To answer those questions...

Ok so in one of my earlier posts entitled Life's Questions I posed a few questions. The last two were "Why are we here?" and "What is the point?". However the answers I wrote for these were far from thought provoking and more just me getting stuff out of my head. All very well but I thought I'd give answering them another shot now I'm in a more upbeat mood. They're both pretty similar so I'll answer them as one...

Well during the summer I read Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene that basically says that human beings only exist as machines to help our genes survive and be passed on to the next generation. We have been created by our genes to protect them for this generation and then they will be passed on to the next. (I recommend reading it it's interesting what ever your beliefs are.)

Someone else however may argue that we're here as a test to determine how we're going to spend the rest of eternity. If we live a good life then we will be rewarded when we die and if we lead a bad life then we face punishment in the afterlife. Whether this view is true or not I think if people lived their lives as though it was the world would be a better place.

Whichever of the above opinions you take at the centre of it is selfishness. In the first it is perhaps more blatant and though genes can't actually be selfish in the way we might say a person is they behave in a selfish manner. They want to survive and beat all the other genes no matter how they have to go about it. The second one may seem on the surface to be more altruistic. But if the good deeds people carry out are only a means of ensuring they get their place in "heaven" then surely it's self centered. 

Perhaps neither of the above is true and we're just here by chance. The right conditions at a point in time to cause a huge amount of pressure and heat so as to lead to an explosion in which the right protons, electrons and neutrons join together to from the right chemicals to build the right atmosphere for life to begin which through a series of chance events has lead us to the present day. The people who believe in this and still endeavor to do good are surely the best people at heart. Because they're doing it just to do good because they can and want to. They don't believe it's going to make them end up in heaven they just do it. To an extent this could also be said for the first view on life I mentioned but if you read the book you will see why this isn't necessarily the case. (Too complicated too explain here as this post is already quite long but just ask me if you want and I'll try to explain)

Gareth x