Iain McGilchrist, in his The Matter with Things, says that the most important, deepest and hardest to answer question is “why there should be something rather than nothing”.
The current orthodox answer is it’s all down to chance. We live in a purposeless random universe. Human beings are insignificant little creatures on one tiny planet floating in an empty universe.
But that orthodox answer is pretty hard to swallow. Lee Smolin, Physicist, says “we should ask just how probable is it that the universe created by randomly choosing parameters will contain stars. Given what we have already said it is simple to estimate this probability….the answer in round numbers comes to about one chance in ten to the power 229. (We might note the part of the universe we can see from earth contains ten to the power 22 stars)…..
That probability that our “something not nothing” is purely down to chance is mind boggingly small. So small it’s surely hard to believe.
The fact there is something instead of nothing is, frankly, astonishing.
The second question is why this something has “turned out to be complex and orderly, beautiful and creative, capable of life, feeling and consciousness, rather than chaotic, sterile and dead.”
If you aren’t amazed by everyday reality, you’re not paying attention. The sheer complexity and beauty of this world stops me in my tracks every day. I’m in awe of Life in all its diversity, complexity and beauty. Every flower, tree, butterfly, bird, every unique and astonishing human being……I am amazed.
Like everyone else I don’t have the answers to those two questions but I find that when I start to consider them I become ever more humbled, ever more blessed.
Maybe that’s what makes those two questions so great….not that we can find the answers but that in their contemplation we are opened up to the sheer, immense wonder of this world.
Heroes Not Zombies 
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