It Doesn’t Compute

Most of life is about paying the bills.  We work most of our days to pay for food, shelter and raising children.  And for the most part we don’t think too much about all this.  After all what we do is the human analog of what very living creature on Earth has to do to keep its species alive into the future.  And none of them question why exactly all this goes on.

But when you get to a certain point and the end of the race is in sight and maybe you have a little more time on your hands than you used to, you might start asking some questions about what all of this is.  This is called philosophy or religion or maybe just plain curiosity.  One day you look around and think, “How the hell did this whole thing get started and where the hell is it going to end up?”

And it’s a good question.  The pessimist’s answer is the whole thing is just a complete accident.  Life itself is just a random occurrence that probably will just peter out and end when the sun dies in several billion years or maybe even sooner than that if some things go sideways for us here.  Who knows?  Maybe we ourselves will be responsible for the end of life.  Some madman may decide it would be fun to figure out a way to kill off every last bacterium and virus and make it so that none could ever reappear on Earth again.  It seems like a stupid idea but there are lots of crazy people and who’s to say that a really smart crazy man might not take it into his head to do something like that.

But there is definitely a sizable chunk of humanity that believe that we are here for a reason.  They believe in some kind of God.  Not necessarily the personal God of the Bible.  Some think there is some sort of universal spirit that is associated with all life or maybe just human life.  And it’s safe to say they have no way of ever proving what they believe in is real.  I’ve heard lots of people trying to prove God’s existence.  And I don’t think anyone has ever come up with anything that would convince an atheist that he is wrong.

No, the belief is not based on proof.  But at the same time, I don’t think for the most part it’s wish fulfillment.  I think it’s a form of intuition.  Some people look around and say I just don’t believe that all of this is the result of random chance working out over the course of several billion years.  It’s like that old idea that if a billion monkeys typed on a billion typewriters (word processors) for a billion years that they would come up with the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.  I think it’s a case of not letting large numbers intimidate you.  I can understand that over the course of geologic time mountains can turn into valleys and stars can explode.  But how does that create Mozart or Shakespeare or even you?  It doesn’t compute.