The Five Questions I Didn't Ask
They say there are five questions people ask.
1. Where do we come from?
2. Why are we here?
3. What is wrong with this world?
4. How can it be fixed?
5.
I didn't really ask these questions. It didn't bug me that I didn't know the answers. In fact, I didn't know I needed to ask them in the first place. I was born, breastfed, brought up and bred to know and appreciate the world as it is. Yes, there were the inadequacies in life that sometimes warranted tough questions, but these five questions never really bothered me. I asked other questions instead.
I appreciate philosophy and how philosophers try to make sense of our existence. However I sometimes get the vibe that it isn't the answers that they are looking for, but the thrill of exhausting more complex (or complicated) questions in order to cancel out earlier perspectives (they usually throw in big words and lofty concepts as if the man on the street was suppose to know them all). Kinda like asking for the sake of asking... Don't misunderstand me, there are sincere seekers out there who philosophise because they are just trying to making sense. But some do so just for the sake of arguing.
More than One Lens perhaps?
God vs Science has become a recent buzz discussion in some of my circles. I really don't see the point such a discussion. On the side of the non-practitioners of religion (atheists, agnostics, etc.) they put the burden of proof on the believer to show that God exists. The irony though is that same burden of proof is on the non-practitioner, because how do we know God doesn't exist?
With the practitioner, I don't see the point in trying to wring an argument out of science to prove God. How does science proof anything that cannot be empirically observed? Can science give an answer to how divorce happens? What about why we feel empty and cannot put a finger on it? What about sacrificing for others? When do we stop growing and start dying, don't we begin to die the moment we are born? Science doesn't easily provide an answer. But it sure does offer a plethora of suggestions and hypotheses.
So I don't get why we over-glorify science as if it is the gold standard to measure all of life. I believe science is just one lens. There are other lenses that could be more effectively used. The lens of art, human-interaction and human response, the lens of history,... all these are valid lenses to provide answers to tough questions.
I'm not an enemy of science... okay, maybe science teachers. I did well in Biology. Screwed up my Physics, Chemistry and Additional math... (I still love these subjects but didn't do well enough to get through the school term). But I just think that sometimes, we create an imbalance in perceiving the magnanimous world around us by only measuring things scientifically. It's like creating a one-lane bottleneck on a 12-lane highway just to get to the other side.
Better to Die?
Going back to the five questions, I talked a fair bit about God because I grew up with the worldview that God created me for and with a purpose. So my answers to the five questions have a lot to do with my ruminations about what's beyond this life. As I test this worldview against others, I'm beginning to see how this makes a lot more sense. It doesn't escape the tough questions or find loopholes (which I find philosophy doing), but it provides a reasonable answer to get by with purpose.
I don't recall asking those questions directly. But I have to admit that I have pondered on these five questions in different ways. What's the point in living, isn't it better to just die? Is suicide wrong, what's on the other side? Why was I born in such a circumstance, how would life have been if I was born with a different set of circumstances? Why did my dad die? Can the world ever get better? Who do I want to be in future?
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