Welcome to Gaia! ::

MY answer for "Why do we exist" is that, we exist because the planet just so happened was in the right place for bringing in life, reproducing bacteria. We were the lucky planet, that was able to hold onto the life. I personally don't think there's an exact reason for why we're all here, I just think that we were lucky to have so much time to evolve and form into intelligent creatures.

Aye. The "Why" questions always end up in Philosophy or Religion. Ages ago religion provided absolute meaning to everything, but then came the sciences and Einstein to give numbers to causes (causality), and then came the chaos of interpretations and conflicts of pluralism.

Now we live in an era of complexity. Facts cannot satisfy the questioning of man, especially now as many live suburban lifestyles. Unfortunately, we are not like Nietzsche’s cows that graze happily. We humans think, therefore we feel; and with thinking comes doubt, and with feeling comes sorrow.

Nietzsche’s cow suggests that ignorance makes one satisfied and happy: for why must we burden ourselves with so many questions which are meaningless as well?

"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief" (NIV Ecclesiastes 1:1 cool . As the sage of Ecclesiastes implies in his writings, everything is meaningless...meaningless!

And as the ancient Greek philosophers (not sure if its Plato or Socrates exactly) put it, man cannot make his own purpose in life-- man alone cannot find a purpose because life is meaningless and insignificant. This is basically existentialism: we are born for no reason.

However, we can have a purpose in life... However, as many philosophers put it, we have no control on them; we cannot seek our own purpse, for purpose comes from God.

Purpose is abstract. You can get an apple from a store, but purpose comes from something beyond us. Now we can argue whether purpose exists or not, depending on your perspective upon spiritual existence. But that would take up meaningless space as we swim around an endless cycle of arguments.

Such abstraction must manifest or materialize thus through something physical right? Science doesn’t deal with abstractions except concepts with facts; thus purpose requires faith: believing in something without any guarantee. There isnt any empirical data, yes, but if there were. If ghosts or angels appeared and agreed to undergo MRI, religion wouldn’t be called faith anymore. Faith would die!

Simply put, no amount of reasoning can give you a purpose. You can be successful and wealthy in the future, then you die. You can live a lazy, boring, meaningless life, and then you die.

But for the faithful, you do your life's "mission" and you die too, but you die satisfied, believing they lived meaningful lives. Those who question a lot often die miserably (we can start from the guillotined French to contemporary nihilists).

Sure, we live as purely rational beings...but what do we become then? Mere machines and programs. Existentialists, perhaps; and those who make themselves suffer by not being content with believing something.

I think there's beauty in a simple, rustic life: one that's romantic and peaceful, without questions or concerns. Happy, healthy and content, enjoying nature's beauties. heart 3nodding (Sadly, I'm an educated city boy crying ) I wanna be a cow! xd

The trouble with humans is that we're all pieces of sophisticated intelligence&thought overlaid onto an incomprehensible system of animal instinct and desire. So our every action is directed towards some purpose or value, but the purposes or values themselves come from that animal base we have (or from its godly antithesis, the argument for which goes in another thread).

We are all rivers; we study the landscape and try to divine the origins and reasons for our courses, but as for the spring that feeds the river--who knows where the water there comes from?

However, I think there are things that hold ultimate value and that there are purposes and meanings to things like life: the problem is that if our understanding could contain the purpose of life, our understanding would be bigger than the purpose, wouldn't it? Hence understanding would become a higher purpose.

Maybe. xD I just think human ideas like purpose and meaning and value have reality, because I think the human psyche and mind have reality.

I think an interesting point here is that bugs have much more highly evolved sex organs, for pleasure. While we may enjoy our mental mastrubations, I think insects probably enjoy their lives, and who is to say it's more or less than us?

First off, let me say: I LOVE this guild! eek heart

I agree with a lot of what was said. Personally, I try not to ask "Why?" too much. xD It's like one big, never ending chain reaction that results in me getting a headache. I try to be like Shiro; I don't want or need an answer to all the questions. In my opinion, there isn't an answer to be haved, but determined to search for one you'll probably go nuts. It's kinda like when you try to image nothing. I mean, pure nothing. What does nothing look like? No one can honestly say because there's always something there. Or imagining a new color in your mind. Has anyone else tried that before, picturing something like a new color? It's really weird to think about because the impossiblity of it.

Funny. I'm kind of reminded of the little kid that says "But why?" in a whiny tone of voice to everything their parents say. I don't mean that as an insult, or anything. I'm just trying to point out that eventually it becomes pointless to keep asking why something is the way it is. There comes a point in that endless series of questions when you have to change your "Why" to something like:

Why am I asking this question?
Why don't I quit worrying about things that in the long run are going to make absolutely no difference?
Why don't I just get on with my life?

And this last question is the ultimate end to any series of "why" questions: "Why do I even care what the answer is?"

Although my personal favorite end is "Why don't I go get some coffee and quit thinking about this."

Ironically, I know how Douglas Adams stumbled upon that number as the answer. I agree with what else you're saying, though, and to say to the person about the chicken or the egg junk, I say the chicken was first, because God didn't want to sit on an egg.