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Why does anything exist?

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Nothing should exist

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There should be nothing anywhere, anytime

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There should be no time, no space

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No matter or energy

No form, no logic

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But there is something

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I think, therefore

I exist

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There must be at least one thing - a thinking thing... me

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But if anything at all exists, and there is no possible explanation for its very existence...

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Then maybe anything could exist.

If anything at all exists, when and where there should be nothing, then anything is possible anywhere, anytime.

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If anything is possible, then there are really no absurdities.

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What else do we know?• There are 17 known laws of the physical

universe - laws of thermodynamics, planetary motion, etc.

• There is a backdrop of time and space of possibly infinite dimension.

• There are rules of logic and mathematics.

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We have sensory data that we usually trust, and a whole world view on which we build ideas from other people.

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We use these to guide our thinking to find answers to difficult questions.

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Yet, we have unanswered questions, such as a unified field theory and string theory, questions about black holes, parallel universes and the big bang.

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And we have unanswered questions concerning life after death, the nature of morality, the relationship between mind and body, and, the big one - why does anything exist?

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Most cultures have ways to explain the unknown and the unknowable - usually appeals to the other world.

Most cultures have stories about the beginning and the end.

Most put themselves at the centre of the universe.

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In our world, we routinely look to causes for explanations.

When we encounter questions with no apparent causal answers, we are tempted to say that there are influences from another world that is invisible.

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We have superstitions, beliefs in both good and bad luck.

We may believe in guardian angels, divine intervention or demonic possession when we are at a loss for causal explanations or reasons.

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Over the course of time, many unanswered questions have eventually been answered by conventional means -- observation --, but with better tools and more curious minds.

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This gives us faith in our thinking and learning processes. They have been fruitful.

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Over the course of time, education and technology have improved. We get better at acquiring and sharing knowledge, skills and wisdom.

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Over the course of time, we get better at making tools to save labour, extend our senses and preserve our health.

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Technology has continually improved.

Methods of educating have continually developed.

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More importantly, we also get better at the processes of inventing new tools and creating new ways of teaching and learning.

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While we have made good progress in understanding our world by searching for causal answers within our world, we have not made much progress in understanding that “other world”.

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We can still attribute the unknowns to another world, but that does not help us make progress in this world.

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We are left with an unchanging situation - “while our knowledge will always be finite, our ignorance will always be infinite”

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We may approach a utopian world of perfect knowledge, but we will never reach it. There will always be more questions than answers.

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There will always be opportunities to look for explanations in that other world.

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The best we can hope for is to continually improve our abilities to create better tools and better methods of learning.

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We keep and copy ideas that work for us and discard ideas that don’t help.

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We pursue knowledge of whatever exists, skills and tools with which to live, and wisdom to choose the best course for value.

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How could anything exist?