In this and the following two articles, we will take a look at three fundamental questions which science cannot answer. It is not that science hasn’t yet found an answer to these questions. They are questions – important questions – which science has no way of answering. They lie outwith the scope of science.
The first is this rather simple looking question: Why is there anything at all? It seems infinitely more likely that there would be nothing, no existence. The fact that the universe exists at all is a complete mystery.
Science might be able to trace everything in the universe back to the big bang. That still doesn’t answer the question of why (or how) all that energy was there in the first place.
To probe further into this dilemma, it is worth looking at what we mean by ‘why?’ A scientist tends to answer such a question by looking at what has caused the thing. In other words, we can look back in time and see what has led up to the current situation. An example of a question where this sort of answer would be appropriate is, ‘Why is the Earth’s climate changing?’
Another way of answering ‘why?’ questions is to look into the future and see how the current situation is likely to affect the future. This sort of answer is most meaningful if there is some intention at play. An example question is, ‘Why should we reduce emissions of carbon dioxide?’
Yet another type of answer is of a functional or relational flavour. An example question is, ‘Why does a car have a gearbox?’
When answering existential type questions, a materialist can only really give the first type of reply, referring to the past causes. However, there is no knowable time prior to the big bang. That is why it cannot have been caused, or at least can never be shown to have a cause. Science cannot answer the most fundamental question about existence. This has led to the first cause interpretation of God, who is deemed to have created the energy of the universe, together with the fundamental laws of physics, and then left the whole thing to play out in a mechanistic way.
A theologian might well answer existential questions in one of the other ways, assuming some intention on the part of a creator god. As has often been pointed out, this merely shifts the unanswerable questions from the universe to the god: Why is there a god?
A mystic simply states things as they are: Existence is a mystery. We don’t know why anything at all exists. We can never know why there is a universe.
