If I remember my high school biology correctly, sperms and unfertilized eggs are not exactly alive, they are "viable", which means capable of producing life. When the egg and the sperm unite, that's when life begins. Of course the Supreme Court rewrote that book when they ruled that an unborn baby is not viable until it's capable of surviving outside the mother, and it's not legally alive until it's born. Since then, premature babies have been surviving earlier and earlier, which kind of complicates matters. I seem to remember that, in the original "Roe versus Wade" decision, the court designated a certain number of weeks after gestation as being the point at which a fetus becomes viable. I don't remember how many weeks that was, but I think it's been pushed back some since then. Then there's those awful partial birth abortions where they kill the baby as soon as its head pokes out. Last I heard some people were trying to make that illegal, but I'm not sure if they ever got it passed or not.
One problem with the concept that you are the same person all of your life, and maybe even beyond that, is: What about people who experience brain damage or Alzheimer's? Their personalities are substantially changed, and they may have lost most of their memories. I suppose they are legally the same person, but what about spiritually or even biologically?
Also, what about the fact that some people are genetically smarter, healthier, or prettier than others? Does that seem fair to you? Shouldn't the government do something about that? No matter how much help they give the dumber, sicker, or uglier people, they are not likely to ever catch up to the people who got a better deal at birth, unless those people are just plain lazy. It seems to me the only way to make this fair is to surgically bring the smarter, healthier, and prettier people down to the same level as the less genetically fortunate. Would you vote for that? Okay, I might have gotten a little carried away there. A more humane alternative would be to encourage the smarter, healthier and prettier people to squander their birthright by eating, drinking, and smoking to excess, and maybe blowing off their algebra homework once in awhile. I might vote for that, providing it was proposed by a Republican and not a Democrat.
You may be right about the supernatural world getting bigger with all the "pop spirituality" that's going on nowadays. I like that term "pop spirituality", it neatly sums it all up, doesn't it. Although most of that stuff has been around for a long time, it certainly has been undergoing a renaissance lately. I wonder, though, if the Native Americans didn't have the right idea all along. According to conversations I have had with several of our local Indians, they didn't distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, or the sacred and the secular, it was all part of he same universe to them. Of course they lost the war, but they eventually ended up with casino gambling and free hunting and fishing, so they didn't come out too bad after all.
I believe that thing you talked about in your last paragraph is called "deja vu". I've experienced it a few times myself, but never about anything important. It was always just some little thing like walking down a stretch of road or sitting around a table talking to some people about nothing in particular. Sometimes I dreamt about it before it happened, but I had forgotten the dream until it repeated itself later in real life. There is probably a logical explanation for it, but I don't know what it is. That's okay though, life is more interesting with a little mystery in it, don't you think?
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