: regulating chemicals in the body, secreting bile, and also producing thoughts and storing memories. If such had been the teachings of the authorities they most esteemed, for a long time, none of them might think that such ideas are ridiculous. 

A shocking fact that few people realize is that the human brain has no  characteristics whatsoever than can account for processes such as thinking, instant memory recall and memory storage. Humans know from their work with computers the type of things that make possible things such as computation, reliable information storage and reliable instant retrieval of information: things such as a CPU for serially executing stored instructions, an operating system, application software programs, stable media for storing learned information, wires that make sure fast and reliable signal transmission occurs everywhere in a system, encoding protocols used in storing newly acquired information, and also indexes, sorting and addresses needed for instantly retrieving information. The brain has no such things, as I explain in my post here and in other posts of my blog here. So if humans were to imagine that thinking and memory were done by the liver, they would not be engaging in any flight of fancy worse than they are already doing by imagining that thinking and memory are done by the brain. 

Alternate Reality Scenario #4: Humans With Souls That Always Visibly But Silently Left Their Bodies at Death

An interesting alternate reality possibility is one in which human souls always visibly left a body at death. We can imagine, for example, a planet on which whenever a human died, we would see a glowing shape like a human body visibly rising up from the dead human body, and floating up into the sky, gradually disappearing in the clouds. 

Some AI art

In such an alternate reality, would humans then almost all believe in the reality of a human soul? Not necessarily.  You can never underestimate the degree to which humans are capable of inventing ingenious excuses for not believing in things they do not want to believe in, despite the clearest evidence for the reality of such things. So we can imagine materialist thinkers trying to explain away such observations by claiming that the arising of a ghost-like form from a dying body was just some kind of unimportant physical side-effect of death, rather like a rotting corpse giving off a stench. Such a claim would not be any more far-fetched than the excuses today's  materialists give to explain away frequent observations of apparitions or observations of out-of-body experiences in which people say they floated out of their bodies and saw them from meters away. 

Alternate Reality Scenario #5: Humans With Souls That Always Visibly and Vocally Left Their Bodies at Death

Another interesting alternate reality possibility is one in which human souls always visibly left a body at death, while at the same time continuing to speak. So you might have death scenes like this:

Mother:  Grandma's heart has finally stopped. Soon she will be dead.

Son:  Look, Mom. Grandma's ghost is rising out of her body!

Grandma:  Well, here I am out of my body. I guess this "dying" thing isn't so hard after all. Please arrange for a burial of that old corpse I no longer need.  

In such an alternate reality, would humans then almost all believe in the reality of a human soul? Not necessarily.  You can never underestimate the degree to which humans are capable of inventing ingenious excuses for not believing in things they do no not want to believe in, despite the clearest evidence for the reality of such things. So we can imagine materialist thinkers trying to explain away such observations by creating a theory that complex shared hallucinations always occur at death, with all the witnesses hearing and seeing the same illusory thing, due to a kind of rapid hallucination infection caused by moving hallucination particles. Such speculations would be no more bizarre than current speculations about a multiverse, designed to evade the evidence that our universe was fine-tuned to allow observers. 

Alternate Reality Scenario #6: Very Quick Human Reproduction

An interesting alternate reality scenario to imagine is one in which human reproduction occurs very quickly. Once a human decided to reproduce, his or her body might become rather bloated. Then he or she might split into two different adult bodies, each with its own mind.  The reproduction of a human body would therefore be rather like the reproduction of a cell.

If life worked this way, humans would probably "take it for granted," and regard it as no great clue about the nature of reality. Humans probably would not say, "Look at how amazing it is -- each of us can split into two bodies very quickly; such a marvel must be some sign of divine design or the agency or a higher power." The marvel involved in such a splitting would not be all that much greater than the real-life marvel of an extremely complex eukaryotic cell (consisting of trillions of well-arranged atoms) splitting into two identical copies of itself, or the real-life marvel of a speck-sized zygote progressing to become the vast state of organization that is the adult human body.  Those marvels 95% of all humans "take for granted," and fail to regard with wonder, even though they are more amazing than anything an astronomer has ever seen in a telescope.

The rule is always: people will "take for granted" any marvel, as long as they have seen such a marvel all their lives.  So, for example, if it were true that anyone could go outside, snap his fingers, and always then see a delicious four-course meal on a silver platter descend from the sky, landing at his feet, then we might call that a law of nature and call it "the law of convenient food delivery," and regard it as nothing very special and no sign of the work of a higher power. 

Alternate Reality Scenario #7: Most Human Living Places Older Than Human Civilization

Finally, I can imagine one other alternate reality scenario: one in which most humans lived in living places older than human civilization. We can imagine a planet in which there are billions of very well-constructed castles and mansion that humans live in, so many that every family might have its own glorious castle or mansion, with all of these grand living places so old that there was no record of when they were constructed. 

If there were such a reality, it would not necessarily be the case that most humans would regard themselves as being blessed by some castle maker who provided these things for their convenience. There would probably be some large group of materialists who would claim an accidental origin for all of these convenient castles and mansions.  We can imagine such people coming up with some catchphrase or slogan they would use to help spread claims of an accidental origin of so many millions of castles and mansions so convenient.  They might constantly repeat some vacuous  phrase such as "constructive conglomeration" as an explanation. It wouldn't be a decent explanation at all, but it would serve the purpose of acting as an analgesic pill for those pained by encountering examples seeming like design by some higher power. If it seems far-fetched to imagine very many people would postulate an accidental origin of tall, glorious castles and mansions, you should remember that every new type of biological innovation or new type of species is a hierarchical organization of matter trillions of times more impressive than a lifeless castle or mansion, and remember the type of claims made about such marvels of purposeful innovation.