[split] Are Questions About God Important?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, at first, this seems right. But it really isn’t.

I would say, first, that the premise is wrong. (Sorry, @Confused-by-christianity) That is, does knowing whether a divine being exists make the big questions (a few listed before) important or not?

It’s also not the way that Istvan worded it when he said, Things are equally important with or without God. I would change that to say that the big questions are important before we know whether a divine being exists or not. Not caring about those questions makes one little better than an animal, “more meat than spirt”, as you said before.

That is -exactly- the same as saying these things are or aren't important regardless of god.  

For example, “Why are we here?” is one of the most important questions. What is our mission? Do we have one? The Grand Nudger, I’m sure you know the importance of knowing your mission and achieving it.

Because my mother and father were high on all sorts of chemicals before they started ingesting them at a fertility ritual in middle america many years ago...where they caught each others eyes...because they were both gorgeous. That's where I get it.

Yes....man, I know my mission and the importance of achieving it and I've had more than one mission in my life..none of them having anything to do with those two teens having a little fun half a century back.  The stakes are life and death. What more am I supposed to need to make a decision? I protect the weak. I feed the hungry. That's what I'm supposed to do. I was built for it. I'm unencumbered by guilts and doubts and reservations that prevent other people from doing this. If not me...then who?

Without God, the only other answer, AFAIK, is that it’s just chance. My being here or not being here is a function of a universe-load of random events. We are here without any purpose. We have no mission. If so, then why is anything important? (Where Confused-by-christianity is going, I think.)

I often suggest that folks such as yourself do not actually understand the positions you argue against, you've simply read scripts about chance.  I have a mission and I live it...even if "chance" gave me that mission, which I highly doubt. There were very specific and non random influences in my life which I can point to to explain why I feel and do what I do...about that. It really would be incomprehensible, even to me, if "chance" was why I thought what I do. No, you can thank one hard ass irish woman. A crack smoking seminole stepdad. You can thank the serbians, the albanians. You can thank dozens of authors and even more real life heroes for why I am the way I am and why I must do what I do. There was nothing..absolutely nothing...left to chance in any of that. I am not randomly me. I am very specificly me for very personal and individualized reasons which could not have happened literally any way.

...or else...you see..I would have been someone else, something else, with some different mission or purpose........we would not be talking..about me.

On the contrary, if the answer is that “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.” (Compendium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church Q1) then that’s a mind-blowing difference! Our short, little life here, full of pain and sorrow along with the happiness, is only a prelude to something far, far better than we could ever imagine. That changes everything and makes the answer to the other questions even more important.

Second, the other questions (besides ones such as “why are we here?” and “Does a greater being exist?”) are also important before we know “the god fact.” Questions like the ones Istvan said, “what constitutes a meaningful existence, a just society or an ethical decision” are vital for us. However, to Confused-by-christianity’s point, there really is no good answer to these without something like a divine being. (I think that’s what he meant. I could be wrong.) Random chance has nothing to offer here.

If wishes were horses we'd ride together......

I have all sorts of good answers without resort to divine beings. You must mean that you don't...individually..and imo, probably not by "chance".