Why — The Irrelevant Question?
Why are we here? Why do we exist?
Reason.
Is there a reason behind all this?
Is someone making a plan for all the complexities?
Is it calculated, with a purpose in mind?
If it is so, then what mind has thought of this and why do that mind itself thinks, makes and exist?
Religion and Science have been perceived as two opposite ends of a string. And the tension between these two tugs has been phenomenally controversial.
There is no denying that there can be answers from both the fields. Whose to say what it is, above our nature and existence when we have hardly a respectable understanding of what is around us.
There are two trains to knowing- a slow train and a fast train.
The slow train is of science. As scientists and thinkers of every generation pick pieces of knowledge, try to join them and come up with theories and experiments to prove them, we advance our understanding of our world, really really slowly. The train of science stops at a lot of stations, just to make sure that in going to the next station, the train will not derail. That slow process makes science very reliable, in the long term.
The fast train is of religion. Very easy and very imaginative. One day you wake up and tell yourself that everything is there because a ‘being’ much larger than us thought of it and made it. And then you go to sleep. The train of religion has no stops, it is so fast that it seems it’s not moving at all. The fast process of religion ensures that humans don’t feel uneasy with our gaps in understanding the world. Since God is the answer to everything. (Partly the reason why theists are so satisfied with life)
But out of all this, one must not deviate from the question. It is far more important than the process or the train you take to reach the answer of it. Why is a very powerful question. To understand its vastness one must first accept a few things.
We don’t know why we all are here at this particular time?
We know a little about our planet and the universe but not why it started.
It is as if one fine day, all matter came into existence out of nowhere and time was invented with it. What was before it or what this universe resides in, are perplexing questions. And no matter how much you try to find the outer peel of this, there will always be one more peel to answer.
The universe is here because of a random expansion then what made the expansion and in which box did that expansion happen and then what is the box or where is it and why is the box existing and if that box was made by God with many many universes in it like ours, then who made God and how did (s)he came into existence and if so then why was God made? And so on and on.
It is a fun exercise to do. How many layers can you find of this space we exist in? And as you go further and further, the urge to know the last layer increases ever so compoundly.
And that is the urge which powers human intellect and its questions. Whether that urge powers religion or science is a different matter. But the question is in itself too huge to be seen easily by humans. We spend our lifetimes in this feeble and purposeless existence knowing nothing of the far beyond. We seldom think deeply of why these atoms and this time and this space exists? Why after all, this very matter, in this very space, and at this very time? Why?
