Why are we here?

In this age of hand-held navigators and digital dictation of directions from the dashboard, it may seem superfluous to remind readers that old-fashioned site maps mark an observer’s location with an Xand the comment, “You are here”. Now imagine a New Age philosophy department’s site map: As dreamed up by The New Yorker’s cartoonist cartographer, this billboard uses the X mark all right, but it dispenses the extremely neutral comment “you are here” and replaces it with the potentially unsettling query, “Why are you here?” Jokes apart, how does one handle that question? Because the ‘why’ questions always tend to be harder than the ‘how’ ones. It seems easier to say ‘how’ you got somewhere rather than ‘why’ you were there in the first place, especially if the ‘why’ involves ultimate questions of the purpose or the design of existence!

For scientists, this is the notoriously slippery province of teleology (from the Greek teleos for ‘end’, ‘purpose’ or even ‘perfect’) where most clear-headed practitioners would fear to tread! However, for many a philosopher, and indeed for most believers, teleology may be built into the fabric of the cosmic order itself. Such an argument makes out a case for the existence of a definite order in the universe, which is otherwise filled with entropy and disorder. The teleological proposition of an a priori order inevitably leads to the existence of an all-knowing Creator/Demiurge.
Turn the tables on Him by asking ‘how’ He can possibly exist outside the framework without being subjected to the ‘why’ query?