Why life on Earth?

Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that we (humans) exist and that our conscious recognition of that “fact” is real.

Then why is this so? That is, why do we exist? Why did life originate on Earth? And human life in particular?

The argument from design is interesting, but then so is Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

Both have elements that make them agreeable to lots of persons; one based in faith and circumstantial evidence, the other based in tangible evidence and fossil records.

That aside, why did life originate here? The accidental implication of Darwin’s hypothesis is without serious flaw.

The purposeful implications of design and a God-oriented creation make sense – if one posits a God, with a purpose for creation, here, on this one planet, in all of space and the universe, rather than anywhere else.

If there is a God (and the arguments for Him will not be addressed here), why would such a divinity select this place, in this space-time, to create a race of beings that are truly insignificant in the great scheme of things – the total reality of the universe?

The purpose of being seems more likely to be found in the outreaches of the universe than here on this picayune planet.

It makes little sense for an omnipresent, omniscient deity to select this one little ball of material to create a race of creatures who matter not in the great scheme of things: the universe as it seems to exist.

If, as contend elsewhere, the Supreme Being, is playing a game with humanity – that is, God wants man to discover His ploy – why just here, in this moment, when a Prime Mover would likely, if we can discern His thought processes, have better venues in which to ply His shenanigans?

If, however, God, or the Force that is the Universe or total being, is an unaware entity, that is just pure existence – His or Its essence, and that alone – one has to accept the idea that this creation, on this Earth, was, as Darwin (and others) postulate, accidental, unless….

…unless existence itself is purposeful, in some strange way that is without consciousness and direction, a paradoxical thrust or stasis that mankind can never understand or fathom.

This may be the goal of scientists, physicists mainly, and/or theologians without an axe to grind: to discern what the pattern of life, existence, is or means.

Did the discovery of quarks help in this discernment? Does string theory work toward that understanding?

Does a faith in God bring about meaning? Only if one is Gaia-centric and believes that this one place, in all the universe(s), is where a God would place His or Its raison d’etre.

String Theory resolves nothing

Lee Smolin, in his excellent pysmatic “The Trouble with Physics” [Houghton Mifflin Co., NY, 2006], excoriates the ubiquity of string theory in academic departments of physics, and rightfully so.

String theory, which as you know, posits (in simple terms) infinitesimal vibrating strings as the absolute basic elements or structures of all things; the constructs that make up reality.

Dr. Smolin (he’s a Ph.D.) takes to task the emphasis on string theory which, to his mind, hasn’t gone anywhere since promulgated and will very likely not go anywhere in the near or far future.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Smolin is wrong (we don’t think he is) and that string theory is the answer to the physics Holy Grail: a “theory of everything.”

What does the theory tell humans about the most significant questions of existence?

What preceded the Big Bang? Is the Universe infinite or not? Is there a First Cause, a Prime Mover? Does consciousness cease when one dies? And if not, where does consciousness go upon death?

String theory, like relativity or quantum, gets us nowhere.

Theorizing about strings, or any physical adjunct, is interesting, enthralling even, but it takes individuals, society, and civilization – mankind – nowhere.

Strings, multiple universes, parallel universes, building blocks of existence don’t answer the question of why humans exist – the purpose or meaning of life.

Meister Eckhart, the 14th Century mystic, theologian, and alchemist, about whom Carl Jung was often panegyrical, proclaimed that God was “naught” – in alchemical terms, beyond comprehension; the same view as Augustine, Saint Dionysius, et al.

If string theory is valid, does it provide a clue as to the nature of God, or no God?

Patterns in physics, logical properties of matter, were flummoxed by quantum mechanics. String theory could reassert Newtonian or even Einsteinian sense to physical laws. And even if it did, is the result one of clarification, in the metaphysical or cosmological scheme of things?

The escape from or even into reality (both psychological maladies) by way of string theory by physicists is tantamount to transcendental denial – but a denial of what? God? Immortality? Nivana? A total cessation of life, consciousness, at death?

For us it not true that all things die? Even God?

Moby Dick: God

Herman Melville’s great book, Moby Dick, gives readers the essence of God: impervious to human existence unless provoked by thought (about Him or directed to Him).

The novel, subliminally, asserts that Christians, Jews, and other religious people, even heathens, will, if they pray to or evoke their God, bring down upon themselves a perceptible wrath – for the intrinsic element of God is malevolency.

Most religious concepts provide for a God in battle with evil – Zoroastrianism is one, where God (Ahura Mazda) supports truth (Asa) and the Devil (Ahriman) promotes the lie (Druj).



And while the Roman deity, Janus, has two-faces, the archetype only suggests that God is of two natures, good and evil. The mythology doesn’t attribute to God the element of evil; it merely implies it.



Moby Dick goes beyond this.

What Melville did was open the door to a quantum God, one which acts when acted upon – when measured or observed, like Schrodinger’s cat or quantum particles.



God, in Melville’s book, exists in the universal realm (the sea), impartial to mankind, until mankind seeks Him out; in the pursuit of Ahab to kill Him, for transgressions of the past (when Ahab sought Moby Dick and lost a leg in the finding of Him).

Melville’s God – Moby Dick – is white, to show that mankind perceives Him as good and pure, but the reality is that Moby Dick – God – is exactly the opposite of good and pure……but only when He is acted upon: the quantum measurement.

Most scientists, as we note earlier on here, do not believe there is a God or that a god ever existed.

But Melville’s magnum opus gives those scientists a way to reconcile their observations of the universe and quantum reality with the possibility of a God who exists as the ultimate quantum, thus resolving the singularity question that plagued Einstein and those who seek the Theory of Everything.



The Moby Dick metaphor isn’t just a vehicle for a good yarn. It’s the intuition of Melville that, like Cosmic Consciousness or the Thomistic epiphany, leads the way for physicists to look at the idea of a Prime Mover who can be explained by quantum mechanics.

Melville suggested he wrote an evil book, evil in the sense he wrote about a concept that would be anathema to the culture he was surrounded by.

Yet, he did more than write an “evil book.” He provided a clue for those in the 21st Century as to what they might pursue in their quest for the definitive answer to what this existence is all about.

God was, and is no longer? Or never was?

Most physicists, including the provocative Richard Dawkins, do not believe in a God, at least not a God as represented by religion.



There is the God of Einstein: He who does not play dice with the Universe.

And there is the God of Teilhard de Chardin: the mystical (and real physical) body of Christ – which comprises the Universe and reality, in toto.

A review of Dawkins’s book, The God Delusion, had this to say:

Dawkins not only portrays the "psychotic" God of the Old Testament as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Dawkins view is a ripened take on the Gnostic view of the Old Testament God, Yahweh, propounded in the years after the death of Jesus/Christ.

Carl Jung’s view in his “Answer to Job” is that God finally recognized how badly He had acted toward His creation, and thus atoned by sacrificing Himself, as the Second aspect of The Holy Trinity, Jesus/Christ.

The demi-urge (demiurgos) of the Gnostics was not God, but a god beneath God, the Supreme and ineffable deity.

Yahweh was only a pretend God, and accounts in the Hebrew texts (The Old Testament) seem to confirm that.

Whatever the power of that God, Yahweh, was, it was tremendous but required the intervention of man, just as the Bible had to be written by men because God/Yahweh was incapable of doing so Himself apparently.

The Hebrews had to do the killings that God required or wanted. And the Hebrews were constantly rebuffed by their God, long before the Holocaust.

But what happened to Yahweh? Yes, He died as Jesus, but did He die altogether?

Did Jesus/Christ replace His Father? And where is Jesus/Christ? Neither aspect of the Trinity (and maybe not even the Holy Spirit) has made communion with humankind after the alleged Ascension of Jesus/Christ, forty days after his Resurrection.

(We’re discounting the vision of Saul of Tarsus, St. Paul; it seems likely to have been an hysterical hallucination brought on by the guilt he felt for his persecution of early Christians, his Jewish brethren.)

But Dawkins, and his cohorts in the scientific community, just plain out reject a God altogether.

God is not a part of their reality, never existed, and has nothing to do with human life, the evolution of humankind, or even the laws of physics.

The belief is palpable, to reasonable persons. The sufferings of mankind can’t be explained away by theological arguments such as the one that states God has a plan for humanity and we, his creatures, just don’t understand it or can ever know it.

But we contend that, perhaps, the inscrutability of God is what one might call The Game of God: The God Game.

God, not Yahweh, is, indeed, ineffable, but hoping to get His creation to discover Him, and this is what physicists, and all of us, are supposed to be doing; that’s the purpose of His (our) creation.

Some scientists and philosophers contend that God is simple; others say He is complex, like the universe.

And, as noted above, some say He is the universe.

Then there are those who say God is dead or has gone underground, disappeared:
Nietzsche and Richard Elliott Friedman (in The Hidden Face of God) respectively.

So, in this spot, we shall examine the parameters of the arguments, for and against the existence of God, and the cultural elements affected by the pro/con debate.