I clearly understand your premise that religion only provides comfort. You have still failed to demonstrate what makes your standard of meaning defensible. You attack a definition of God, but that is not the God that is revealed in the Bible.

As Christians, we appeal to a definition of truth and meaning as found in the God of the Bible revealed ultimately in the person of Jesus. He is our transcendent objective standard. You must try to build your case without a reference to our story or our God because you are a naturalist. Unfortunately, naturalism must presuppose an objective standard based somewhere outside of the human observer to make any sense at all. Your very definition of meaning and comfort presupposes values that are universal, but naturalism is unable to explain this phenomenon within its own worldview.

Religion is for human comfort, not meaning.

all you’re really saying is that our purpose is to please your god and it would be ungrateful to ask awkward questions beyond that.

Scott,

Let’s say you get a job working for a multi-millionaire. He employs you to go through his garbage and separate it into different groups: tins, vegetable waste, bones etc… When I’m done, he gathers it all up and throws into a big garbage bin and it all gets mixed up again. Why do you do it? Because he says he wants you to, he says it pleases him and he says he will get angry if you don’t do it.

Would there be a meaning to your job? Would you consider that job worthwhile? Wouldn’t you feel frustrated and depressed everytime you saw your painstakingly organised garbage mixed up again. You might be happy with the pay, but as far as job satisfaction goes, it would surely be zero.

You might just be happy to make your employer happy, but that wouldn’t provide your job with any meaning. Until you found out why he wanted you to sort the garbage only for him to mix it up again, your job would be meaningless.

Could you please demonstrate how your definition of meaning is verifiable and objectively true? You have contended that meaning is synonymous with “adding,” but who gets to determine what is an addition and what is a “subtraction”? Is it you or me or someone else? I would contend that unless there is a transcendent arbiter of truth, the strongest person gets to determine what is “meaning.” That’s sure a bummer for the weak or the minorities.

What I meant to say was that in classic theism, God, being both transcendent and immanent, is therefore simultaneously impassible and intimately involved. In other words, it would be incorrect to think of God as a mutable being, changing upon every turn of His creation. But it is equally wrong to imagine that He isn’t purposefully and intimately engaged with all that He has brought into existence.
Back to your challenges about “meaning”, I believe that God (let’s assume for the moment that He exists) did, by divine fiat, create a universe which cannot augment His perfections or being. However, He did not create in indifference as though He couldn’t be intimately involved with or affected by it in profoundly meaningful ways. Consequently, when mankind (God’s supreme creation) enjoys the wonder of relationship with His Creator, it is the highest significance possible.

So…all I’m saying is that God, in a Christian worldview, does not have to be augmented in order for man to have meaning. The Creator (who would be the ultimate source of all meaning and significance) need only determine to enjoy rich fellowship with His creatures in order to bless them with superlative meaningfulness. And, from a Christian perspective, I believe that the greatest expression of God’s desire to be in that relationship was His becoming a man in the person of Jesus Christ (and that, even after man had rejected the relationship the first time [Adam]), to extend forgiveness and restore the relationship. Without forgiveness, life is indeed meaningless.

Thanks for letting me clarify…

“…but what if He is also personally, intimately, and self-determinatively engaged and affected by everything He wills in and through His creation? Does this not constitute “meaning”?”

The irony being I’m not sure the first sentence makes a great deal of sense.

I’ll have a stab at translating what you said:

What if your god is personally, intimately, freely engaged [busy doing] and…

[From Cambridge Dictionary:

"affect (INFLUENCE)
verb [T]
to have an influence on someone or something, or to cause them to change”]

…changed by everything he wills in…

[Sorry, don't understand "wills in". Doesn't make any grammatical sense whatsoever.]

…and through his creation.

[What the...?]

Sorry, I just can’t make sense of your sentence. So, no, it doesn’t provide grammatical meaning, let alone philosophical.

Perhaps I’m just being stupid. Could you have another stab?