Reading: The Big Questions

Who am I?
This is a fundamental question that every human being needs to attempt to answer.
Am I an animal that has evolved just like all the rest of the animals we find around us?
Am I different from the pets I own?
If I am fundamentally similar since my DNA is about 90% the same as a cat?
If we are so similar in the basic building blocks of our cells, what makes me special?
Does my life go on when I die or is my life only as viable as the offspring I have given birth to?
If I have no children, does my life simply end and that is all there is?
Do I need to have a community around me to give me my identity?
Or is my identity given me by something else? Given to me by God?

What is real?
What is meant by the term real?
Do I have to be able to touch something for it to be real?
If I cannot touch it, can the sun be real?
Is history real?
How do you know for certain that your body is real? Could it be your imagination?
If you can imagine something or dream something that seems as though it is very real, is it? Or is a figment of my imagination or a dream just so much unreal stuff?
Is darkness real? Or is it a measurement of the absence of light?

Is there a God? Does it matter?
Is God real? How do I come to know him/her/it?
Is this God dependent on my idea of him to exist?
Is there a star in the sky which is actually us seeing God?
Does God interact with the world in which we live?
What difference does it make to me if God exists?
Which religion is the "correct” one? Are they not all the same?
Does God speak to us?
Is there a God? Does it matter?

How do we know anything?
I know something if I experience it.  For example, I fell to the ground like everyone else falls to the ground. Gravity must exist.
I know something if I am logically convinced of its truth. For example, I can see the ruins of ancient Rome. I was not there, but those who have studied this have discovered that the Roman culture existed.
Is faith a viable avenue to the arrival of truth?  
What does it mean to know something is true? What if a new discovery proves that the thing I thought was real, is just an imaginary creation?
How do we learn anything? What does it mean to go from ignorance to insight?

What is my mind? Is it my soul, too?
Is my mind something more than the neural tracks that have been formed between cells in my brain?
Why does it seem like I can be outside of myself watching myself think or do an activity?
How does my mind function? What are memories? How are those memories stored in my mind?
How is it that some people simply are more capable of using their mental capacity than others are? What makes one "smart”?
Religion speaks of a soul within the human being, what is a soul? Is it the equivalent of my mind?
What makes me capable of experiencing joy? Is it a construct of my mind or is it something else?

Is there a universal "ought”?
If I speak of morality, what does that word mean?
Are there such things as right and wrong ways of acting and thinking?
If I am confused, does that make me a bad person?
If something is wrong for me, is it wrong for you? Who gets to say?