What if God is waiting for us to become cheese?

I don’t understand why finding out that the universe has a purpose is supposed to be comforting. So does a slaughterhouse.

Say the Big Bang was milk going into a bucket. Galaxies are the lumps. We’ve developed consciousness somewhere in the rind and immediately assumed this was the point.

Very optimistic behaviour from a culture.

Before anyone objects that the universe doesn’t look like cheese: you are inside it. A bacterium in a brie has never seen the packaging either.

This would explain divine silence. I don’t talk to yoghurt. If it started asking why I allowed suffering, I would probably turn the fridge down. Our theologians would interpret the cooling as a test.

The annoying part is that this universe really would have meaning. Objective meaning. There would be a correct answer to why we exist, and it would be “a slightly nutty finish.”

Imagine finally discovering this. Twenty years of equations. A telescope the size of Neptune. We find the edge of reality and there, written backwards across the sky: BEST BEFORE THURSDAY. Thursday in whose fucking timezone?

And now what? Do we cooperate? Is a good person someone who helps the batch mature? If I comfort my child but accidentally lower the acidity, have I committed a sin? Can a murderer be forgiven because he pairs well with crackers?

At some point I have to say no. The purpose assigned to us by whatever made us cannot automatically be our moral obligation. A farmer’s plans for a pig are not the pig’s meaning of life.

I would still feed my children. Still help a friend. I’d also fund a space programme whose entire objective was to give God diarrhoea.

Perhaps this is what free will amounts to. A cheese developing opinions about the menu.