Meaning, God, and Consciousness

Those who believe in God don't do so because it gives meaning and comfort to their lives -- that is a patronizing and insulting rationale; rather they work back to God from the experience of meaning and comfort that they originally discover in their lives and wonder about its source. Indeed, though I am not such a believer, I too wonder about the primal existence of meaning. The question is not why is there something, why not nothing. The better question is: Why is there meaning, why not the sheer existence of things? There are, of course, many reductionist explanations, but none of them explain consciousness itself which endows existence and every sparrow with meaning and delight. To deny meaning is self-refuting: it presupposes the very thing it would discard.