h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I once read a book by Orson Scott Card it was talking about the intangible forces that hold all life together on this plane of existence.

The soul in other words, but oh so much more than that. A soul definitely fits under that list of words that has to be expierenced rather than being defined.

It is my belief that the soul is the 'what' part of the question that is implied. One has to first define what exists before explaining why it might have been otherwise.

So why exist rather than not?

Our lives are the expression of the Creator. Through our lives is the source known.

I suppose though at some point the only thing really qualified to answer that question is religion. My answer is as good as any when looked at in that light.

Hi Perium,

That's a most interesting answer, and one I personally feel a lot of sympathy with.

Especially about the soul being experienceable but not definable -i.e. beyond language.

But H. is being more radical still - he's not asking why any particular 'thing' (he doesn't mean material objects - the attempts at translation call what he means 'beings' or 'existents', which I didn't use at any point in the Entry because I was trying to keep it simple and accessible), exists, but why anything whatever should exist. This would actually include God or The Creator and the Spirit, and any number of worlds or universes or dimensions one might suggest.

He's asking why_anything at all_ exists, since it would seem so unlikely to us that it would - apart from the fact that it does!

Like you, I think his question tends to lead in a spiritual direction - H. did too - in the direction of the experiencing or perception of the world 'as a miracle' , although he wasn't formally religious himself.


Grime