Before you read : this may not be much of a proof, but my personal perception as well.
Many philosophies and religions discuss about "what is purpose of our existence" or "why are we living" etc. I thought let's think this question from a little materialistic point of view. As for the question "are we alive", I mentioned that assuming all scientific laws to be true, we are just robots of some kind. I thought, if that is true, what is driving me to live then.
Simply speaking, I have some aims for me, I have some achievements in past, and I have some current work going on. Looking materialistically, all those things were bound to happen. But, I am "feeling" that I am doing something in it. Like some embedded machines, which also do some computation while taking some decision, we also do some computation. We may say that there also some notion of "thoughts" going on in those machines. (Well, they may not be exactly like us.)
When an embedded machine is created, it is created for some purpose. Even if it is some reproducible machine (ya, there are some machines like that called "Fon-Noyman-Machines" or something), it has a purpose at least to reproduce. As for us, we are given some purpose of our own before we are born, say "to survive", and most of the other purposes we learn while surviving. How exactly we get this purposes created?
If the basic purpose is assumed to be only "survival", can it create all such vast pool of purposes that we face now? Or perhaps there is some other "basic" purpose as well? When people discuss about existance of soul, or life-cycle, or heaven-hell theory, they can't be related to only materiastic thought of "survival". And even the thought that we live just for making our long and happy living possible also looks very.... "incomplete". If it were for only survival, then the problem should have been solved by now. So, there does exist something else that drives us or some "basic purpose", that was created in our embedded machine earlier.
"Find yourself"
A robot with AI is created with all humanly inputs givrn to him. WHAT WILL HE END UP LIKE? He will wake up from "sleep" for the first time, what will be the first question that will come in his mind? WHAT IS GOING ON? Thousand and thousands of inpus are entering his brain and he don't know what to do with that data. After he tries to neglect that data, one biggest question comes in his mind. Who am I? "Who" is a completely relative question, like for an ant I am a giant, but for dino I am a bug. So, as a matter of relativity, it becomes necessary for him to know "where is he" ot "who/what is he surrounded with" and maybe "what time/day is it (:P) ".
This question is never finally answered till the end of his life. As you know, the world is changing and also we can't look into our own eyes (metaphorically), we don't completely know who we are.
It may sound crazy, but if you try to think about it, it makes sense. Why do we try to compete? Why do we like to try new music to please ourselves? Why do we want to have kids and nurish them to become a grown person? Every person has an aim called "satisfaction", and till that is not achieved, it can't stop. So, either satisfaction or death can stop his struggle. That's why human tries to beat the death to achieve the satisfaction first. And we can't help it. It is already encoded......"Find yourself".... for that one must survive first. So come the purpose of survival...and follows all other purposes. So, if you can find such "mirror" that will show the complete image of you, you are lucky. We are all in search of that mirror.
