It can't be? The approximate age of the observable universe is beyond comprehension for a human, nearly infinite if we consider it relative to the length of one human life. Life on Earth has only existed for a tiny fraction of the universe's apparent existence, and humans represent a small fraction of that small fraction. Not until very recently did humans start developing things like written languages, organized belief systems, and nation-states. Here's a visual representation (Fig. A) I stole from the internet:
View attachment 147097<-FIGURE A
Human existence represents less than 2% of the red section above; if it had its own color, you wouldn't be able to see it as it would be much less than 1 pixel thick. Let's zoom in on that tiny little slice of "us," courtesy of another stolen infographic (it's kinda big, so click to reveal):
Unfortunately, Figure B is not "to scale" so it fails to provide the same visual impact. If this were shown to scale, the Purple section would practically cover the entire area, with the Blue, Green, Red, Orange and Yellow sections combined filling the remaining 0.3% of space, representing the last 10,000 years. Cut that in half, and you have the entire history of human civilization.
I will concede that our knowledge of the universe, and even of human history/pre-history is not a complete picture, but these conjectures are derived from continual empirical observation and subject to continual study and refinement. Science is a never-ending work in progress, not meant to provide "final answers" to spiritual questions, but simply to provide a comprehensive picture of the current state of human knowledge. You do not have to accept the absolute truth of an infographic (I don't) in order to appreciate the point.
The point being that we are not part of the overwhelming majority of time and space. The amount of significance and importance we place on this tiny blip of excrescence is simply disproportionate. It isn't particularly surprising that we would be so focused on ourselves, but if we actually look at our place in the universe, we're no more "important" to it than a single atom is to one person's body.
Spiritual traditions are a recent development by this standard. When a person has a spiritual vision, it is mediated by the symbols of the particular faith they have been taught. A practioner of Hinduism doesn't have visions of Christ, and Christians don't have visions of the Buddha. There is no denying the reality of the felt experience of spiritual visions. They can be tremendously powerful and the instinct is usually to accept them as confirmation of one's own beliefs. The idea that such an experience could ever arise internally, independent of any actual outside spiritual presence, is generally not considered even as a possibility. People who have had such an experience will often use the confirmation thus provided as scaffolding to support auxiliary beliefs, even if they are not directly addressed by the experience.
How else can a 5-second vision of a bright white light lead to so many specific conclusions? It is almost unthinkable to take any such experience at face value, as simply strange and awe-inspiring mystery that our brains are sometimes capable of, sort of like dreams (which some people also insist must always have secret, special meanings to them.) I tend to think that dreams, visionary experiences, even psychedelic states can be beautiful mysteries in themselves, which we can appreciate independently of any external narrative or instrumental purpose. We such good pattern-recognizers that we find patterns even where there aren't any, a tendency expressed in the popular sentiment, "I don't believe in coincidences," or its corollary, "everything happens for a reason." This definition of "everything," though, seems to exclude almost the entirety of events in space-time, it even excludes most of Earth's history and most of human existence.
We don't like the ides of things happening by chance, because it makes it feel we are not in control. Our evolutionary survival imperative is to avoid uncertainty, and we desperately attempt to shield ourselves from it, both physically, with technology, and psychologically, with language, religion, philosophy and law. So I can understand why many find it unacceptable. But I've talked to people from almost every religion, who've tried to assure me that because of the visions they personally experienced, they can assure me that their spiritual path is correct (and others are incorrect, dismissing the validity of everyone else's spiritual visions.) The only thing that this assures me of, is that a vision tells us more about the person who had it, than it tells us anything about supposed metaphysical truths.
At any rate, we will never "understand" the universe the way we would like to. Trying to explain it away with Intelligent Design fails, because all the questions one has about the beginning of the universe are now simply displaced onto the Creator figure. In other words, the origin of God Herself, is an equally vexing question to the origin of an impersonal universe. It simply places one extra layer between us and the unknowable, kind of unnecessary from my point of view.
I will add that I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong. It's just the trouble with claims about the afterlife and reincarnation, are, by definition, unfalsifiable, so our discussions of them are necessarily, and only, speculative. There are no "assurances" that can be provided; at best, perhaps some "good vibes" might be emanated. There's nothing wrong with good vibes and intuitions but to mislabel such condolences as knowledge, certainty, truth -- as proselytizers often do -- is false advertising, no matter how sincerely the seller holds the veracity of their claims.
How can a statement about the afterlife possibly be anything other than hearsay, and how can so many mutually exclusive claims about its specific nature ever be reconciled or tested against each other? By what mechanism would
internally consistent knowledge of the afterlife be transmitted to the world of the living? Unless these issues are addressed, how can any one description of the afterlife be weighed as more credible than others?
This is interesting, why has it never occurred to me? Indeed, the behavior and experiential aspects of what cultures understand as an immaterial soul, are vulnerable to physical damage. Now that you've pointed out, it is amazingly obvious. If a soul is a non-material entity, then at least some part of it should be observed to persist independent of the brain's physical processes. But you're absolutely correct; we don't observe that. There is some neurological research which even suggests a lack of a unified self even in healthy brains; that is, what we have given the name "soul" or "self" is really an emergent byproduct of many discrete, independent but related parallel processes within the brain and body. In fact, I would even argue that the popular conception of "consciousness" is little more than a secularized notion of the soul -- an empty placeholder for an idealized notion of personal essence, whose presence is inferred, assumed but never observed (though not for lack of trying.)
Wow I can't believe I just rambled for ~1,500 words! I guess you could say I'm kind of interested in this topic, maybe a little
too interested. In summary, I do have hold one belief with great conviction, which is that, even including the wisest and most knowledgeable among us, we know
so much less than we like to think. And here I actually converge with some spiritual thought, because as much as religions implore us to be humble in the face of an all-powerful, all-knowing God -- something "much greater than ourselves," -- I find it equally humbling to reflect upon our relationship to an all-encompassing, unknowable reality, in which the entire story of life on this planet is nothing more than an immeasurably short blip, a statistically inconsequential aberration, and, yes... an extremely unlikely chance accident. As unlikely as it is, religious conjectures are even more remotely improbable, so in the absence of additional information, it makes sense to favor the
least unlikely explanation.
I'll be the first one to admit that logic isn't a perfect tool. Far from it. But what is the alternative? Ideology or wishful thinking? I'd prefer the imperfect tool which makes no pretense of its limitations, unlike those dangerous, faulty tools whose entire appeal is derived from pretense. If it sounds too good to be true... you know the rest.