Writings

What is Our Business Here?

March 2026

Shawn Kok

What is our business here?

The universe may be revealed by physics and chemistry, but that only tells us how we got here, not why we are here. We know that we are cousins of the flora and fauna around us, and at some point dropped from trees and became the modern human being. At the limit of our intelligence we accept that we are beneficiaries of evolutionary randomness, yet cannot shake the idea of Intelligent Design. We conclude that we do not make objective cosmic difference but assume we matter to a sovereign entity. In the spirit of self-interest and to combat boredom we invented from our consciousness meaning and morals and love, elevating them to a status higher than nature, only to grapple with an indifferent universe. Unable to deal with such a conflict and the excess doubt it brings, we conceived the narrative of good and evil and convinced ourselves that we are here to train, that there is a reward at the end, and that an ultimate being who is the origin of good is affectionately rooting for us.

Such a superfluous premise as the answer to one of the most persistent existential questions, especially when juxtaposed against Darwinian and Aristotelian thought, makes this deity out to be restless and us, trivial and inconsequential. It is logically incredulous to the point of absurdity that the progenitor of good would simply spectate as his creation doomed themselves. I am not undermining scientific explanation or the wisdom of ancient thinkers we have so benefitted from. I am saying that their explanations, however sophisticated, are inadequate in revealing the truth. Here I am drawn to a third kind of explanation, one that the Christian mathematician, John Lennox calls the “God explanation.” Imagine you enter a room and see a kettle of water about to boil and wonder to yourself how that is happening. Science will tell you that the water is boiling because of heat and atmospheric pressure and molecules. Philosophy–which can very much enrich our response to any question–might deduce an underlying, obscured idea responsible for the causation of the phenomenon. As you ponder, a second person steps into the room and simply reveals that he wanted to have tea, and so has set the water to boil. This is the God explanation.

Granted, to argue for the Judeo-Christian explanation opens more gaps. From the creation story to the resurrection of Christ to the coming of ultimate moral judgement, the Holy Bible accounts for little of the sort of details that will satisfy a rational mind. Was it the agency of Man or God’s plan that resulted in sin entering the world? Was it not predestination that Jacob was favoured over Esau even before birth? Where did Jesus get his Y chromosome if he was born of a virgin? How did He introduce carbohydrates and alcohol into H2O to turn water into wine? How can the rapture possibly a naturalistic event? All these valid and meaningful questions are ignored and seemingly render Scripture as facile, outdated, and unscientific. But if we were to take a step back, we will see that the Bible is essentially a collection of stories by a nation plus a small sect of believers, amassed over a long period of time, passed down orally by illiterate folk and eventually written fifty to hundreds of years after the character’s lifetime. This means that Scripture ought not to be upheld as historical or scientific evidence, but rather as corroborative evidence, especially when it comes to explaining our time on this earth. What the Bible offers is simply a different kind of explanation, one that whether is at odds or in cahoots with science or philosophy or any other kinds of knowledge, remains to be known.

So why are we here?

The Measure of “Christianess”

September 2025

It is perhaps owing to the deceit or strength of knowledgeable civilisations and their invented forms of thought that have dominated our morality both secular and religious that we now seek to express and explain religious belief, especially the Judeo-Christian faith, primarily through the utility of altruistic and anti-Dionysian actions that manifest as an imposing propagandistic lifestyle of converting non-believers and conquering outsiders.

The foremost quality of Judaism that embodied prostrating and obsequious attitudes for self-awareness is lost on its modern counterpart. Christianity, a flattened idea of Judaism, is a loud, self-assuring (opposite of self-awareness) form of religion that emphasises on outward performance and the sanctification of others. I am inclined to think of this departure as a pronounced indication of the human nature (who will conquer who) than a corruption of original faith.