Roger Nygard, Director
My travels around the world to seek out spiritual leaders, scientists, artists, pizza chefs, and other experts for my latest documentary, The Nature of Existence, came about as a result of my awareness of my own mortality. My father died when I was thirteen, and suddenly I had a swarm of questions about life and death. I wondered what the point of everything was. It wasn’t until twenty-five years later, when the events of 9-11 shocked our entire country into considering our mortality–for about a week–that I started to badger my friends with questions: Why do we exist? What is our purpose? If there’s an afterlife, where exactly is it located? What or who created the Universe? With billions of stars in billions of galaxies to be mindful of, why would a god get so apoplectic if you masturbate? Finally, I wrote down the 85 toughest questions I could think of and went on the road to get some answers.
How would YOU answer the 85 questions?
Theatrical Trailer
After four years, and 170 interviews across five continents, I finally collected in one film all the answers to the mysteries of human existence.
You say you’re skeptical? You want samples? Okay, here’s a taste:
 Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist |
 Brother Jed Smock |
 Irvin Kershner, Director of The Empire Strikes Back |
| “Nobody can really be happy. You can have moments of happiness, moments of joy, but life is very difficult–unless you’re a total idiot, then you can be happy.” Irvin Kershner Film Director, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back |
| “Particles in fact, don’t exist. And so…at some level we don’t exist.” Dr. Steve Biller Physicist, Mansfield College, University of Oxford |
| “Everything created is one thought in the life of God.” Rabbi Baruch Kaplan, Jerusalem |
| “If an individual has faith that he is Napoleon, then you say he’s loony. But if a hundred million people have faith in some god, then because it’s a hundred million, you’re supposed to respect it. But there’s actually no more evidence for God, than for the lunatic’s belief that he’s Napoleon.” Richard Dawkins, Evolutionary Biologist & Author, The God Delusion |
| “God’s going to cast you vagina lickers into Hell lickity split.” Brother Jed Smock, Confrontational Evangelist |
| “What matters is not what we think our purpose is, but that we feel like we’re part of a purpose that greater than ourselves.” Orson Scott Card, Author, Ender’s Game |
| “Happiness is realizing your true nature.” His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Art of Living Foundation, Bangalore, India |
| The experts debate premarital sex. |
| “Happiness is a byproduct of having purpose and meaning, it isn’t a goal.” Julia Sweeney, Actor, Writer, Monologist, Letting Go of God |
| “No one in the world was born to have fun.” Ali Ghiasian, Taxi Driver |
| “Truth is like pornography, you know it when you see it.” Leonard Susskind, professor of theoretical physics, Stanford University Co-discovered string theory. |
| “The simple difference between spirituality and religion is…you won’t kill anybody for having a slightly different version of spirituality.” Professor David L. Wark, FRS, Physicist, Imperial College London Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxford, England |
| “The reason we are here on this earth is to eat good BBQ.” Grant Benatar, Holy Smoke Barbecue Patron |
| “If you only see one movie this year with all the answers, see The Nature of Existence!” Roger Nygard Filmmaker |
Evangelist vs. Atheist – watch them debate evolution.
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