This is my first blog post so it ought to be about my cosmology - my understanding of life and the universe and 42 in general.

It seems to me very clear that the universe, so far in its existance, has been a machine for creating consciousness. I don't know much about astro physics, but it seems that the heavier elements that make up this world have been created from hydrogen and helium over the billenia when stars die.

The continents of this world on which higher life evolved have themselves evolved by the formation of a sialic crust floating on the mantle. This took billenia as well.

Finally life evolved and then higher life and then intelligent life and finally conscious life.

Then to cap it all off society evolved from tribal to global and autocratic to democratic.

Consciousness is the one thing that interests me the most in life. It seems to me obvious that the laws of physics were specifically arranged so as to create it by a process of evolution as just described. I cant guess what it is for. Maybe it will lead to the evolution of something even more amazing. I am a scientist and an atheist and altogether reject the creationist theory as absurd. However there IS some sort of intelligence in the universe and it is not beyond the bounds of the imagination to think that there is some sort of presence or agency - a god - involved at this level of the sum total of all existence. When I talk about God I mean existence itself, but maybe there is a more junior being in charge of the universe. The idea stands as a reasonable hypothesis. I don't think it is beyond the bounds of the possible that science will eventually find out if it is true or not.

One thing does strike me though. I see human existence as being intended to create the machines. That is what I think I am here for and I have spent much of my life as a scientist and computer programmer  in the industrial world helping to do just that. I suppose the machines will lead on to the next level after consciousness. I wish I could be alive when that happens but alas I am getting old.