Life's Purpose and the Truth About Existence

Beginning the Search
· What is the purpose of your life?
· Does it have a purpose?
· Do you want it to have a purpose?
· Can you imagine not existing?
· Do you accept the popular belief that all this just happened?
The world provides more questions than good answers. Anyone who says they have the answer is wrong and this is a very, very popular belief. Yet ultimately there is truth, there is an answer. A good question might be will we ever find it?
I must say I do not believe that all this just happened. The only way to justify our existence is to say that life has been billions of years in the making. The universe is so large; it is so far beyond our comprehension that something amazing could have happened in this vast maybe endless expanse. That something was life. Yet why does anything exist, any matter even the smallest spec of dust or atomic particle? Well existence occurred out of nothing. There was this big bang, but what banged, apparently nothing. If there was ever a desperate theory this is it. Here is the one truth I am certain of, "no one has a scientific explanation for existence." There are actually some very strong reasons to believe we will never find the answers in science. Of course, that does not mean we should not try.
Going from existence of nothing to something is just leap one. The next leap is to go from inanimate matter to life. The odds I am told for life occurring, i.e. some protein (the building block of DNA) by chance are so large to make this essential step virtually impossible. The odds would be greater than winning the lottery one billion consecutive times. Next, you go from some life, like a cell to a living being. Now the final leap is even more significant. You need to go from life to intelligent life.
Therefore, except for one thing, it would be a good conclusion that we do not exist. The one thing is that we do exist! The dreaded alternative is that there is a creator and thus we teach our children that indeed all this just happened. Many dread a creator because that could place limitations on their life. In addition, the most likely scenario would have God being the God of the bible and if true that would mean we were spiritual beings and will never die.
I would like to know the truth. I especially want to know the truth if it matters in some way.
Religion's part in the confusion
Is there a logical path to the truth? Religionists have made a mess of the truth to the point of serious confusion. I conclude religious people would be difficult to believe. In any case, which one would you believe?
Let me try some logic to get to the answer.
If God exists, I will assume He would communicate that to man. Some possible ways would be:
· He could communicate to us in the creation itself, especially if it were spectacular and really beyond our comprehension. In the creation, we could see a creator but that is all we would know. We might decide God was the Sun, or one of the constellations or that there were alien beings behind the creation. We could never know, "which god."
· If God wanted us to know more or if it was important for us to know for some reason, He would have to tell us more, somehow.
One question I asked myself was, "is there one religion that makes more sense than others" or that can potentially be validated. I considered the most logical path would be to eliminate any religion that made no claim to be from God. If it is a religion just created by some men for perhaps the betterment of humankind that would be fine but I am looking for communication from the creator. Well much to my surprise, many religions of the world make no connection to God. Buddhism and Hinduism are good examples. They represent fine ideas, traditions and attract hundreds of millions of people but have no message from God.
More Questions
Continuing to ask questions and find answers that make sense, my next question was,"Why would God want to contact His creation?" That question led me to ask another more basic question. It makes sense if God wanted to contact us that there was a purpose for our existence. In fact, if we are the result of creative enterprise there had to be a reason. So what are the possible reasons? Well now, one thing is becoming clear and that is unless God tells us we will never know - certainly never know for sure!
I could proceed to use logic and guess possible reasons for our existence. I could come up with some feasible ideas. Because I have heard of different explanations and many seem reasonable. I realized I needed to move away from what various people have taught since I would not know which one to believe.
The process of elimination
Anyway, I decided to focus on eliminating more of the "players." One of the largest religions in the world is Islam and no matter how much I tried to find a way that there could be a reasonable connection with God, I could not! The reason is very, very simple and I suspect it is the reason Islam has no tolerance of other religions. The entire basis of Islam falls to Mohammed's dream and then in what he would teach following that dream. It is indeed the weakest of all the major religions that make some claim for a connection to God. Actually, it is in a tie with a much smaller group called Mormons who depend on the dream of Joseph Smith. This one-man or one-woman dependence is the theme and only validation of a variety of religions. It may be a dream, a vision, or a trance but whatever it is; it seems much, much too weak as a viable message from God.
WOW! This is the last thing I expected but its early.
It is becoming clear, there is only one viable possibility for communication with God and it is the Bible. Maybe that means there has been no communication, even no God. My reason for this conclusion is the comparative nature of other communications.
Why the Bible, why is it better than the others?
Yes, it has people who have dreams, visions but it also has a stated purpose and a consistent theme from over 40 authors. There is one theme from Adam through Abraham, Moses to Christ. It has an unlikely scenario that would not be something man could conceive. It has various miracles all tied to the purpose. It contains prophecy and fulfillment all associated with the purpose. Just because it is the best choice by a large margin does not make it The Truth, The Answer. It is just much better than the other choices.
The Basic Bible Story
If the Bible were true we see God directing certain individuals early in human history, then bringing the Messiah through the nation of Israel and then the Messiah finally becoming the King and indeed Christianity would be the final solution for man. It is interesting because the problem as seen in the bible was a spiritual problem and God brought a spiritual solution. That is something different from man's wisdom.
Good, there may be hope here.
Therefore, this seems un-man-like and that is good because I began looking for something that did not come from man. I am only interested in that which comes from the Divine. Otherwise, it just has no value! I am a long way from being convinced. So a great deal more testing will be required.
Can you overcome the terrible, violent history of religion as realted to "Christianity" and see God as the God of the Bible? And this is just one of many obstacles related to the bible.
The people, leaders related to the Bible and specifically the Christians of history are some of the worst of scoundrels, frequently murders and thieves. How can I reconcile that or the hundreds of different beliefs within the "Christian religion?" The distinction that I need to make is to separate the Bible religions propagated by man from Bible truth. I do not know if that is possible. At this point, my conclusion was that the "Bible Story" is the only good religious possibility for answering the question about life's purpose but men have made a mess of "Bible" religion.
Somehow this has become very complicated
To clarify, this article represents the process I went through some time ago and I am just now sharing my thoughts from that period. Since then I have done a mammoth amount of work and reached some solid conclusions, often surprising. The most surprising thing is that there is a very good answer, undeniable and yet for some reason cloaked as a mystery.
I have been studying the meaning of life for over 30 years. In the process, I have used my scientific background, my varied religious training, and my personal studies with some bright and fair-minded people. I studied as many of the religions of the world as possible and read their "books of wisdom." This included the Qur'an, the Bible, books of Mormonism, Hindu and Buddhist writings, and hundreds of books and pamphlets from many religious, atheists groups. During this time of study, I prepared and presented many lectures, which lead to many more discussions. One major conclusion has been that the answer to the purpose of life is incredibly simple and obvious to a logical person. The battle getting to the truth is overcoming all the inventions and the historical acceptance of the many inventions, frequently now called religion. After some encouragement, I wrote a book on the subject of life's purpose. There is nothing like evidence and although ultimately there will never be perfect evidence; there can however, be an extremely high level of confidence for those who work at finding the truth. This article and others to follow takes you through a very logical process but the book, "What Is Life All About" in its 622 pages provides surprise after surprise as you get good answers to your questions. The surprises are there because the book typically does not align with your fundamental beliefs and yet explains things in a way that fits "perfectly" together.
There are two websites: [http://www.what-is-life-all-about.com]
And
The websites provide:
> An excellent resource for anyone seeking the meaning of life
> Much more information regarding the book, "What Is Life All About?"
> There are e-book and hard copies of the book available
Thanks for your interest,
Alan