1. We seem to be quite alone. See Rare Earth. If we are a 'special creation', why should we be alone? The universe seems almost designed to prevent contact between intelligent species--even if there are any out there.
You are asking a philosophical --- “If God - then why?” question. Anyway, if we are a 'special creation', why should we not be alone?
2. What is the purpose of building a 13-billion-year-old mess of gas, dust, stars, black holes, planets, radiation, etc...just so homo sapiens can emerge on a backwater planet of a third-rate star in the outskirts of an average galaxy?
Building an entire universe just to come up with us seems, well, profligate and wasteful. If God wanted us around, He could have simply produced us wherever He liked, without the accompanying clutter. Think of The Little Prince, for instance.
Again, this is philosophical in the “If God - then why?” category. These questions are countless. Here is one:
If God loves everyone and is capable of anything - then why doesn’t He make sure everyone who is driving drunk will get home safely?
2a. This brings up the old conundrum of the 'Hiddenness' of God. If we are here for His purposes, and he has a Plan or direction for us, why does he not speak up and introduce Himself?
There sits Andromeda, bigger than ours. Are there intelligences there? We will probably never know. Suppose there are not. What is the 'purpose' of Andromeda?
Again, “If God - then why?” Beyond this, many people do not think He is hidden and has not revealed a plan. Look, I am not trying to make you believe ‘something’ because quite honestly I know that ‘I’ can’t make you believe anything. These are questions that you need to find the answer for if you are truly truth-searching... like, "What is the 'purpose' of no Andromeda?"
3. We are badly designed. We are mayflies, existing for only a bare instant in the history of the Universe. We fall apart. Our own genes and bodies betray us. Designed to die. As (I think) Voltaire put it, 'had I been present at the Creation, I would have made some useful suggestions.' Why has the Almighty made us so poorly? Made us so short-lived? Filled our lives with pain and sorrow (as well as joy)?
OK… So let’s say that this whole universe is void of design, purpose, and plan. If we are not designed then we are not badly designed. The appearance of design is an illusion as well as the relative term ‘bad’. Emotional pain and sorrow are just made up illusionary feelings by man and non-existent in the universe. Man has only himself to blame for these ‘emotions’. Why doesn’t man just choose to feel joy and let the guilt and sorrow go? (Nietzsche) Why would we not expect death to be final in this ‘mayfly’ existence we call life? Why are we cursed with this consciousness from a mindlessness universe?
There is no need to answer these questions for ‘me’ – I’m not looking for answers to ‘these questions’… You could, if you wanted, actually write an article and call it “The Mindless Universe and How We Became Mind-full of this Fact”
Regardless, I hope you have a Good Friday.
Who or what defined the meaning? May as well call this agent "God".
Is the Universe contingent or non-contingent? Careful how you answer.
As for pain being "made up", I happen to be a diabetic, with severe diabetic peripheral neuropathy. I know pain; it is an old friend. If I invented it, I must have a pretty fertile imagination. Evolutionists will say that pain serves as a survival mechanism: creatures will move away from pain-causing things, situations, behaviors. A friend of mine who died of colon cancer described the pain as "someone dragging red-hot barbed wire through your guts." Somehow he was unable to magic that away via the power of positive thinking.
--Boris