1. WHAT A CHEERING THOUGHT

There are many people who believe in a great purpose to our existence. What will be confirmed throughout the rest of this contribution is that I'm not one of them. However, I believe that what I have decided may be of merit; we aren't here for any true purpose, we are a bit of an accident and the rest is, pretty much, up to us.

In this article I shall attempt to justify my viewpoint and discuss the pros and cons if you do accept what I've said. Eventually, probably in a later submission I'd like to set forward some ideas we might consider to make things "better", although I don't see a need for that article to get too heavy.

2. RANDOM CHANCE

I've read the theories of a number of scientists who suggest that the universe we live in is a statistical improbability, I've also read books that suggest that evolution is little more than random chance combined with selective coupling. I personally believe that this justifies my interest in numbers from an early age; my mother still gleefully tells any new friends of mine how I could count before I could speak. It also gives a whole new meaning to Poisson distributions but more to the point, if you believe these authors, God is not a definite no-no but what He does is little more than roll the dice, albeit a set with many, many sides.

I have a bit of a personal problem with supreme beings as our maker too. Standard intangible, if we were created, who created the creator? Having said that though, if we are the result of one of many big bangs, how was there "stuff" in the first place? I'm not going to try and tackle either of those questions. In themselves they probably represent many years of endeavour from brains far more dedicated than mine.

3. DOES CHANCE PRECLUDE PURPOSE?

Let's start with an assertion; if we're here by accident, we cannot have been designed for a purpose. I dont believe that is true. Take the 3M scientist who failed to create the strongest ever glue and invented post-it note glue instead. His creation was accidental, but many would say it serves a purpose. So the question everyone has to ask themselves and really, this is the key point, ask only themselves is; do I feel that I a) serve a purpose and b) want to serve a purpose?
I don't think that anyone should feel less adequate if they cannot answer yes to a) and b). I certainly don't! Wanting to serve a purpose is all very noble but my opinion is increasingly that gaining a feeling of serving a purpose is just another way of passing off responsibility.

... more to follow ...