Pondering Existential Question: Why Are We Here?
human existence
. Galib laments, "I am doomed because of my existence, what would have happened if i didn't exist?"
Individual existence may carry more emotional and personal concern, but it is the collective existence that has engaged religion, philosophy, and science. Religions see human existence as creation of God. Philosophers have attempted to substantiate God's existence through it. The classical argument of William Paley tries to prove the existence of God based on apparent design, complexity, and purpose in human organs, such as the eye. Modern arguments support the existence of God through the
anthropic principle
, which posits that the universe is finely tuned for human existence. The ultimate answer in theist religions and philosophies is the same: Human existence is God's creation.
In the Indic context, religions such as Jainism, and philosophies including Sankhya and Mimansa, endeavour to answer the mystery of human existence in terms of eternal substance - atman, purusha, jiva, soul. Jiva takes human form in a cycle of birth and death due to karm and avidya. The basic scheme is as follows: the soul transmigrates between births due to ignorance and/or the karmic effect. Atheistic religions and philosophies, however, fail to answer why this cycle of birth and death started? How, for the first time, did the soul come into bondage to take birth? Atheistic Indic schools of thought attempt to sidestep this question by invoking the concept of anadi, a standard response to questions they are unable to answer.
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If atheistic religions and philosophies suffer from logical inconsistency, theists fare no better. Considering God as purn or self-sufficient, they fail to give any reason why God created humans? For example, Semitic religions believe that God created humans out of desire. As desire emanates from deficiency, accepting desire in this context would compromise the concept of purn God. Hinduism, being mindful of this problem, describes God's creation of humans as lila. Lila doesn't mean playfulness; it is anirvachniya - that which cannot be explained through speech. However clever this explanation may be, it does not suffice.
Science, a late entrant to this debate, tries to explain human existence as an outcome of the blind and chance-based interplay of matter and forces resulting in chemical and biological development. Chemistry produced self-replicating complex molecules, which led to the emergence of life in single-cell organisms. Simpler life forms gradually developed into more complex life forms, including humans. According to mainstream science, human existence is just a contingent feature of the universe. There is no guarantee that, given another chance, the universe will again produce life and/or humans.
Even after the best minds contemplating human existence for thousands of years, it remains largely unanswered to date. Many leading scientists, including Einstein, were not comfortable with the idea of the universe as an outcome of the blind and chance-based interplay of matter and forces. On the other hand, explaining human existence as God's creation or as anadi cycle resulting from the soul's bondage with matter has logical inconsistencies that many thinkers have accepted.
In a world facing growing existential challenges, explaining human existence and acknowledging the value of life would always be of paramount importance. The future may have a better answer to why we exist.
Authored by: B.Purushartha
The writer is joint secretary, GOI. Views are personal
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