Why Are We Here?

  I’d like to request a formal apology, but I don’t know what address to put on the front of the envelope.  It’s bigger than our government or the UN.  If I were to try and speak to scientists in general, which ones do I send it to?  Is there a governing body?    I know I could send it in to Maclean’s, although, it really isn’t their fault.  They’re just reporting what they are given.  I don’t expect them to think.  Besides, even if I were to demand such an apology, I’d be told that my belief system has warped my worldview.

  The caption on the title page of Maclean’s article reads, “The Higgs boson discovery does more than just explain why we exist.”  Scientists have discovered a particle which is claimed to give mass to the substance of the universe, and the tab for the project is estimated around $13.2 billion.   Whenever I read articles on this kind of subject, I always hear a similar type of rhetoric, “These physicists are looking for answers to questions that humankind has asked itself for millennia – who we are, where we came from, why we’re here”.

   I like science.  In its purest form, I find it interesting.  What I’m having a hard time with are the different messages I seem to be hearing from the scientific community, even though I can’t seem to locate where these messages stem from.  If you are the source, I am so happy to have found the proper audience.

  There are a great number of people who hold to the theory that God created the universe, and I am among such thinkers.  Whenever I get into conversations with people via the internet, I am consistently informed that we know how we got here.  Billions of years ago, we exploded in a big bang and it just happened.  I’m told this is known science and that people like me are mindless twits who care little about truth.

  My issue is this.  If we already know how the universe came to be, then why are you spending $13 billion to find out how it came to be?  You either know or you don’t.  That’s it.  I expect one of either two things from you.

1.        Be honest and tell us that you don’t know for sure how the universe began.  If that’s the case, I can handle that. 

2.       Stop spending billions of dollars trying to figure out how this all began.

   There is a third alternative, but I doubt that your pride is capable of making the admission.  You could be forthcoming and concede that your worldview is influenced by your belief system.

  I wish I knew who you where, but I don’t so I guess I’ll save myself the postage. 

  I don’t anticipate you being apologetic.  If you want my real thoughts, I believe that the work you are doing isn’t capable of achieving the objective it has set out to do.  You aren’t able to answer the ‘why’ questions of life.  So why are you trying? 

Taken from the July 23^rd edition of Maclean’s Magazine, pages 40-47