Well, here is my take.

Mortality, the cessation of existence as we experience it is frightening to most people.

Transhumanism is largely a reaction to the fear of mortality, and religions in general have capitalized on this fundamental human attribute.

While science has not captured and defined the essence of human consciousness, or the essence of living versus dead tissue for that matter, that detail does not preclude the possibility of one day possessing that understanding and matters that defy explanation have always occupied the domain of mystical and magical matters to human culture.

It may be that there is an ether involved in the human existence, my postulate is that we are temporal eddies in a large flow of riverlike strings of collated energy, consisting of all past existent life. There are events, talents, and wisdom that are impossible to explain with the current tools of understanding. It is possible that biochemistry and hormones operating in some enormously complex symphony of interaction relative to time create these attributes and that one day we will quantify and be able to emulate these occurrences, however that day is not today, and for now, I prefer to consider this the incomprehensible magic of the human form. Each new life posses some varying degree of previously experienced life, either through some novel cosmic string amalgamation, or through the mechanisms of incomprehensibly complex interplay of biochemistry, either way, experience through shared time is the only way to participate in, and know the potential within.

Accept your own death willingly, for it is nothing but your experiential contribution to future generations composed of the infinitesimally small fragmented pieces of our existence.