Joanne asked:

Why are we here?

============

But where else should we be? That sounds like a flip answer, but it really isn't. Your question has a
scientific answer if you are asking how did human beings evolve from the great apes and the lower
animals? Is that the sort of answer you are looking for?

Or were you asking another question, perhaps, what is the purpose of human life? The trouble with
that question is that it assumes something that might not be true, namely, that human beings have a
purpose. It is a little like that old lawyer's question: have you stopped beating your wife. But what if
you don't have a wife; and what if even you have a wife you never beat her in the first place. So,
before you ask that question about the purpose of human beings, you have to have some reason to
believe that human beings have a purpose in the first place. Do you?

Ken Stern

Suppose that you had the opportunity to ask God, 'Why are we here?' And suppose God gave you
the answer, and it was a perfect answer, which explained every aspect of the question why God put
each of us here, and for what purpose. Would that be enough?

You might smile at such a childish idea, but actually I don't think it is childish. I think it is perfectly
reasonable to want to know, ifthere is a reason why we're here, what that reason is. And if there is no
reason why we are here, that too would be an answer to the question, albeit a disappointing answer.
And, in fact, if you look around you will find plenty of people who think they know the reason why we
are here, and there are also people (probably more) who are quite certain beyond any shadow of a
doubt that there is no reason why we are here.

But that's all irrelevant, anyway.

Because the deeper question isn't about a reasonfor a given fact, but rather understanding what kind
of factit can possibly be — I mean, the fact that 'We are here', or, rather, that Iam here: for each of
usmust ask this question of him- or herself. ('Why are there human beings on this planet?' is not the
question.)

My challenge to theism is that no answer issuing from a God-on-high could logicallysatisfy the
requirements for answering that question. In your case, God could explain to you why Joanneis here
— why the universe would not have been as God wished it without the flick of a brush stroke which is
the individual, Joanne — but never why I am Joanne.

One philosopher who has notably taken this, not as a challenge to religious belief but as a starting
point for philosophy is Ian Ramsey ('On the Possibility and Purpose of a Metaphysical Theology' in
Prospect for MetaphysicsRamsey Ed. London, Allen and Unwin 1961). I am mentioning this
because, along with the work of the French philosopher and Talmudic scholar Emmanuel Levinas, it
is thinkers like these with a theological interest who have come closest to appreciating what is, I
humbly submit, the fundamental stumbling block to metaphysics.

Geoffrey Klempner