Reply #28: I don't think you're supposed to ask that question. :)

[Silent3]

Think about creationism. The existence of our world, the life upon that world, the vast universe we inhabit... all of this complex order supposedly "demands" that there be a Creator. A Divine Creator is the "only" explanation.

For the non-theistic among us, this hardly seems a satisfactory answer. All you've done is play a pretty transparent shell game, saying that everything you can't explain is explained by something even bigger you can't explain. Where did God come from? He didn't come from anywhere, he was always here. Who or what made God? He made himself... or, He didn't have to be made, because He was always here. These are good answers?

God is the answer which is supposed to awe you into not wanting to ask deeper questions. It makes no sense to me how "God did it" can be such a satisfying answer to so many people when it's not much of an answer at all. What it lacks in explanatory power it obviously makes up for in placating some psychological need for some people.

The concept of "purpose" ends up working the same way. When you get to God, you're just supposed to accept and stop asking questions.

What is the purpose of work? To make money.
What is the purpose of having money? To be able to buy food.
What is the purpose of having food? To be able to live.
What is the purpose of living? To serve God.
What is the purpose of serving God? Hmmm... to save my ass from Hell?
What is the purpose of having a system of Heaven and Hell and torturing millions, maybe billions of souls for eternity? That's for God to know, foolish mortal!

Each of these questions could, of course, be answered in different ways, but you're always going to end up either running in a tautological circle or confronted with one big, unanswered and/or unanswerable question. You can't used God to solve this problem, you can only use God as a way to quell your desire to probe the question of purpose any further.

What really gets me is when people declare unconditionally, "Well, there's just has to be a purpose behind all of this!" Oh, really? Why? Because the universe is somehow obligated to satisfy the human need for a sense of purpose? Because the human sense that the bigger a thing is, the more complex, the bigger the purpose must be behind it, and for some reason we can demand that this perceived need for purpose scales all the way to the top to the Universe itself?