Who hasn't pondered theories of our existence, your questions are some what in a general sense and hitting on religious themes etc. so I'm just going to go through all my beliefs and give you an insight of how I think this world and universe works. So, I've written something before, I'll just spill it back out, then add some more fresh views. All my life, I've criticized this world, I've analyzed what it is and what it will become. The more I think, the more I try to comprehend, the more knowledge I yearn to know, the more I feel that we're not looking in the right direction. What I mean is, whatever we were born to do, we're not doing. We weren't born to live a life, die and hope some God will let us continue to form our legacy. We were born for something else, something we have yet to discover. There is something out there, or possibly something within ourselves. The human race has been around thousands of years, the Earthly race has been here for millions. How much did the world advance in the millions of years before us? Not very much at all.
Instinct and survival were born with the first beings of this planet. Whether or not beings were to be created or not, is beyond me. It very well be a mistake. The world was as it was, something among something on a much bigger scale; the universe. Millions of years past before humans were born, and in the thousands of years we've been here, the world has changed drastically. Take the world as if it is an orange, this orange takes a little time to become ripe. Eventually fungus begins to grow, and you have a new life eating away at the orange, causing it to wither and die. Now take this orange and imagine it to be the world, and the fungus, as us, human beings, animals, amphibians and all that there is that has a heartbeat. We're destroying this planet. Every day innocent lives are lost, violence and emotions rape this world and all that is in it. We've riddled it with wars, we've disfigured it with greed and the desire for things we want. Morality is dead. We no longer do anything for the benefit of anyone else, that is assuming that at one point we in fact did. Everything we do eventually falls back on us, we do things for others in hope that we will receive good karma, that in the long run it will please the soul. But where has that lead us?
We're slowly heading for extinction. Power, money, greed, desire, four things that control this world. There's no denying everyone of us falls into one of those categories. So why do we strive for these things? We strive for them because we no little else. We know not what we are here for, if we don't ever find out what we need to do, we will become a blip in the history of all that there is.
We either die in dignity or we die as failures, that is how the world will see us, how the future will see us. We're building an empire of human emotion when really, there should be something else we should do. What is the outcome of this thinking? Religion, we seek the answers of our existence and we look to religion. Yet when you think about it, who really created Religion? Humans. We did. We have no other intervention as to what may have caused us to believe in these things, religious beliefs are created by people who seek answers, not people who believe in some God. God is symbolism for the answers, this was some how lost among years of transition.
Religion was created by humans, believed by humans, misinterpreted by humans. There's a reason no one knows what god is, no one knows the answer, because God is the answer, God is what we're all searching for, yet it isn't what we think it is. God is no being. It is answers, the word God or the idea of God is symbolism for those answers. So what do we do? Something we wont. All hope is lost for this race, so we might as well tear this world from limb to limb and finish what started out as a search for meaning. We're doing this by feeding our greed, by following our desires, and not what we were set out to do. Who gave us this task? We'll find out when we find our answers.
Now, for more of a fresh view. I've studied philosophy for a while now and I know the view of several renound philosophers. A man named Socrates, a Greek philosopher, whom inspired many others as well as taught the great Plato. Socrates was concerned with the question of ethics; right & wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice. He moved philosophy beyond the reflections of the natural world and closer to the more supernatural if you will, or the non physical state of the world. Socrates believed that the soul had to be cared for, and this could be done by gaining wisdom - knowing what was good led to good things.
Now, this led to much deeper philosophy and theories about the universe, and even my own theories, so moving closer to my point, I will speak of Plato. Plato believed that we could find the answers of this planet through our own minds. He believed that there are two worlds. There is our world that we see each and every day, the materialistic one, the one that is filled with emotion and desire. Then, you have the world of ideas, the one in which our soul lives in. He believed that our soul contains all the knowledge we could ever want yet, we only take parts of this knowledge when we follow the way in which our soul leads us. If you take the idea that there are two parts two us, dualism, there is our physical state which is motivated by desires and emotions, we do what feels good in this state.
Then you take the lesser physical state, the state that is the mind and soul. The mind and soul are trying to lead us closer to the right direction, as a charioteer as such, however, the physical state is being distracted by the day to day things that we enjoy rather than doing what the soul feels it should be. The more we follow the soul, the more we learn about the world and what is in it and even answers to how it came about. Basically, Plato believed that true intellect could only be found through the intellect, the mind. The senses could not be trusted. His theory of ideas proved that there are pure, unchangeable ideas which human beings may forget but can be understood through the use of intellect. In his parable of the cave, Plato explains his theory of ideas through allegory. These are some Plato's many beliefs.
Now, where do I come into all this? Well, I too believe that there is a spiritual world, one in which guides many things in which happen in this universe, I think people are naive to believe that there is only what you see. The Humanist tradition has many many great points form men such as Karl Marx & Albert Camus. They view that the world can only be looked at as science or from an empirical view. I think there is many truths to thins, but many humanists say that we cannot study what is not there. Makes sense, yes, great sense, however, they believe that what you cannot see is not there. I think this is what let's the entire humanist view down; they think there is nothing more than what we see. They break everything down to it's final particle, saying that humans are made of skin and bones and to the furthest filter; atoms, and nothing more. This empirical study in my opinion is extremely naive and I feel they are missing out on many key elements of this universe.
From a religious point of view (really don't want to get into too much depth here due to the touchy subject), I think it's somewhat naive also. Many religions have great points and state why this world came into being. But they do just that, they state why rather than stating how. Science and religion work hand in hand from this point of view as science states how where as religion states why. In saying that though, I have already criticized science in saying that it is naive in thinking there is only what you see, and if it cannot be explained then in cannot be. If I could refer back to Socrates, he believed that there should be a general consensus in all beliefs, that one truth for one person, cannot be a different truth for another as it does contradict. I would agree with this in saying that religions contrast far to much in belief for one to be right and another to be wrong.
If religion is the key to learning all of life's answers then I would not say that we will figure it out with 5 major religions each containing thousands of branches and denominations as well as there being further hundreds of other minor religions. There would need to be one general belief proven to be correct to be correct, rather than having several truths believed to be the right path to the right answer. This is a general view on the subject not taking into account other people's views, but that is my own.
If I'm to state my views on how the world and entire universe came into being, I would have an agnostic belief in saying that we cannot know.
Cosmology states that the "Big Bang" created this universe over 18 billion years ago with a big explosion and that the "Expanding Universe" theory states that the universe is expanding all the time. Well, I would say that it is a good theory, however, humanists would say that you cannot study what is not there, and scientists carry on the belief in saying so, but how could they come up with a theory that cannot be based on anything but what we see when we cannot see what was there before?
If I was to summarize my points and state my beliefs (which is pretty difficult) I would say that religion is too indecisive to hold the answers and science would be too naive in saying that you cannot study what is not there and what we cannot see is not real. I would believe more in philosophy and it's beliefs. In saying that, I've always said that "All generalizations are false", therefore, I cannot say what is true. No one can. I doubt as humans, we ever will, we're a blip in the history of this universe, one that is barely a second long within a century. We'll most likely be extinct before we find out answers. With a less pessimistic view, I would say; if humans learned to use their minds, they would find answers. Other than that. I have nothing else I can explain.