This is very good topic Salem, I've been actually wondering about existence and consciousness the past couple of days too, it's just a fascinating mystery, mind you none of us have the real answer to the topic but it does make a good topic for discussion.
For me I'm more interested in the scientific side than the religious side because with science you only deal with facts and evidence while religions require you to believe in something that's not there, but the truth is science in itself still has no answer in this subject, so until there's some sort of evidence it's all speculation based on educated guesses, for instance the purpose of life probably depends on what you think of it, it's up to the individual who's going through this physical experience to say what the purpose is, some people think the purpose is to help others, some think it's to worship a God, then you have others who think it's merely just a physical experience and we live it to the fullest, the science guess these days is to pass on our genes and try to survive as a specie, you see nature does not care much about the survival of the individual but it does when it comes to specie survival, of course you have the concept of natural selection where probable random events work against certain species, or are they really random events? Who knows.
I find the topic of consciousness a little more fascinating than the topic of why we are here, the whole problem of body and soul really makes up a good debate and unlike the purpose of life, science may eventually figure out how consciousness works sooner than we think, does the body have a soul that's conscious after death? Are the mind and body separate entities? What about our brains? Are we just a pack of neurons that when we die we just don't exist anymore? What about some of the phenomenons that happen with NDE's and so on where the individual is still conscious yet their body (Including their brain) contains no activity? But then we felt nothing before death so we must be heading the same direction, right? Well, you cannot experience nothing because there's no such thing as nothing, there's always something, but what is this experience? Is it a conscious one? Ahh just so many questions, I think a forum Neurologist would be nice to have, but we'll settle for the closest thing we have, Renee? :lol: