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Creation supposes a creator! But, when there’s no-thing in a no-where realm, where is this nebulous creator supposed to dwell? I admit, as a Cosmic and practicing Cosmogonologist, even to me the ultimate mystery of the universe remains sacrosanct. I can readily understand that when a universal seed already exists, supposedly as a black hole of suppressed matter, it is well capable of being germinated, coming to fruition, and then reverting to become yet another universal seed. This is all down to the effort of the Ultimate Force within the seed, and easily explained as a matter of scientific logic. Once created, the original seed is de facto naturally endowed with its ever-lasting ability; its master, the Ultimate Force, part and parcel of its very being. But, how did this great big bundle of suppressed energy originate in the first place to constitute the seed together with its inherent code? The answer, with all due respect, defies the imagination of us all, and will in my opinion forever remain the unfathomable mystery of nature itself. And, please, don’t try introducing a Male-God-Creator in some no-where realm into the reckoning; it’ll only lead to the fermentation of even more religious mumbo-jumbo - And there’s far too much of this about already!
I feel it is more than enough to understand the nature of the universe we find ourselves in, without striving to comprehend anything that came before it. And I’m sure that nature itself didn’t need any chapter-and-verse influence of a god-type entity, human-style, to have made its existence possible in the first place. Nature is just nature and will forever remain so – Just let it keep its secrets!
Since my life became my work, and my work my life, I’ve strived to make sense of all that we form part of, and ventured to relate just how we’ve managed to evolve from nothing to something to somebody. And I’ve published my own theory related to the progression of Universal Intelligence from its explosive beginnings to the point it has reached now, and boldly suggested where it’s heading in the future. This, without doubt, makes me a Cosmogonologist, albeit a radical one, and regardless of what others may think of my Cosmogony, I haven’t yet encountered a single person who has been able to dispel the ideas that were psychically fed into my mind when I was cosmicated by powerful voices in my head, way back in 1980. It does sound crazy, doesn’t it? However, the content of my cosmication was not an iota as crazy as some of the specious ideas that other voices have fed into the minds of other people in the past; and their psychic experiences have, in part, become the basis of half-baked dogmas that have had their most sacred authority religiously cast in stone, it seems. Therefore, what does one do when confronted with such a diversity of religious beliefs and/or philosophies that desperately need to be de-personalised and superseded by a much more common sense belief that has a strictly scientific flavour? Old habits die hard, and the entrenched are most unlikely to capitulate easily. It’s all been said in my scripture, ‘On the Square plus One’; therefore, there’s no need to labour the point again. Nevertheless, regardless of opposition, some action must be taken to start the ball rolling, so to speak, in the direction of this much needed change. And this is just what my Cosmos Club stands for in the world today.
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Brian
Cosmos Coconut Club
Sri Lanka

[Admin note: Edited for length. If anyone would like to know more about Brian's ideas, click on his name to go to his website.]

“Purpose” is like “Truth”, a semantic entity with many conflicting referents. One man’s truth is another’s fantasy. “Purpose” has precise technical definitions in several fields, but these don’t overlap by much.

So my purpose here is to agree with everyone who doubts that the word can be meaningfully employed with respect to the infinite and ever-after. Some things just are.

As second sense would have the time and place of my birth and all the events that compose the arc of my life have been crafted to some end. While systems like evolution or economics are consequences of the way things tend to self organize the second purpose imposes a result. What strikes me as absurd about this idea is the notion of a being that could pull this off couldn’t achieve any possible aim in a much easier and direct manner.

Finally there is purpose we set for ourselves. I may choose to have children and take pride in them. I may look to their welfare and hopes for a fulling life. That may drive a desire for an income to be able to provide that hope and welfare for them. Or I just may love my job. It may incidentally serve the purpose of evolution or the economy but it is my decisions based on my chosen purpose that drives those events.

I should mention first that this is a loaded question, with several hidden implications. A “purpose” presupposes a mind that conceived it, as well as the ability to implement it. In the present case, this means that the owner of the mind not only created the universe the way it is, but could have created another universe and decided to create the existing one for a specific reason. So the question really deals with the belief in a Creator who enjoys almost infinite power and freedom but, at the same time, goes through the very human process of pondering decisions and acting accordingly. In a way, this is a very anthropomorphic vision of God.

A second aspect of the question concerns the motivation behind the purpose. What did God have in mind in creating the universe the way it is? Being the ones who ask the question, it is obvious that we see ourselves as at least part of God’s goal. As pointed out by the defenders of the “anthropic principle,” what is peculiar about the universe is that it happens to have just the right physical properties to give rise to life and, through life, to human minds. Such an anthropocentric view of the creation is, however, not readily reconciled with what is known of the evolutionary origin of humankind.

Personally, I do not accept the implications of the term “purpose.” Sticking to the facts, I prefer the undisputable statement that the universe happens to be such that certain events, including the generation of life and mind, were possible, perhaps even probable, if not obligatory. Instead of searching the “mind of God” for the explanation of this fact, I see it as an expression of reality and as a significant clue to the nature of this reality.

. . .

In my opinion, life and mind are such extraordinary manifestations of matter that they remain meaningful, however many universes unable to give rise to them exist or are possible. Diluting our universe with trillions of others in no way diminishes the significance of its unique properties, which I see as revealing clues to the “Ultimate Reality” that lies behind them.

. . . 

It will be noted that there is no logical need for a creator in this view. By definition, a creator must himself be uncreated, unless he is part of an endless, Russian-doll succession of creators within creators. But then, why start the succession at all? Why not have the universe itself uncreated, an actual manifestation of Ultimate Reality, rather than the work of an uncreated creator? The question is worth asking.

http://www.templeton.org/questions/purpose/essay_de_Duve.html

What it comes down to really, when you tease through all the semantics, is the question: why are we living where we are and to what end? That’s a much more limited set of conditions, though possibly (as Alison suggests) no less arbitrary.

I would also offer this post:  “What is the Purpose of your Life?”