There is a mystery at the core of existence that many people struggle with, despite the answers provided by science and religion. Does reason and evidence alone, as laid out in my answer, solve the mystery?
 
Religious and scientific teachings we've been given since childhood are thought to offer definitive answers.
 
This conditioning forms deep-rooted beliefs that shape our adult thinking—or prevent us from thinking critically at all.
 
Without others telling us what to believe, our minds wouldn't be blank, they'd be free to think. Real-world evidence and reason can replace belief with knowing and understanding, the only thing that can give our mind true comfort.
 
Reason and evidence reveal that belief trains the mind to obey. In contrast, understanding fosters wisdom, independence, and a path toward a better world.
 
Our common sense, reason, and intuition are smothered by the assumption that important questions can only be answered by erudite scholars and Nobel Prize scientists.
 
To help break that illusion, we need to touch on some "sciency" things. Doing this will demonstrate that even that realm leads to what we already can know by just thinking.
 
 
LOOKING INSIDE MATTER
Atoms and molecules underlying all physical matter are rightly called machines. They fit the definition: "an apparatus consisting of interrelated parts with separate functions, used in the performance of some kind of work" (Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words)
 
This machinery is hard to fully grasp because we're accustomed to images and tidy diagrams showing static parts in fixed models. This gives the misleading impression that nothing is moving.

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​The reality of an atom machine, shown in the photo below, is a blurring cloud of machine energy and motion where the parts within atoms are moving so fast that their positions and paths cannot be pinpointed.

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​Like atoms, living cells are illustrated in still-life diagrams.

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Cells are anything but still. They are filled with speeding nanomachinery and interlocking functions.
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APPLYING LOGIC TO THE ORIGIN OF MACHINERY
Current mainstream explanations suggest that atom machines originated from a Big Bang and that life emerged through natural processes like abiogenesis and evolution.
 
Most religions teach that a deity is responsible.
 
On the other hand, a logical syllogism taking into account that nature is replete with machines, reveals this:
 
1. Complex functional machinery requires intelligent causation.
 
2. Physical and biological things consist of complex functional machines, including molecular machines. (Wikipedia)
 
3. Therefore, physical and biological things require intelligent causation.
 
This logic and its conclusion are overlooked in mainstream scientific and religious discussions and literature. Alternative logical syllogisms seem to be missing.
 
Although we would like more detail on what the intelligent cause is, another logical barrier stands in the way: Since a complete understanding of the physical world, including infinity, escapes us, so too must an understanding of its intelligent cause escape us.
 
In other words, we can come to know a lot, but we don't get to know everything. Wisdom is knowing what we can't know.
 
 
TIMING
Just answering the question of the cause of nature's machinery does not end the mystery. All that machinery is moving, timed, and coordinated with countless other machines. This requires ongoing and sustained orchestration.
 
To get a feel for this perplexing problem, consider that atoms are dynamos that seem to be perpetual motion machines. (Nobody has ever found a dead one.) Atoms combine to form molecular machines that are intertwined with countless others. Everything is on the move, and not independently. It all must be timed, regulated, and coordinated.
 
Here's a glimpse of a minuscule part of the coordinated chemical complexity going on in our bodies, second by second. But, again, such schematics do not do justice to the blinding speed going on.
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A still-frame tiny snippet of the millions of biochemical machines operating on autopilot at blinding speed moment by moment keeping us alive
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​Even in sophisticated fields like quantum physics and developmental biology, the when, how often, starts, stops, and speed of things underneath physical and living matter remain a black box.
 
Rather than explanations, the precision and timing of everything are taken for granted. What triggers it all and how it’s timed across trillions of cells, tissues, and organs just seems to be beyond even investigation.
 
If life were a product of chance and random mutations, how did it achieve such unimaginable precision—without even a known timing mechanism?
 
To help grasp what is going on underneath. Watch these flocking birds flying at 50 mph and can number over a million. Yet they swarm perfectly with no collisions. They appear to be one organism orchestrated by one mind. This flocking, amazing as it is, only hints at the complexity, speed, and coordination that occurs inside matter and organisms.

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NATURAL LAWS
Laws in nature, such as those of motion, chemistry, electricity, gases, magnetism, thermodynamics, etc. govern most of what matter can and cannot do.
 
But there is no timing and coordination law. Not only that, the second law of thermodynamics demands a continual increase in entropy in the universe--increased disorder. This would work against the continuance of the perfect order, timing, synchrony, and coordination of the machinery within matter. It would also likely prevent its spontaneous appearance in the first place.
 
 
THE PERSISTENT BLACK BOX
No unified timing system has been found--no equivalent of a master clock, CPU, or command center. All that is found are descriptions of parts, feedback loops, structures, and chemical gradients—none of which explain timing or synchronization.
 
The “mechanisms” that are invoked are little more than metaphors—like genes being "turned on" or systems being “self-organized.” Nothing is known about who or what is doing the organizing and switching on and off. There isn't even any research investigating it. That, even though if timing is lost, all physical and biological systems crash.
 
 
THE LOGICAL ANSWER
1. Complex functional machinery, timed, coordinated, and moment-by-moment controlled to adapt to countless circumstances--requires constant intelligent control.
 
2. Physical and biological reality consists of such machinery.
 
3. Therefore, physical and biological reality requires constant intelligent control.
 
This conclusion, using just common sense, is the same place that Max Planck, the founder of quantum physics, ended up: “… mind is the matrix of all matter.”
 
 
WHY THE CONTROLLER OF IT ALL DOESN'T MAKE EVERYTHING NICE FOR US
It seems that if ongoing creative intelligence is necessary to control matter, the controller would not allow natural disasters, disease, and death. However, this objection doesn’t disprove intelligent control; it merely questions why the world isn’t nicer by human standards.
 
Earth requires cycles of destruction, decay, renewal, birth, and death to sustain itself. Just as all sunny days create a desert, a world without destructive cycles and death results in an unlivable world.
 
 
THE TAKEAWAY FROM THIS THINKING JOURNEY
Knowing that we are created beings and that mind is interacting with our entire reality moment by moment is profound.
 
But even more important is how we can come to that realization. Replacing belief with knowing by using reason and evidence opens the whole world to critical scrutiny.
 
It also helps us realize there is no need to seek a religious or secular organization or leader. We are given the tools within to independently negotiate life: free will, reason, and conscience.
 
Relying on those inherent gifts, rather than given beliefs, is the key to the discovery of what is real and good for ourselves, for others, and for the world.