“When someone dies, their consciousness turns off and everything doesn’t exist then. So why, in this case, do religious people still believe in God?” (Question asked of me in social media today and my answer)

This is an expression of what you want to be the case and not what you can demonstrate to be the case.

When you think about consciousness, can you explain how it actually happens from the biological processes you can observe and measure? You can see all these nerves and synapses in a brain and you could even make electronic copies of these in a supercomputer. Will it be conscious? Will it have a sense of self? Will it ponder eternal truths, wonder about its origins, worry about its destiny?

So unless you can actually demonstrate which life processes enable your consciousness to happen, then you have no idea whether this living organism has caused your consciousness or is merely its vehicle.

And if it is merely its vehicle, then on death it would make sense that another residency for the conscious should exist, another experience of yourself in what could be a quite different vehicle.

Christians look for a resurrected form of their personal body. This is said to be like that of the resurrected Jesus, Who was able to eat fish and touch people, his voice made audible vibrations in the air and his form reflected light so that he could be seen in colour, but He was also capable of rising into the air, disappearing, walking through locked doors, making Himself unrecognisable at will. This is a clear indication that as far as the physical properties of this eternal and indestructible body are concerned, it is more than a mere upgrade on our physical bodies as we have them now.

It makes no sense for such a destiny not to exist, since every other hunger known to man exists because the fulfillment of that perceived need exists. Sex drive exists because sexual partners exist, hunger exists because food exists, thirst exists because drink exists, and the yearning to know God and experience everlasting life and to know all things exists also because the fulfillment of this exists and were that not so, then evolution would never have made such an inefficient and absurd organism which wastes its energy on seeking the unfindable.

What do you say to that?