Dealing With Not Knowing: "why Does Anything Exist"?

[creative]

Hi everyone

 

Since becoming an atheist, and losing omnipotent Yahweh from my understanding of reality, I am left with the stark reality of the fact that I do not know how I came to be here, in the grandest sense.  I have a rudimentary grasp of the big bang theory, the formation of the planet, evolution - I'm not talking about that.

 

I'm talking about that most tricky of questions "Why does anything exist"?

 

That is to say, not why is the universe here, but why does reality itself exist?

 

It seems to me there is only two possibilities.  Either

 

a. Reality has always existed.

or

b. Once, absolutely nothing existed, then reality began existing without a prior cause.

 

Both seem utterly absurd.  And... that's hard to get my head around.

 

I am not opening this thread to try and seek answers to this question.  Rather, I'm curious to know how you deal with the not knowing.  For me, I find it both very frustrating, and quite frightening.

 

(This is not a topic about God, by the way.  I don't really want to think about the god concept, unless someone else wants to raise it.)

If you explain a monkey how to build a plane and give him the tools and blueprints. Would he build a plain of grab a hammer and chase you about with it?

I guess the answer is obvious . To a monkey that all doesn't make sense because he is not made to build planes.

Now are humans made to understand "Why does everything exist?"? Nope!

When you go deep in science you will discover plenty of things that just dont make any sense but are still valid. Our human brains are simple not build to deal with such thinking processes (literally).

Heres something to think about: (theory of relativity) How would you mesure the speed of light if your traveling at half the speed of light and want to determine that light always travels at light speed. Oke that sentence is starting to make less sense when i read it again.

 

In short we just dont know and we are not made to understand such things.

 

I guess the best awnser to the question is: Because it does

[3DollarBill]

 

a. Reality has always existed.

or

b. Once, absolutely nothing existed, then reality began existing without a prior cause.

 

 

c.) Reality doesn't exist.  You don't exist.  Nothing exists. 

 

d.) What we perceive as reality doesn't exist, but some other stuff does.  We're all plugged into the matrix.  Or maybe we don't even have real bodies, we're just the product of some super-sophisticated version of sim city being played by a 30-year-old alien who lives in his mother's basement and has never gotten laid.

 

I honestly don't worry about it too much.  And I certainly don't let it cause me to believe some obviously made-up shit which attempts to explain it but ultimately fails.

[SquareOne]

@ 3Dollar - please forgive the shortness and bluntness of my responses.

 

 

c.) Reality doesn't exist.  You don't exist.  Nothing exists. 

 

 

 

I don't see any reason to believe anything so ridiculous as this.

 

 

 

 

d.) What we perceive as reality doesn't exist, but some other stuff does.  We're all plugged into the matrix.  Or maybe we don't even have real bodies, we're just the product of some super-sophisticated version of sim city being played by a 30-year-old alien who lives in his mother's basement and has never gotten laid.

 

 

 

This falls into one of the other two categories.

 

 

 

To a monkey that all doesn't make sense because he is not made to build planes.

 

 

 

 

Neither are humans - but some people still can.