Why?

That age old question of Why? Why are we here?  Since the earliest days of humanity we have wondered why.  Even in this day and age there is no answer to the question and without that answer nothing really make sense other than what science has managed to discover so far.  Although science is more about the How and the What as opposed to the Why.

Even without the science of today early people solved this question by creating a workaround, we know it as Religion.  It solves so many problems, you don’t have to worry about the why anymore that is in the purview of the Gods or God depending upon your belief system.  They know all the answers or it’s their fault either way it is beyond our understanding therefore we do not need to know.

Early beliefs system centered around the Mother Earth, the Goddess (female) was more important than the God (male) primarily because females could create the miracle of life.  Later that changed and the Goddess’s were knocked off their thrones and it became a man’s world.  After that Religion went downhill somewhat to the point where it became more about the control of its subjects/believers than about providing answers to difficult questions.  Dogma has ruled ever since and the only new ideas are violent ones subverting what started out as peaceful systems of belief.  Throughout history Religion has been the prime excuse for violence/war/terror imagine what history would have been like if the question had never been asked or that Religion was never considered as an option.

Even if you do not have any religious beliefs you are still aware of the idea effectively Religion is the ultimate meme it has always been with us lurking in our memories.

Consider a thought experiment:

Perhaps our existence is not real but a simulation (see The Thirteenth Floor) then the answer to the question is simple and many of the gaps in science start to make sense as well (all that missing matter for instance).  No requirement for Religion at all.

Whether this life is real or not there is one simple truth to it which people never seem to get:

Life is hard!  Get over it!

Everything is hard the first time round, next time it is a little easier.

An easy life is boring which breeds stagnation and that is a killer to any civilization.

The upshot is that the answer to the question is that either it is very simple (seemed like a good idea at the time) or that it is incompatible with our current world view so it becomes unknowable.

The irony is we have created far harder lives for ourselves over a simple question.

Note: I do love the synchronicity of me coming across the following article on The Register.