I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

What do you guys actually think we are? Are humans just another species that happened to evolve on a random planet in this massive universe, or do you think there is some deeper reason behind our existence?

Science gives us a pretty convincing explanation of how we got here. Universe formed, stars and planets formed, life somehow started on Earth and after billions of years of evolution, here we are. In that sense we might just be another outcome of nature, no different fundamentally from millions of other species that have existed and gone extinct.

But then religions have completely different explanations. God, soul, karma, rebirth, heaven and hell, some purpose we are supposed to fulfil etc.

Personally I don’t really know what I believe anymore. I usually mix science and philosophy while trying to understand these things. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about consciousness, self reflection and Advaita Vedanta, especially the idea of what the “self” actually is.

Science explains a lot about how we exist, but I still wonder whether it can ever answer why there is something instead of nothing, why consciousness exists, or whether there even needs to be a “why” in the first place.

So what do you think?

Are we just an accident of the cosmos that became intelligent enough to question its own existence? Or is there actually something deeper going on?

Would love to hear your own theories, religious, atheist, philosophical, scientific or just something you came up with while thinking about this stuff.

A brilliant new video from Understanding Humanism, voiced by the wonderful Prof. Alice Roberts.