Why Are We Here?

Some Universal Thoughts on the BIG Questions

I began writing this piece at the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and have worked on it off and on since then. During that time, so many things have happened in the US and elsewhere that it is hard to keep with them, and only those substackers who write constantly have a chance of doing so. As readers of my posts know, I am not among them.

This post is totally different: my attempt to address more timeless questions, like “why are we here?” Is there a God, and if so, why do so many bad things happen to good people? (the title of a famous book by the late Rabbi Harold Kushner).

My answers to these questions you hopefully will read below have been percolating in my head for years, decades really. I tend not to think about the above existential questions during most of the year except during the ten-day period that begins every year with Rosh Hashanah and ends with Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religion, when Jews are supposed to collectively confess our sins and resolve to do better the next year. We do this at long religious services at our synagogues or temples, where worshippers are led in prayer by a Rabbi and Cantor who chants a seemingly endless series of prayers, drawn from the Old Testament, Psalms and other writings of famous Rabbis through the ages.

Like most Jews, I think, I have participated every year in these services from probably the age of three, silently reading the words, and as I have learned the melodies, chanted along, silently and when appropriate, publicly, with the readings, led by the Cantor. For about the first 15 years of my life, I did this robotically, not thinking a lot about the meaning of what I was reading or singing about. Just more or less hoping that if I said the words fervently enough, good things would happen the following year, and bad things wouldn’t.

But beginning in my college years and continuing through my adult years, I have used the time spent at synagogue during these “High Holy Day” services, just to think. Oftentimes, my mind would wander to things I was immediately worried about at each stage of life. But as I’ve gotten older, and especially this year (my 75^th), my mind has always wandered back to those two BIG questions I posed at the outset. And I tend to come up with the same partially formed answers, or more accurately, non-answers – only not to think about them much until the following year. But this year, I’ve decided to write them down, because as readers surely know, you don’t know what you really think until you do that. And I think this late stage of life matters, too. At 75, if not sooner, I’ll bet a lot of people ask and try to answer the same questions I pose here.

In what follows I draw, in parts, on the liturgy of the Jewish prayer service on these holy days. But I also attempt to universalize the questions and answers beyond Judaism, because Jews are a tiny fraction of the people on earth, where Christianity (including Catholicism) and Islam, along with Buddhism, are the overwhelming dominant religions. I do so with the help of AI, not because AI is some kind of God in itself, which of course it is not, but because AI engines built on data on the Internet are essentially much improved forms of search, with a small error rate. But errors there may be in my references below to other religions, so please forgive my mistakes in advance (I know it’s a Yom Kippur thing, even though we’re several weeks past that holiday by now). The good news, though, is that my references to other religions are merely to provide context. They do not affect the major themes I advance here, or at least so I think.

I hope I am not being presumptuous (or even trite, which would be worse) in offering these thoughts to readers, which are outside the political-economic subjects on which I usually weigh in. I am doing so in the hope that they might stimulate some of you to do some similar thinking, if you haven’t already. And, like writing always does, at least to clarify to myself what I really think (at least up to this point in my life) about the really BIG QUESTIONS.

Does God Exist? Is the Wrong Question

Much of the debate over religion centers on the age-old question: Does God Exist? I suggest that that is the wrong question. Rather, what I hope to convince you is that the better (or even right) question is: Is God Active or Inactive? And along the way, I’ll suggest that many who call themselves atheists, or who deny the existence of a Higher Being, or God, may in fact, once they think more deeply, realize that down deep they believe that God exists, but is simply inactive.

Good and bad things happen to all humans, and for that matter, to all living things. With one certainty, every living thing eventually dies. Probably for as long as humans have considered these facts, they have wondered why. Why do some grow old or rich and regardless are happy through much of their lives, while others die young and poor, or even if they live a long time and are rich or comfortable, are unhappy most of their lives?

Until Abraham of the Old Testament, humans thought there were multiple Gods that drove these outcomes, and whether humans appeased or didn’t appease these Gods made all the difference in their lives. Since Abraham of the Old Testament, the world’s three major religions have all accepted the existence of just one God, though people have differed over the role that God, or this Higher Being, actually plays in our lives.

Before I get to these differences, I want to highlight that one big distinction that looms as more important than all the others: between those who believe that God is active at least to some degree, and those who believe God is inactive.

An active God intervenes in the course of human affairs, though how often and to what degree is a matter of belief and faith. At one extreme are determinists who believe that God has a “plan” for everyone right down to the details of everything we do and what happens to us. Humans have no “agency” or “free will” in these plans. This, of course, raises the question: if God determines everything, are humans just God’s toys? Why then would God even “need” us, and does God even have needs? But I am getting ahead of myself; I will address “our purpose” at the end.

Which religions are built on “Deistic determination”? According to my AI research: Calvinist Christianity, much of Islam (though some Islamists leave some room for free will), Stoicism, and Jainism. This is an important list. If this AI answer is wrong, please tell me. I will add there is some element of Deistic determinism in Judaism, or at least among many individual Jews, who when something good happens (mostly marriages, but other life events), may say “B’shert,” it was “meant to be.” Likewise, I think many Christians believe some form of this. But Judeo-Christion theology in general is not deterministic but rather reflects some mix of fate and free will, with a fuzzy line between the two.

To many, an active God means a sort of “super parent,” who rewards good behavior, repentance and prayer (though not always and perhaps in “mysterious ways”), and punishes bad behavior and doesn’t respond to those who don’t pray. Humans can’t know, however, if and when Gods responds to human behavior/misbehavior or prayer. That’s where faith comes in. If you believe in some form of Deistic activism, at least part of you must believe that what humans at least has a chance of influencing what God does.

To me (and maybe many other Jews) the most famous prayer in the Yom Kippur service, the “Unetanneh Tokef,” best encapsulates this paternalistic version of God:

“On this day all of us pass before You,

One by one, like a flock of sheep.

As a shepherd counts sheep, making each of them pass under the staff,

So you Review every living being,

Measuring the years

And decreeing the destiny of every creature

On Rosh Hashanah it is written

And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

How many shall leave this world, and how many shall be born; who shall live and who shall die, who in the fullness of years and who before; who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by wild beast; who by famine and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague; who by strangling and who by stoning, who shall rest and who shall wander; who shall be serene and who disturbed; who shall be at ease and who afflicted; who shall be impoverished and who are enriched, who shall be humbled and who exalted.

BUT REPENTANCE, PRAYER, AND DEEDS OF KINDNESS CAN REMOVE THE SEVERITY OF THE DECREE.”

Pretty strong stuff, huh? The last sentence, bolded, captures the “parent” part, because up until then, the prayer is super deterministic: bad things will happen to us, or at least things will happen to us that are outside of our control, unless we repent for our wrongdoing (against God, asking for forgiveness from other humans is a separate matter, according to Jewish thinking), pray and do good deeds.

Now, I want to be clear, I think all three of these things that are supposed to “remove the severity of the decree” (other prayer books use a somewhat version of this phrase) are good things to do. But do I believe, or do you, when it really comes down to it, that God actually responds to our supplications? Or to put it simply, do you believe “life is fair” – in the sense that if we do the right things and good things will happen, and if we misbehave, bad things will happen?

For what it’s worth, while I may have believed all this when I was young, I certainly have not believed this to be the case for many decades. Let’s take the recent release by Hamas of the remaining Israeli hostages. Jews in Israel and around the world are beyond jubilant that this has happened. Many I am confident, like the young man playing on a guitar in my Facebook Reels feed, thank God for their release, literally, not just in the metaphorical sense when many people utter “Thank God” after some good thing happens.

Again, I want to be clear, I am not questioning others’ beliefs that God was indeed responsible for the return of the last 20 hostages who made it (or more indirectly, as I am also sure many Jews believe, that President Trump was somehow an instrument of God’s will to have made the deal – by threatening both Netanyahu and Hamas they had no other choice or else - - that made the hostage release possible). It’s a “free country,” as they say, and people are entitled to believe what they want to believe (though in the US these days, not always to say what you want to say).

But I just can’t accept that view. Why did God only save these 20 (and those hostages released earlier), and not all the other hostages who died at the hands of Hamas during captivity, or on that horrific October 7^th day? It can’t possibly be because the 20 who made it were somehow more deserving than those who didn’t? Just as it can’t possibly be true that the 1,200-plus innocent Israelis who were murdered by Hamas did something anything so wrong in their lives to have justified what happened to them. I’m sorry, I can’t believe an Active God would make such distinctions.

I can’t believe that an Active God would have allowed so many innocent Palestinians (no, they were not “all Hamas”) to have died.

I can’t believe that an Active God has allowed or continues to allow the continuous daily murders of innocent people throughout the U.S. in single or mass shooting events.

I can’t believe that an Active God allows so many people who don’t “deserve” this fate, to die or be injured in accidents or through diseases? Or how can an active God allows people to come into this world with genetic defects that lead to such suffering and death, when clearly the unborn have done nothing to deserve this fate?

While I realize that human beings, at least as presently constructed, cannot live forever (which I can understand an inactive God could design, just wait), but why do some perish before others, and why so much suffering? It can’t be that the length of one’s years or amount of suffering is in any way correlated with how well-behaved people are while on earth (or if there is some loose correlation, what accounts for the huge number of exceptions?).

And then, the Big One, at least for me, is that I can’t believe that an Active God would have allowed the Holocaust (or similar genocides of other peoples throughout history). Not even as the “price” for the creation of the state of Israel (which for those who claim otherwise, is not a colonial power, but a place Jews have called home for something like 4,000 years). How could we even think of an Active God who would allow such a thing? For that matter, why does an active God allow any evil in the world? Just to toughen the rest us up? Test the goodness in people? Though I am in or nearing the winter of my own life, I can rationally understand why God would want to put a limit on our life spans, which does make us appreciate every day we’re here. But suffering by people who have done nothing to deserve it? No, this I don’t get, and cannot accept that an active God would allow this.

It is at this point that those who believe in an Active God say, wait a minute. God may be active without acting as a super parent, intervening or not intervening in human affairs for reasons unrelated to human behavior or supplication, and humans can’t fathom which is which. Hence, the phrase “God acts in mysterious ways,” who are we mere humans to doubt that? I get that this answer is good enough for lots of people, who could otherwise feel hopeless and helpless. Believing that God might care about each of us in some way – cares enough to occasionally act like the super-parent many imagine God to be -- can provide solace, especially during the bad times, especially after awful events. For me, that answer just doesn’t work, though I marvel at those who believe that it does.

But just because God may not be active, does not mean that God doesn’t exist. God can just be inactive. On this view, an inactive God a long, long time ago (scientists still debate how “old” the universe is) created the matter before the “Big Bang” and all of the scientific “laws” that have governed the universe ever since. One of those “laws” is “evolution,” which accounts for how we humans eventually arrived on the scene. But an inactive God never intervenes in human affairs, or any “affairs”, such as the motion of everything else in the universe, of all the planets surrounding the zillions or stars that make up the billions of galaxies that constitute the universe (a thought that is so mind boggling that makes astronomers, at least to me, the deepest “thinkers” on our own little planet). Instead, here on earth, everything that happens, at least for humans, arises out of some combination of everyone exercising their free will and random events of nature.

There is a name for the “religion” that believes God is inactive: Deism. Certain of our nation’s founders were Deists: Thomas Jefferson (he of Declaration of Independence fame, author of the words “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”), Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. AI tells me, with reputable sources, that James Madison, James Monroe, and possibly George Washington were influenced by Deism. While the majority of other founders, including John Adams, John Jay and Sam Adams, expressed Christian or Unitarian beliefs, they also all believed in the separation of church and state. In other words, the overwhelming evidence is that our founders never intended the US to be a “Christian nation.” Yes, a nation founded by Christians, but not to be a nation of and by Christians. (I couldn’t help myself, I just had to throw those few sentences in, given the false claims otherwise being bandied about today).

So, I’m a Deist too, but with “Jewish characteristics” – someone who grew up in a Jewish environment, am proud to have done so, and am deeply disturbed by the rise of antisemitism in the US and elsewhere around the world, a development I never would have imagined growing up and living through, say, my first 50 or 60 years.

I hope you can see why belief in an Inactive God or Deism can easily be confused with Atheism, which denies the existence of any form of Higher Being. If one believes that God doesn’t intervene, ever, in human affairs, how do we know that even an inactive God exists? I can’t (no one can) prove that to be the case. But I suggest that is the only logical inference by arguing in the negative. Namely, if an inactive God doesn’t exist, how does one explain how all that material that predated the Big Bang got there? Or where did all the laws of physics, evolution, and so forth come from? Nature? No, that’s not good enough. Where did “Nature” come from? Something, or some Higher Being, had to have created the matter and the laws of nature (which, to say it again, scientists continue working hard to “discover”), even if a lot (maybe most) of what has happened in the universe since the Big Bang has been random.

As social scientist Charles Murray put it in a recent column in The Free Press writing about his new book Taking Religion Seriously: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” I first heard it put in those words by the late columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer during a session of a chess club we started in the early 1990s. That I thought Charles had come up with it himself is proof of how unreflective I had been. Anyone who had taken any interest in theology would have encountered it long since. It’s one of the most famous questions in metaphysics.” (It doesn’t surprise me that like me, in his late years, Murray is pondering the Big Questions too).

Or as the remarkable physicist Stephen Hawking recounted a joke about an astronomer’s lecture in his Brief History of Time (and speaking of Hawking, how does one reconcile an active God with his fate, or that of anyone else with ALS?):

“At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

In short, once one starts thinking about where the Universe and its laws come from, you’re in a land of infinite regress. Turtles all the way down. Those who would deny the existence of at least an inactive Higher Being, at least to me, have a very steep logical hill to climb.

Life After Death and Souls

Back to randomness. I think it’s part of our human nature to be very uncomfortable with randomness (yes that nature word, and yes this could one of an inactive God’s “laws,” ironically). Even Einstein was uncomfortable with randomness, encapsulated in his famous phrase “God does not play dice.” But Einstein’s remark was only aimed physicists who claimed that there were probabilistic aspects to quantum mechanics, of the laws of physics that govern the behavior of sub-atomic particles, not at the life events each of us, including him, experience every waking hour of every day. Indeed, Einstein was essentially a Deist, using the word “God” as a metaphor for the fundamental laws of the universe, which he believed to be orderly and deterministic, not random.

But if much, if not most, of what happens to us in our everyday lives is random, then what difference does it make whether I (or you) am (are) good or bad? No one, other than the police, can stop me (you).

Ah, the “police.” They and the laws they are enforce are a human invention to keep us from all killing each other. So is organized religion. The Golden rule. Do unto others as they would unto you. Humans have learned that it’s in our self-interest to behave according to some well accepted rules, otherwise only the strongest, or those with biggest, baddest weapons would rule the earth.

But religion reinforces self-interest by helping to keep social order. Religions specify moral codes of conduct (the Ten Commandments), backed up by notions of an active God’s love or punishment. These keep people in line and maintain civility. This functional role of religion is the thesis (boiled down) of an important book written by my friend, Jonathan Rauch, Cross Purposes (read it, it’s fantastic, like everything that Jonathan writes).

Even so, while religion, or fear of the police, may keep each of us from doing bad things or encouraging us to do good things, it doesn’t necessarily remove the feeling of hopelessness or helplessness in the face of adverse events, whether you believe in Active or in Inactive God. To be sure, for some the phrase “God acts in mysterious ways” is comfort enough, and my full credit goes to those for whom this works, especially during the hard times. It doesn’t work for me, though the combination of rituals and song in prayer does provide solace and comfort, whether or not you think God listens to our prayers. I’ll return to this theme shortly.

But wait, there’s more to address the hopelessness/helplessness problem. Virtually all religions have invented other concepts to provide comfort: the notion of “afterlife,” and “heaven and hell.” Indeed, Christians believe that one can redeem an otherwise bad life in this world so long as you embrace Christ and thus ensure that you will be rewarded in the afterlife. However, Christians don’t completely overlook the goodness of life here: good works here is evidence of the strength of your faith. (Christian and Catholic readers, if I’ve butchered this short summary of your religion, by all means, tell me in the comments).

Judaism has more mixed views about the afterlife. On the one hand, its presence is acknowledged. As evidence, one of the prayers Jews say in the “Amidah” portion of their services every day, states “Praised are you, O Lord, you grant immortality to the departed.” Nonetheless, the overwhelming emphasis in Judaism is on the here and now, embodied in the concept of “Tikkun Olum,” or the charge to Jews to “repair the world,” meaning this world, not the hereafter.

Related to the concept of an afterlife is the notion that we each have “souls” that are independent of our bodies, and that live on even after our bodies return to dust. This is a central concept in all major religions, in some form. Our “souls” are what make us both “human” and “special,” and whether Good is active or inactive, it is the soul that God gives us. For what it’s worth, even someone like me who believes God is inactive and that it is unlikely there is any form of an afterlife, can still believe that in creating the initial conditions for the world, God somehow “built in” the concept of a soul, once the microbes (precursor of amoeba) that somehow surfaced after the Big Bang eventually grew into humans. A human “soul” can be a part of God’s algorithm, as it were, though with a huge dose of randomness thrown in thereafter. But the fact that humans have some sort of specialness and consciousness, embodied in our souls, doesn’t automatically mean that souls live on after we die. In other words, belief in souls does not require a belief in an afterlife.

But whether you believe in an active or inactive God, whatever suffering humans endure on earth fundamentally is immaterial to the fate of our “souls” however long they may last. One who believes in an Active God who has a “plan” for us can rationalize the suffering each of us inevitably experiences in life which can be viewed as a roadblock to overcome, or as a test us, all part of that plan, and that our reaction to those roadblocks can determine the quality of the afterlife. But, to me, that rationalization begs the question of why God tests some of us more severely than others; or why some of us are brought into this world in a gilded environment and others in poverty; or why some are born with genetic defects and others with genetic gifts (I have a rare form of a genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (adult onset, in my 40s), that almost certainly would have killed me years ago had not a miraculous new drug, trikafta become available for me about four years ago, which has greatly extended the lives of roughly 25,000 Americans, including me, who were born with CF. That all this has happened is result of decades of miraculous scientific discoveries. But why us, or me? In being born with the disease? And then miraculously largely rescued from it, at this particular moment in history? If you want to learn more about this miracle go to Youtube and this link:

. It’s an amazing story). None of this makes any sense to me.

And to those who believe in an inactive God, and that our initial starting position and that much of what happens to us thereafter is random, could still believe in after life or the concept of a soul, or both. This could be a matter of faith or theology. But to me, unless one also believes that the goodness of one’s deeds while on earth somehow affects the quality of one’s afterlife or the “goodness” or some other aspect of one’s soul, I don’t see how belief in afterlife or a soul provides much comfort for those who suffer in this world.

Which brings me to the next question: whether God is active or inactive, and whether or not there is some kind of afterlife, why pray? If you believe in an Active God or afterlife, the answer is easy: you hope for some reward, here or the hereafter.

But why should one, like me, who believes in an Inactive God and who also doesn’t believe in an afterlife, pray? After all, by definition, an inactive God can’t or doesn’t answer one’s prayers either in this life or an afterlife (if you believe in that too).

The late Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his best-selling book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, which I mentioned at the outset, had an answer that resonates with me, whether God is active or inactive: we pray to summon the energy within us to find the strength within each of us to meet the moment, and especially to deal with bad things. Prayer in this sense is like meditation. It calms us, allows us to clear our heads, and hopefully to give us courage.

The best illustration of this function of prayer is what Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has recently written in his widely and deservedly celebrated book, just featured in Time (October 27). Eli says he’s not religious, but also “no stranger to Jewish tradition.” It was that tradition, and the prayers and songs associated with it, that helped get through an unimaginably cruel ordeal of 491 days in captivity. Here is Eli in his own words:

“Even in the early days of captivity, I find myself murmuring Shema Yisrael [Here O’ Israel, perhaps the most famous and important of all Jewish prayers, the one Jews are supposed to utter in their last breaths if they are able] again and again, almost unconsciously. Like a mantra to keep me grounded.” [emphasis added].

And here: “On Saturday nights, when the Jewish Sabbath ends, Elia [a fellow hostage] chants the zemirot, the traditional table hymns. Sometimes we join him. Songs I remember my father singing. And that memory comes as a pinch of sweetness. I don’t know if I feel God in those moments. But I feel power. I feel a connection. To my identity. It connects me to my family. To my childhood. To my roots. It reminds me why I must survive. Who I’m surviving for. What I’m surviving for. It brings back glowing memories of childhood.” [emphasis added].

That my, friends, explains why even those who don’t believe in an Active God or the afterlife pray. Everything Eli wrote I believe, only he says it better. I am sure that readers of other faiths recognize the same things about their rituals, their songs, even if they down deep don’t really believe that there is a God who will answer them in this or a future lifetime.

So: Why are We Here?

So, now we turn to the ultimate question that all people, at least at some point in their lives, ask themselves or of their religious leaders: why are we here? To state the obvious at the outset: no one knows. How could it be otherwise? OK, I admit, that may sound depressing to some. But at least it’s an honest answer.

But what do the world’s main religions offer as an answer? Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as different as they may be on many things, essentially agree on something like this: God created us to recognize, serve and glorify God. But is God so insecure or vain (realizing I am imputing human qualities to a Higher Being here) that our presence is somehow necessary for God? Hindus believe, from what I gather, that human exists in order to realize their divine essence. But this is circular. Why would God believe it necessary to create humans so that they can realize that they were created by God? Buddhists, I have gathered, reject the ideal divine creation. Humans instead are the “karmic” result of previous lives. But this doesn’t explain why humans were created, or where those previous lives came from? We’re back, I think, to at least an inactive God.

I close with two sheer speculative thoughts about why we’re here (what other choice do we have?). Perhaps, as I suggested earlier, humans are just toys to God, who is interested in seeing how his algorithm, subject to random forces, play outs – knowing that in the end, even humans are destined to become extinct. Again, not just each of us, but all human beings and other life forms on earth are doomed to die off when our sun dies, a billion years from now.

Or, given the enormity (even that word doesn’t do it justice) of the universe whose size as I noted earlier is ginormous – measured in billions or possible trillions of galaxies each with billions of stars, each with who knows now many planets – the odds favor the existence of life elsewhere throughout the universe. That being the case, perhaps it is more likely that we on earth are just one of many God’s experiments to see how life in different parts of the vast universe evolves. If so, we (humanity collectively) haven’t done badly, but my goodness, there is so much to improve on. Just look around. Or look in the mirror. Try to be a better person each day, and yes, try to repair the world just one day at a time. God is watching.