Watching my mother-in-law decline through Alzheimer's made me question everything I'd ever thought about God and the human soul. Who is this person who behaves so differently from the person she once was, and retains so little of her former life? If there is a soul that's separate from the body (and the physical brain) why isn't it allowed to express itself at the end of life? Is it just eclipsed by faulty wiring, but ready to emerge restored into the afterlife at her passing?

And if there is an "Immortal Soul" that can learn and grow throughout life, but can also decline and suffer, just which version of the thing is going to get scanned and uploaded into eternity?

If consciousness evolves from the unpredictable behavior of complex systems, I think we do it a disservice by reducing it through religious narrative simplification. But on the other hand, how do people go on without such a meaningful narrative to sustain them?