Have you ever thought about the question "Why are you here?"? It is a collection of simple words that depending on the context can have amazingly supernatural ramifications.
I someone you know has and important appointment, like for a job or a concert or for a public ball game you might ask this question, "Why are you here?" Perhaps they have moved away or seem to be in a hurry to speak to you. Why are you here?
These uses of the question do not even approach the question I am hoping to pose. It could be asked of you if you had been previously sighted on many occasions drunk or brawling. Why are you here? Or of you had frequented other churches on other days of the week. Why are you here?
I do not want to diminish the importance of those questions and that they might be, must be asked. However, that is not my question, yet.
You see you must first exist and be able to move about before any of these other questions can reasonably be asked. Let me brake down the question a bit.
Why do you exist? Why do humans exist? Why do you among humans exist? Why do you have the past you have and come to be here looking and acting and feeling inside like you do right now with all the other things that are going on everywhere just know? In this context we could discuss the relationships you have in your family, the job or jobs you have, your marriage or marriages. Or we could get more basic. How do you exist?
Why do you exist and not someone else where you are? How does anything exist?
I am not an expert in metaphysics or an expert in philosophy or any of the foundational sciences used so commonly to describe our existence. However, it seems clear to me, they don't have an answer for why you or I am here.
The normal line of reasoning when discussing such a question is to look at a timeline of sorts. I am here now because I was here or very nearly here moments ago. I was already here before. You can take this line of reasoning backwards a few days tracing your activities. Or perhaps a few years. However, the farther back we go we begin to see changes in the You that is now here.
Perhaps the now you is bigger (taller) or bigger (rounder) or if on a diet thinner now than prior. Those of you with gray hair and wrinkles might notice in the past You back a bit that you have less gray hair and winkles.
Your behavior patterns might have changed based on your experiences or a change in your beliefs from the You that is now here. I actually hope so.
But let's go back in time, say 200 quadrillion years. I should say that back then perhaps there was no then. Or perhaps there was no there, then. Scientist would be hard pressed to discuss time that far back and have no imagination to care to discuss it. You see they have assigned the beginning of all things at a point in time. Note I talked about their imagination and them assigning a point in time. Actually assigning a point in time for the beginning is ironic but I will leave that for now.
Let's get this part straight, they imagined a beginning because they can only imagine the finite. Perhaps the infinite scares them. If you would get a top astrophysicist and ask them about the existence we have here they would not describe and infinite universe extending infinitely in every direction.
They would babble on about matter and space time and say that they knew that without matter there is not space or time so the end of the universe has no meaning. At this point talking becomes meaningless as they are just making it up.
You see concepts like the big bang and Einstein's description of things that they so proudly say has been verified are actually proveably false.
I could babble on about Nicola Tesla and the Ether but I really don't want to draw your attention just now to science, falsely so called. (1 Tim 6:20)
I want to show that even with the best imaginations of philosophers and scientists, the best they can come up with is that everything we see and are and can detect far, far away, it all just happened.
Nothing and nowhere and no time just became everything and everywhere and all time. Imagine that! They did! I mean they just imagined that to be true. I know there is the red shift in starlight and they think the universe is expanding. However, that to has other possible explanations and if I don't say more plausible explanations. Maybe they NEED to believe in finite things. Suffice it to say, they just believe it to be true based on imagination.
I have actually heard people using this as way of living. Imagine you are successfully or rich or healthy or popular or smart or whatever and you will create your own reality.
This is a little like Satan telling Eve eat this and you will be like God.
This sort of thinking seems to me to be dangerous at a very simple level. If you could make your own reality, what kind of world would we have? Everyone winning the lottery is kind of self-defeating.
Or worse, you are imagining good one day then imagining disaster the next. This seems like a precarious existence at best.
This has also come into religion as a perverse sort of faith. Faith in one's own imagination. We need to have faith in God if we are to stay Christians. (1 Cor 2:5)
Back to why we are here. Clearly we are not just here out of nothing by imagining it because we weren't here to imagine it in the first place.
This discussion in science and philosophy comes down to a funny discussion. If there are actions there must be a cause of that action. Maybe a prior action caused the present action and you go back till you get the first cause.
The Bible actually has something to say about the first cause of all causes, the first action of all actions.
I am that I am Gen 3:14
I am the Alpha and the Omega
Rev 1:8,11, 21:6, 22:13
God claims the role of beginning. I won't even start on the end! Enough rabbits!
We have some words to discuss this, it is natural and supernatural.
Be carefully of human terms to describe God or even God's creation. The term, supernatural is like the whole universe is in a bowl and God is outside it and dips his spoon in and stirs it around. God and the spoon would be super the bowl.
Let's see the Biblical descriptions:
1 Cor 2:14
Jam 3:13-18
Miracles are examples of supernatural events. Exterior forces not part of nature act on them to change what would normally occur had this force not acted.
The Bible is full of non-natural events where God chose to get involved. Besides the whole creation thing, making Adam, parting Red Sea etc...
Where does all this leave us and why are we here. What I CAN do is show you what the Bible says and show you how it has affected me and the things around me. From this, I infer, no I believe in God and the saving grace from His son's great work of salvation.
There are those that will cry foul, you have not proved God exists or that the Bible is true. If that is so then "why are we here?".
As a research scientist, the theories that they provide to explain how life got here (which does not hold water in my view) never addresses this question. Why are we here? I believe only the Bible, and perhaps other sacred writings, are the only sources that explain why we are here.