What does it all mean?

One person’s journey of exploration through life

We are all born into a world we do not know. Our instinct is to make some kind of sense of our environment.

At first we just take what is around us as given and start to explore from where we are to see what we can find. Sooner or later, as we grow up, most people start to wonder about bigger questions which cannot be answered by exploration alone.

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

Do I have a purpose?

What happens when I die?

Is life on Earth all there is to my existence?

These sorts of questions have fascinated many people, including me and, in these pages, I will outline my philosophical and spiritual quest to get closer to some answers.

As we seek and probe, we find that:

Reality is always stranger than we think (or can think)

Simplistic explanations are nearly always wrong

We have to follow the evidence where it leads

These are some of the waymarks on my journey:

• Awe and wonder! .
• Curiosity. As children and as adults. How we start to look for answers.
• The scientific method. A systematic, highly effective and sometimes overrated way of gaining knowledge.
• Are there any limits to what we can find out?
• The amazing mystery of being conscious, thinking beings!
• Is free will just an illusion?
• What is the essence of my “self”?
• Are we just our brains? Or is there more to us than this?
• Do we have a purpose? Were we created or did we just emerge? Which is more likely?
• Does science support a belief in God or has science rendered it irrelevant or even untenable?
• If God exists then which of the many religions and belief systems are closest to the truth?
• Why do I believe that Christianity is true?
• What do Christians today believe?
• Some musings on the idea of a World Brain (1995)

How then shall we live?

Not surprisingly, among the many others who are on a journey to find the meaning of life, there are a variety of books, videos etc. on the subject. Some have a very similar title to this one. For instance:

Alan Lightman, is a physicist, a writer and a self-confessed materialist who believes that the Universe is made up of atoms and nothing more. In a series of videos he attempts to reconcile this belief with human experience. In fact the series is almost all to do with Physics and his references to consciousness well express the impossibility of this task. At the conclusion, he has to invoke the magic wand of “emergence” to make the link. The possibility that his initial belief in materialism could be false is not considered.

A film entitled A Quest for Meaning was released in 2015 which focuses on how humans live in the world at this time and the effects of globalisation. While that is an important topic, it is very different from the more cosmic subject matter discussed here.