Why are am I here? Why am I alive, on this planet, at this time?
A big question? No, a deepity. In one reading, truth. In another, nonsense.
The word ‘why’ can be taken in two ways: why meaning for what purpose did x happen; and why meaning how did x happen. Let's look at ‘why am I here?’ from both perspectives.
In the first sense, the question can be rewritten as ‘for what purpose am I here?’. In the second, ‘how is it that I came to be here?’.
The latter is simple – evolution by natural selection, predicated by the appearance of self-replicating molecules. Evolution is a fact as much as gravity is a fact, and while the steps in the emergence of life on this planet (or indeed any other) is not yet understood, the creation of the raw materials necessary for life has been demonstrable in the lab for 60 years.
I'm not a biologist, and am therefore ill-placed to give a comprehensive presentation of the evidence, but a good read of scientific literature, or Wikipedia, will get you to roughly what I've described.
So it can be said that we know how it is that you or I came to be here.
The former question, ‘for what purpose am I here’ where the purpose is evident prior to your being, is non-sensical, and therefore not an answerable question. It is equivalent to asking ‘for what purpose are there mountains?‘. Mountains have no purpose, they simply are. Asking of their purpose cannot be answered, and so it is with humans. We simply are.
Notice also that the question is not the same as ‘to what end should I live my life?’. That is an entirely different, moral question that can be answered in many ways, and it is up to each and every person to answer it for themselves.
Asking the purpose of your being, as if it is somehow pre-ordained, is non-sensical. And so it is with all why questions, where why is taken to mean a universally directed purpose.
Why are mountains? Why is there sky? Indeed, why is there suffering?
♥ @phuu.
Cool story bro.