Randomness and Purposelessness

If you have to ask me why I can never be an atheist then the simple answer is that I cannot accept that the only reason we are here is chance and that our lives/ my life is no more significant than that of a cat, dog or single-celled amoeba.

Of course I know this makes me guilty of anthropocentrism., valuing human life as more complete, more significant and more valued than animal life but its where it all starts.

Anyway if we boil it down faced with the ultimate question of existence we have two essential choices:

1. Accept that the probability of life forming on this rock we inhabit was infinitesimally small, but by a coincidence of probabilities it did and that eventually after the dinosaurs were wiped out mammalian life thrived, evolved into primitive man and one generation led to another until we reach the 20th Century in which I was born. Accepting this I will, if lucky, get 75-80 years to experience life’s rich tapestry before ceasing to exist, my life extinguished like a candle being blown out, my metaphorical footprint in the sand soon eroded away until all trace of my life on this earth has vanished. Furthermore that this very planet will cease to exist and all record of human existence will vanish as well.

2. Accept that there is some deeper metaphysical nature to life, the universe and existence. Some cosmic purpose as to why this rock, why this solar system and why I am here.

Faced with these two propositions I choose the latter and hence the quest for an understanding of that cosmic purpose begins.

'Galaxy Song' -- Monty Python

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
That’s orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcTHBOjnUss