What is all this? Where did it all come from? Where is it all going?

Some people need an ultimate "origin."

Not all do.

Buddhists, for example, speak of a "beginningless beginning."

But people who require an ultimate origin just simply posit one; the convention is to call this origin or creator "god."

I don't mind. "Origin" equals "creator" equals "god."

Got it.

But, logicians say, then we have the problem of the origin of god.

What existed before god? Who "created" god? Then who or what created the "creator" of god? And who the creator before that?

Now we have begun the infinite regress, a concept not so different from a beginningless beginning.

Scientists, too, are stymied.

The "big bang" origin? Okay, and before the big bang? Before that? And before that?

Here we go again!

So far as I know, no one—not theist, not scientist, not atheist—denies the existence of the vast mysterious power that sustains this whole mind-boggling reality we experience from microscopic insect to big night sky spangled with twinkling stars.

But what on earth is all this—the horror, the beauty, the pain, the love?

Atheists, agnostics, skeptics, and scientists just leave it at that—a mystery, an unknown—while they experiment and explore to learn more.

Theists, religious believers, depending on their specific era, culture, and religion, prefer the parables and poems that scholars call "myths," the tales ancient peoples told to explain the mystery and the unknown.

They're interesting and beautiful; but personally I think it best not to insist on the absolute "truth" of any one of them.

None of them can really bear serious scrutiny.

"What is life all about?" the late Kurt Vonnegut asked his son.

"Father," his son replied, "we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."