Fanman, one thing we do know is that cells divide and planets rotate because it works :) If something doesn't work - if it can't persist - then it appears briefly and goes away. So cells that divided persisted.
One can metaphorically apply survival of the fittest, and social theory, to the formation of galaxies and solar systems. Certain parts of a fairly homogeneous cloud of dust concentrated into asteroids. The biggest ones continually added to their bulk through gravity, and the bigger the proto-planets became, the more they "cleared their space" - effectively "consuming" all material around them and crushing "the competition". Today's fairly stable solar system configuration includes major concentrations (planets) - the "winners" of the cosmic tussle beforehand.
Now the same principles apply for the watery fizz on the surface of Earth that we call "life". Some persist better than others in different situations but we all must remain protected within the planet's atmospheric layer like bacterial cultures in agar. We air-breathing organisms are as firmly rooted to the atmosphere as trees are rooted to the ground. Like plants, we can be "potted" so we can survive for a while in hostile environments such as the deep ocean and space.
This fizz on the surface seems insignificant, but it contains by far the most concentrated informational complexity in the galaxy for trillions of kilometres in all directions. In terms of informational complexity, the Earth is akin to a giant star (maybe a galaxy or supermassive black hole??). Physical movements such as orbital hierarchies are less important informationally than the dynamics of informational concentration. Life's sphere of influence grows like an ant's nest or bacterial colony, pushing outwards in various directions, persisting most with the most useful lines of exploration. We humans, or at least some of us, are at the vanguard of those explorations.
Fanman wrote:If the consciousness, "soul" or "spirit" of a person does travel somewhere after death, where would you speculate that it travels to, and what medium would it travel through? Do you think that a significantly advanced technology could actually collect and store consciousness, since consciousness is a form of information? It would seem to be a sceptical possibility, as our brains do that job, and as technology advances who knows? It seems problematic to me that the person can live on after death, primarily because it would involve the person existing without being tangible. Our consciousness is a product of our brains, therefore once the brain is dead / gone, there's no consciousness. Unless there's "another realm of existence" where the intangible can exist without physical attachment? Religion and spirituality propose (and propound) that such realms exist, yet scientific enquiry has yet to discover any such place(s) to my knowledge.
On the smallest scale consciousness might be composed of something tangible, but I think that electrochemical activity is as much as we've been able to surmise. It doesn't seem intuitive to me to think of an entire consciousness (which includes the whole person) as electrochemical activity. The experience of being, seems to be a lot more complex than that; almost irreducible. If you reduce a person (consciousness) to purely physical causes, you end up regressing until you get to the big bang and possibly beyond that! The reduction doesn't simply "stop" at the brain.
I also think that there can be extraordinary weirdness in life, even on the naturalist spectrum. On the one hand nature appears as being ordered and operating according to a series of "set" laws, but on the other hand its weird to think that everything just organised itself into systems which propagate life, as if done so by some naturalistic genie (to borrow your analogy :) ). I mean, how weird is it that cells divide, or that the earth rotates? We are used to these happenings because we experience them on a regular basis, but how weird might it seem to an alien who had never encountered anything like our solar system? Indeed, in that pure state of wonder, an alien could be forgiven for concluding that it was designed, even if no designer is actually present to be observed. So with the proposition of an after-life, it could well boil down to a resounding "who knows for sure!"
Where would a soul travel? If souls exist, my guess is inwards somehow, perhaps the informational equivalent to supernovas, black holes and wormholes? What happens at the theoretical singularity of a black hole? We don't know. We can at least say that death seems similarly inaccessible.
The regression back to the big bang is a useful line of thought IMO. In a sense we all
were that fast-growing blob of ultradense superheated plasma a little under 14 billion years ago. Yet, in another sense we are each recently emergent, novel and temporal. There need not be friction between the perspectives because it depends on your identification, how you define "you" - and "us". Consider the state of the universe before the big bang. People assume it was nothingness but it wasn't nothing enough to avoid the big bang (big grow?). So there was
something in the nothingness. Planck scale stuff? Platonic forms? A deity? Whatever, we today are that original thing - whatever came first - but morphed via expansion, cooling and particulation over time.
In a sense we are all one consciousness, limited and shaped by our bodies, senses, environment and experience. Neuroscientists and author, Sam Harris, noted that there was nothing intrinsic or special about him personally that made him any different to a felon in prison. In a thought experiment Sam H pointed out that, had he been born with the criminal's senses, environment and had the same experiences, then he too would be a felon in prison today. Life on Earth can be seen as one blind exploratory push outwards, expressing itself in numerous forms.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated—Gandhi.
). I mean, how weird is it that cells divide, or that the earth rotates? We are used to these happenings because we experience them on a regular basis, but how weird might it seem to an alien who had never encountered anything like our solar system? Indeed, in that pure state of wonder, an alien could be forgiven for concluding that it was designed, even if no designer is actually present to be observed. So with the proposition of an after-life, it could well boil down to a resounding "who knows for sure!" 
