Welcome to Gaia! ::

ok, here is what I believe.

I believe the entire sum total of the universe is god. and I believe that all life (humans, plants, animals, fish, insects, bacteria) is how the universe experiences itself. if 'god' (the universe) is conscious, then we are it's varying perspectives of that consciousness. and that, I believe, is why we are here.

it is also my opinion that this planet is living. what is life really? life is the process of beginning (birth), growth, and ending (death) which instigates transmutation into something else. when we die, our physical body goes back to the earth and fertilizes it. in these terms, even rocks are born and die (tho their life span is considerably longer). a rock is born when it becomes separated from the earth, eventually (many thousands of years) it will be changed and reduced by wind or water until it is no longer a rock, but sand.. thus the death of the rock and birth of sand. so if the universe what's to experience itself as a rock, or a crystal, or anything that exists, the potential for such a thing to appear will exist. not that the universe itself has it's own consciousness as to say "I want to know what life as a rock feels like", it's just the only way human language as I know it can convey such a concept as to be understood.

I dont think you understood my response. not only did I answer why I think we exist, but I answered why I think *everything* exists. sorry, it was a very deep answer. but then, I can be a very deep person.

i meant as indidviduals. why do we as individuals exist now?

because we just happened to be born now (in this day and age)? why does there have to be a reason? if you believe in reincarnation then maybe we did choose to be here. maybe there was no choice. maybe we're here now simply because it was possible. personally, I dont think it matters either way. what matters is I am here.

I agree with Yakutsa. We just evolved this way. Honestly, I sometimes think we were an evolutionary mistake because we have these giant brains and we barely know what to do with them.

As for individuals, our place in the universe is so insignificant that it wouldn't make much difference when or where we each existed. Think of individual ants; if you've seen one, you've seem them all, and it doesn't matter if one particular ant was born today or last week. That's pretty much how humans appear compared to the entire universe.

that's my point, we are NO more important than anything else here. I dont see us as exhaulted beings with any higher a purpose than anything else.

You know its funny how we ponder this in our existences yet our answers don't bring about the reasoning to that question. I wonder the same thing, but in my opinion our existences seem to relate to that question. We search for the answers to those questions, but end up coming empty handed or seem to put that our reasoning of existence is due to what we were made to do in our own minds. We were born for a reason. Not to only carry on our families name, but somehow we are given something that some people may not have at all. In my overall general opinion to simply put i think we exist to carry out what has been generated in our genetic codes to do that have been passed down from our generations, but in a sense bring about our own type of world and/or universe to live in in which we make ourselves. No matter what though the question of our existence will be the forever adventure.