First of all, those are two completely different questions. What happens (presumably you mean after death?) doesn't necessarily have anything to do with why we are here.

It could be that nothing happens after death, but there is still some grand purpose to existence. Or it could be that there's an afterlife, but the universe itself is meaningless.

As to what do I really know? The answer is, of course, nothing. No-one can really know anything about what happens outside of our existence and anyone who tells you they do is either lying or delusional.

However we can make an educated guess (and not even a "so called" one, a real one based on centuries learning about the universe we inhabit) Every time we make a new discovery, it has turned out to have a natural explanation. As we learn more, the "god of the gaps" has grown smaller and smaller, to the point where we know that even if there is some mystical force underlying the universe, it has no measurable effect on it.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Physicist-Sean-Carroll-refutes-supernatural-beliefs

If our consciousness really does continue after our physical bodies die, there has to be a mechanism for it, and there is zero evidence of any such mechanism.

It could be that we simply lack the tools or the understanding to detect this, but there isn't even anything leading us to ask the question (e.g. an unexplained phenomena that would prompt us to investigate a hypothesis that might lead to a theory).

As to why we are here? From a scientific point of view, there's no evidence to suggest there is a reason to anything. The universe just is. From a philosophical point of view, I've always liked Carl Sagan's idea that "we are a way for the cosmos to know itself".

TL;DR We really know nothing, but it's pretty unlikely that anything happens after death or that there is a reason we are here.

i must have been either drunk or very tired posting this - i named it 'cosmo sheldra' and in the comment mentioned cosmo yarvis instead of sheldrake thanks for the promoting!

I just found Cosmo a few weeks back. I think 'Pelicans We' is a better tune, but I love this video.

We are a known quantity on many interstellar maps if the evolutionary paradigm is true. It wouldn't take that long for a sufficiently advanced civilization to locate every planet that has life on it, especially if they could use inter-dimensional travel. They could automate everything using robotics, or by some other means unknown to us. Perhaps they could even instantly colonize those planets using sentient robots.

The point is that we are a resource to be exploited and after an estimated 15 billion years of the Universe existing, according to the secular narrative, there should be many civilizations out there capable of doing just that. That we haven't been contacted or seen any activity at all is more than curious; it is dramatic evidence that we are in fact alone in the cosmos.

Hi @lurgee, Check out the two Cosmo Sheldrake vids that paul4dirt posted today, both are pretty cool - http://videosift.com/tag/cosmo+sheldrake

This video was much more succinct than Carl Sagan's Cosmos series segment on the same subject.

If there were a type 2 civilization, with such a device that could harness an entire star's energy - how would we on earth detect that? Maybe everything we think is a black hole is actually one of these?

Your video, Cosmo flips sexism on Scarlett Johansson & Mark Ruffalo, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson could easily feature this on a new-season Cosmos episode about space curvature phenomenon.

It amuses me when people talk about eternal bliss or eternal damnation. WTF would you know about eternity? Human life resulted from a chance combination of compatible factors to support evolution in a tiny fragment of a vast cosmos. Nothing else makes sense.

I grew up exactly the opposite from your situation; I grew up in the secular world and I believed that it was the world, and that our understanding of the cosmos sufficiently explained the questions we had about life. Everything else was a wonderful mystery waiting to be discovered as we explored the worlds, inner and outer. I saw religion, and Christianity particularly, as backwards and ignorant, a sad relic of our more primitive past.

That all changed when I started to have supernatural experiences. I didn't believe in the supernatural at the time, and finding out that there was a spiritual reality blew my mind to say the least. I started exploring all of the different religions and beliefs out there, trying to make sense of it all, and basically just pieced together what I felt was different pieces of the truth from all of these differing ideas of reality.

It was then that I started to come to the realization that there is a God. He opened my eyes to see the ways He was, and always had been, shaping my life. He showed me His personal love, for me. I began to follow Him and He led me, after showing me many different things, to the bible. He confirmed it to me as His book and confirmed to me that Jesus is the Savior of the world. I never would have come to that conclusion on my own in a million years. Even when I knew there was a God, the last thing I thought was that He was the God of Christianity.

I went through a similar process to you; I had to integrate an entirely different way of seeing the world, and let go of the artifices that had been constructed in me since a young age. God set me free to be myself, the person He created me to be. He has made me into a new person, and I experience His love, help and guidance every single day of my life.

I'm sorry you were indoctrinated as a child. You never experienced the truth of John 3:3. That's why it all seems like a sham to you fed by ignorant people who were themselves indoctrinated. The Holy Spirit has to make you a new person, and that never happened to you. It is actually the best thing that could have happened because if you had stayed the way you were, you would have died thinking you were saved when you weren't. Now, you know you aren't a Christian which opens the door much wider for God to do an amazing thing in your life. I just want you to know that He loves you. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. God bless.

I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

I was actually trying to get across it is really arrogant to assume because WE radio all over the place, that makes it the intelligent way to go. Also, the fact that there doesn't seem to be any civilizations populating the cosmos might be because, like us, it would take too much resources for everyone else as much as us. Maybe there really isn't any way to get around faster than light, and therefore not even close to it.

"The idea that your cat is the Creator of the Universe has no explanatory power. To have an argument that your cat is the Creator you need to provide positive reasons for it. The Universe is finely tuned: if design is an explanation than I wouldn't need to disprove anything and everything as being a potential Creator, I would simply need to examine the evidence for design to make a determination as to what kind of being this must be, and using Occams razor I could come to some definite conclusions about it."

And I would posit that any same test applied to the Judeo-Christian god would fail the test equally (given that "god did it" isn't a theory, it's a construct). For that matter, so would any other god you want to throw out there. Assuming an intelligent creator pre-dating the universe created the universe calls into question "How did this dude himself go about getting created?". That question can only basically be answered with "It's turtles all the way down".

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator?

How do you know my cat didn't create it? Equal empirical evidence (none) of both constructs.

Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision? The mere fact of its existence let alone its operation and stability is something too grandiose to be automatically regulated to some accident.

Really? We happen to live in a time period called the Stelliferous Era in which stars exist. Too far in the past, they couldn't form; too far in the future, they will no longer form. So oddly enough, given that the conditions are at this particular time are favorable to life, life came into being and evolved. So if it's your belief that god created this universe to be human friendly, why'd he wait so long for the conditions to be right for us to exist? Why not just do it on Day 1? Or why didn't he wait longer? Why did the universe have to be human-friendly in the first place? He's god -- he can do anything, so why are humans bound to all these rules of math, physics and chemistry, like every single other bit of life from bacteria to Blue whales?

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator?

How do you know it's not my incredibly clever, and possibly deific, cat? Again, same empirical proof (none).

Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision?

We live in a time where the universe is able to support life. Outside of this neatly-ordered era, we'd be plasma or neutrons.

You can prove a negative: there are no married bachelors. The idea that your cat is the Creator of the Universe has no explanatory power. To have an argument that your cat is the Creator you need to provide positive reasons for it. The Universe is finely tuned: if design is an explanation than I wouldn't need to disprove anything and everything as being a potential Creator, I would simply need to examine the evidence for design to make a determination as to what kind of being this must be, and using Occams razor I could come to some definite conclusions about it.

The second question is actually a really good one. I would expect to see the "signature" of the creator: something empirical that would point directly to a creator-being as opposed to a universe governed by. and explainable by, mathematical laws.

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator? Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision? The mere fact of its existence let alone its operation and stability is something too grandiose to be automatically regulated to some accident. The intelligibility of the Universe is also something you seem to be taking from granted. Why should we even be able to comprehend it as far as we do? Could it be that the Creator gave us that ability?

I would also ask you why you think that understanding the mechanism somehow explains away agency?