Writing at the peak of his work on the origins of existence, Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who introduced the idea of natural selection to the world, remarked, "Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact--that mystery of mysteries--the first appearance of new beings on earth."
     Whether we believe in a divine or material origin to the universe (or both), we cannot help but agree with Darwin.  Regardless of its beginnings, the fact of a new being, a being which had not previously "been," a being which had not been heretofore imagined is surely a marvelous and wondrous thing.  As beings who can only create from what is already there, we find astonishing the emergence of something that, while it of course is dependent on what has existed before it, is nonetheless something entirely new.  Because we are bound by our form and circumstances, we awe, perhaps even tremble before true uniqueness, true newness.
     Before such newness, we can draw one of two conclusions.  Either it is a natural and inevitable outcome of various biological processes, or it is the work of a creator who sees beyond the obvious and apparent.  If we choose the first, we of course are still left with wondering how the notion of "life" itself might have been birthed in the midst of a primordial sea.  We may understand the biology, but we do not grasp the why, the reason why the lifeless would produce life--and why it ever did.  Is life always inevitable?  This question is, as Darwin noted, the "mystery of mysteries."
     Yet the question remains:  why, besides the biology, did life ever emerge?  Why life, this "mystery of mysteries"?
     Indeed, why anything at all?  Here, we reach the boundaries of knowing.  Here, we can only believe.