Good day, Frank,
Regarding your essay "The Meaning of Life."
Yes, well concluded; what makes us uselessly labor away is the "fear of non-existence."
"Natural selection" as a stand-in for random mutations producing the undirected "tree of life" is utter nonsense, though a pleasant hindsight construction that continues to hold in place a scientific paradigm from which there is no easy escape. The uniqueness of our planet as a random event? So many hits producing a win all at once? Let's calculate the probability. Well, then, forget it. Also note the difference between Niel deGras Tyson and Albert Einstein, the former a contemporary TV artist, and the latter a thinker. I know who I'd opt for.
And then also our insolence and presumptiveness in accusing God of allowing suffering. We have nothing but our limited minds to make this assumption. Yes, we have to go through trials and tribulations to find the joy that follows sickness, disease and a life spent in an evil quagmire. If all this were "fixed," then we'd already have paradise here on earth. But that's not the deal at all. Faith, acting the faith, and the fruits that follow from it have to be earned. And, yes, it ain't easy. Why should it be? Jesus has shown us how bad it can get; we've got to bear our cross and try to make it to our resurrection. It's the way to go but we have the choice.
Have you ever watched marine angelfish? They come in a great number of different colorful coats, all sharing one thing: beauty. We have been given the power of perceiving that beauty. Could we live without it? I doubt it. When we see a great design, a pattern, a painting, or read the books we love the most, we want to know who was behind them, who "created" them.
Every cell of the roughly 35 trillion cells making up our body contains the complete genetic helix. How do these cells "know" how to compose a human body, no more and no less, over and over again? To do the job, each contains information, and also receives more information from its neighbors, one cell at a time. And where does that information come from? Well, you figure it out. What we know is that no one has yet managed to produce a "first" cell. Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
And isn't it a wonderful coincidence, through advances in the science of life's origin, in fact, that we can begin to understand more and more, and with increasing humility and admiration, that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." You needn't be a linguist to see the connection. Einstein had this inkling; Newton felt its power.
Nicholas Maync-Matsumoto
Dear Author, very interesting research. I am 87 years old, not eager to die now neither want to be in a CLOUD!
Ute Craemer