Are you content with the question as you have formed it? What does it mean to exist? Compare: What does it mean to garden? What does it mean to play chess? What does it mean to help someone in need? What does it mean to suffer? What does it mean to kill someone? Compare the last question with the even more serious, 'What does it really mean to kill someone?' One can perhaps accept this as a question without knowing what its full import is. Perhaps it is a desperate expression of remorse and the wish to make amends. But this cannot be true of 'What is the meaning of gardening?' unless it means something tame, though not therefore unimportant, like, 'How does gardening contribute to your life?' Or perhaps you believe that you have wasted your life gardening, and you are now reflecting on this sad fact, if it is one. It seems to me, without complete conviction, that the six questions shouldn't be attacked head-on. It really is pretty unclear what they mean and how...

The three options you offer for the origin of the universeare: 1) That God created the universe. This, you say, is “bizarre”, becausethen in some sense we would be “subordinate” beings. (Why should that be bizarre?) 2) The universe wascreated out of nothing. This, you say, is “truly weird”. And 3) The universehas always existed, which is “incomprehensible”. I do notsee how you can get to the conclusion that the universe is a joke, orthat you should take nothing seriously.The conclusion I can see coming from your premises is that things are bizarre,or that truly weird things happen, or at least that one of them has, or thatthe universe is incomprehensible; and you might be very serious about playingchess, say, or helping others by nursing, in an otherwise bizarre or weird orincomprehensible universe. Religious people would agree, I think, with thefirst option, that the existence of the universe is bizarre, and want only toadd that our theology and metaphysics should reflect the fact! Nothing...