Director Roger Nygard went across the entire world asking theologians, ministers, priests, imams, rabbis, scientists, physicists, biologists, and skeptics 85 questions to try to understand The Nature of Existence!
Now that he’s asked the experts, it’s now YOUR TURN! Every day we’re going to ask YOU one of the very same questions Roger asked in his award-winning documentary. To offer your own insight into today’s question, “Why do we exist?” click the “Leave a Response” button and type away!
Imagine if we were actually robots under control. With people watching our every move. We could be apart of a major exsperiment controlled by a ape . . .
We exist to question the nature of our own existence
What is we are actually goldfish with legs. Which live on land!!
We exist to try and find out why we exsist. And we exsist to experoence things. Like meeting Killer Wales and being eaten by them!! Existance is lushems.
We exist to feed Goldfish and give them love. Exsistance is Epic!! Like Noodles . . ..
We exist because of evolution. We are, in a very basic sense, the universe becoming aware of itself.
“we are all free to believe what we want, and its my view that the simplest explanation is, there is no god. No one created the universe and no one directs out fate, this leads me to a profound realisation, there is probably no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe” – Stephen hawking.
I’m with him ^
and adding to that who cares how we came to exist, the chance of your life existing is 1 in 10^2,685,000 in other words you are extremely lucky.
what makes life exciting is wondering how we came to exist maybe we aren’t meant to know or find out
Random thought: The human race survives still to make an accomplishment that is not stated anywhere and the moment “WE” make said accomplishment the living universe will “feel whole” and cease life existence as it will be no longer needed.
We exist because a God of love cannot be stagnant, Love must expand. We ourselves, fall in love, raise or desire to raise families. Friends are accumulated and we as a species are designed to return God’s love. Love continually grows and desires others to respond in kind. What some construe as random mutations is, in truth, a grand design. I ask this, when does a series of accidents cease to become accidents after they continually point toward awareness? We return love, that is why we actually exist.
We exist, simply, because we do. 180,000 years ago other organisms existed. At some point in the future, others will replace us. We are simply another series of accidents in the life cycle of the universe. We are not special, and we are made in no one’s image. That being said, because we have this big brain which generates what Jung called “the mind.” the mind is responsible for self-consciousness, ego and the subjective view of the world which we all have. It is this mind that creates the myths by which we guide our lives.
There is an answer … but just talking doesn’t go anywhere.
Talk, talk, talk … deep down you know that talking doesn’t go anywhere.
You need to be a bit more courageous if you want to find the answer.
Meditation is one way.
We exist as an individualized soul the Atma, Logos-Thymos-Eros, Seele, Anima, Ame in order to become fully aware gather experience, and wisdom for our return journey back to our original home the heart of all life the ocean of love.
If there is nothing after life but death,no afterlife,then we have never existed and why would we want to experience all we can in this life if there is nothing but death awaiting us.
What if we are just illusions or we are in a giant dolls house. What if we are not real at all?????
to become ourself
The answer to the question of “Why do I exist?” is that you don’t “exist.” Actually, nothing “exists” — not even the “universe” itself — as we like to fathom.
The word “existence” derives from the Latin word “sistere,” meaning “to stand out,” and this naturally translates to: something that can be seen, touched, heard, or identified in some way and named as a “thing” of some kind. Over the course of evolution, humans have developed a symbolic form of communication — language– a good thing for solving problems and attaining what one desires within a highly organized society. Symbolism allowed humans not only to communicate with others, it also allowed an individual to communicate with himself — “to think.” All he’s doing is tossing those symbols around in his head and continually rearranging them to make thoughts.
With the advance to lanquage came the “dualities” in life. Do you remember from English Class what “prepositions” are? Those are the things that come in pairs — that’s two “positions” that are opposit of each other: over & under, above & below. Some are not preposisions: black & white, cold & hot, day & night, yin & yang. Before you were born you were whole — after birth you entered the world of duality. The one preposition that is at the core of existentialist philosophy is “in & out.” Our human experience is that we have such a keen sense of being separate from everything outside of our bodies. Lower animals don’t have this. When you are driving along the highway with your pet dog, you have a sense that your “location” with respect to the Earth is changing; what you comprehend is that the Earth doesn’t move and that you are moving to a different location every moment that your car advances along the road. For your dog, the trip along the road is a bit different in that he sees it as the Earth moving past him. To your dog, his position/location never changes — to him there are no addresses, no longitudes & latitudes; he is always at the center of the world wherever he finds himself; even when he’s just walking or running his sense is that he’s making the world move around him by working his legs.
Lower animals do show separation anxiety, like when a social animal has been trapped and isolated, or has gotten stranded alone– or a fear reaction when encountering immediate danger, but the deer that’s being eaten alive by tigers does not have any sense of what death is — what the tigers are doing to him is causing a lot of pain but he has no idea that he will be dead soon. A human in the same situation, on the other hand, not only feels the pain but also has the mental terror of losing one’s self entirely (existentiality).
The first, necessary verb (in any language) is “to be.” (to exist, to stand out) but you should keep in mind that this is only a “linqual convenience” — perhaps a lingual necessesity. We like to say that “I am,” “He is,” “They are,” but the verb “to be,” is merely a mechanical convenience in order to make language function usefully, it doesn’t mean anything in and of itself.
When you die you simply go back to the way you were before you were born. You were good to go for an eternity before your birth, and you don’t remember anything from all that time. You’ll be dead for another eternity after you’re gone and you won’t be wanting for anything, just like it was before your birth — It was the best sleep you’ve ever had and you should be looking forward to sleeping like that again.
— Jeffrey Russell
remember the old time s when aryabhatta created 0 ? thats the reason we have graduate courses in mathematics today. we must always remember that existance and non existance is simultaneous. and one more thing , this dumb brain of ours really cannot or ever will understand what life , death, illusions etc.. ever are . so just chill and live life .
Why do we exist?Well…why not? after all what is real? Are the body and mind one or our we (consciousness) simply driving? one thing is for sure, at some point in time, whether in the beginning or sometime after, the first form of conscious came into existence. perhaps not intelligent but aware… the source, the origin of all consciousness… and you know what? it had the same exact question… why do i exist? after all how could it possibly know why it exists. before it existed. so why do we exist? why not? something obviously has to exist or nothing would exist…
In the beginning, sometime either before or the instant the first lifeform came into being. Something , perhaps not intelligent, but conscious, awoke. The root, the core,, the source, the origin of all life. Here we are who knows how long since the beginning. Highly evolved and intelligent (at least by comparison) with the ability to effect the world around us in ways we have yet to fathom. Maybe we should all stop searching for the meaning of life and focus more on the gift of life. Wake up, turn on, tune in, and drop out. Become truly aware and utilize your full potential. Realize that we are gods and goddesses that have awoken from the darkness and brought into the light in a world that is ours to make of it what we will. All living things are connected. How? Who knows! Energy, DMT, perhaps even our DNA. We are not just individuals but also apart of a greater whole. There really is no I; only we, and we are everything that is, everything that has ever been, and everything that will one day be. We are not just gods… we are god. Ya dig?
well i think there is no reason why.
We don’t exhist. why would we? What would be beyond reality. Why did exhistence just all of a sudden exhist? I just don’t undertsand.
Both space and time should not exist. i just don’t understand how do we even have a feeling of existence. how can this all come from nothing? guess i don’t understand anything….
What amazes me in this video series is the absolute certainty that many of the people interviewed make statements. They say things as if they are a matter of fact, when there are over seven billion of us on Earth who may have come to different conclusions for perfectly valid reasons. My answer is that the question should be asked of oneself, and when an answer satisfies us, we are free to share it, but we must own it. On the one hand people want to be heard and understood – at least that has been my experience. I am happy to listen and share my thoughts, but I don’t believe I have a right to say that others are wrong. On the other hand some people want to coerce others into believing as they do, and I can’t help but suspect that those folks are insecure about what they believe, since they themselves would resist control if it were foisted upon them.
Now, given all of that, I will take a stand, and it is with those who don’t believe we would just show up here without knowledge of any previous existence, and then just vanish after death. That seems so absurd to me.
At the same time, I am not an exclusionist. Whatever anyone else believes is fine with me, and just for the record – I am an engineer, scientist, physicist, and an artist, and I believe the earth is over 4 billion years old. My beliefs probably coincide fairly well with the late Carl Sagan.
– Mark.
i believe that we exist to grow into a more advanced civilization and to understand the universe so we may eventually find some of the big answers to the big questions.
Simply Guessing or playing with words will not solve the problem.if we really want to know the reality-we should make an active group to find out the answer(absolutely non-religious) ………….rest on next day…………
I believe we exist for the same reason other animals, plants, rocks, soil, water, gases, planets, the sun, space etc. That is, we are simply part of the process that started billions of years ago. I don’t think human’s are more special just because our brains allow us to ponder these type of questions.
So, does there need to be a reason?