Oh I know the theoretical answers behind them as well, and I can dissect those answers as well. We just add layers of processes to hide the fact that we do not know the source.

That's the thing. You can't use religion to answer that question. It's a question that religious people ask other religious people. It makes no sense unless you already think that a conscious force acting deliberately created all of those things.

All your why questions are given "what" answers.

"What is the meaning of nitrogen" actually is a question that some people care about, and have given answers for.

Nitrogen, coresponds to the word "Hiyah" (There is, its essence), it also is related to da'at i.e. knowledge. In other words, Nitrogen is an essential existance/knowledge to it which it gives meaning.

What we know about nitrogen is that it is the most abundant chemical in the atmosphere, and also exists in a all living organisms, and animal by products.

What we learn from this, is that the essence to a living being is its essential ability to transmit hold and give over knowledge about itself and its environment.

So, that is what Nitrogen "means"

I don't think we disagree with each other on this point.

Light is quanta; packets of energy that behave both as a wave, or as a particle, depending on how you observe them. Those particular quanta are called photons; they move in different sorts of ways depending on the material, and they are different sorts of colours depending on the frequency of their oscillation. We can only see a minute part of the "spectrum"; a very narrow band of frequencies. Everything else is invisible to us. The prism breaks down colour because colour of different frequencies suffers a different degree of refraction when travelling through the prism. Light comes from particular physical reactions, like the ones in the sun; it is generated by well-understood reactions (Which, I'm afraid, I can't recall from memory right now) that release photons. We don't quite understand why light travels so fast; it is an inherent property of the universe.

See? It's easy. And there's evidence for everything I said, as opposed to making up some fictional light fairies to explain it.

ETA: As for atheists existing in ancient times, they did... There was a Greek philosopher which was atheistic, for example. My point was, it was a difficult stance to take for common people for most of the history of the world. I don't particularly trust the Biblical account of the Amalekites, of course.

Again, you prove your inability to comprehend other people.

My simple point is that it has never been "difficult" to be an Atheist. I think you are the paranoid one here. Free thinkers have been atheists for millennium, and often as a result of an oppressive religion.

Why do these packets of energy behave as particles, or waves... why do different materials cause them to move differently. You didn't answer the color question, you just explained there were more colors, you didn't explain why the prism breaks down light into colors, you just exaplined how. You explained the process of light creation, but why do these processes result in the creation of light.

And your last line, what makes it an inherant property of the universe. It has no reason to exist other then just existing?

Again, the only question you answered is How and What, no "why" there at all.

So religious fundamentalists wear extra long shirts, and atheists just go topless? Interesting mental picture.

Even to someone religious, most of those questions about life and our purpose in it are next to meaningless. I believe I'm going to experience this life, and then be born again into another niche to see it from another perspective. At the end of that, I'm not sure what will happen, and I don't really care. Life is meaningful enough by itself, there doesn't need to be a grand plan to anything. Just live.

None of you have yet said what it means to ask a "Why?" question. I want you to formulate, very precisely, what you think you mean, then I want you to read it and think about what presuppositions you hold that could ever inspire such a question.

Life without meaning is no life at all.

edited my nitrogen post to be more clear.

Also, I would like to note that the answer I gave came from Kabbalah, which is not widely accepted amongst Jews, but is the "religion" because it deals with divine and spiritual realm, and does not deal at all with this world. Which is more of why I don't consider basic "Judaism" to be a religion, but of course Kabbalah is ingrained and completely part of the Jewish practices and you can't exactly separate it because of the nature of the culture and philosophy that Judaism is.

Since we live in the world, our measurements and observations are limited by the world. We can find out how things work, but unless we can transcend the universe and the laws that govern it, we will have to at some point say, "It just does. I'm not sure why."

Read my nitrogen post.

Just wanted to repeat this, I don't think a responce is necessary.

Define meaning. The way I think of it, that quote is blatantly false, but I'm sure you probably define it some other way.

And at what point do we go from, 'It just is' to having faith that a higher power keeps all this would be chaos in order, and sets these universal properties?

If we goto Anthropology for a definition of religion, it states: Religion is the means in which a culture defines the unknowable, or unexplained.

-shrug-

Point is, how can you say religion does not exist, or it is wrong, unless you can tell me exactly how things work at every level, without using the words, "It just is."

Meaning is what we live for. It gives definition to our lives, and gives us something to base our decisions on. Christians choose to believe that their life is to be in service to Jesus and God, I choose to believe my life is in serving my ancestors by continuing my family, and helping my family be better off then when I was born.

Just incase any other Jews are reading this, the periodic table link gave something very interesting.

Uranianum is linked to "Kadosh" and Protactinium to "Shabbat".. Protactinium only exists as a byproduct of Uranium, and has no use in and of itself.

That's the thing. Questions like "Why is the Universe like this and not like some other possible way" are unknown, unknowable, or meaningless. I believe (Though this is just a hunch that comes from observing the overall pattern of science and nature) that all of the Universe's behaviours emerge from a very simple set of rules, and that very few of the Universe's inherent properties are "built-in". Furthermore, I believe that we still have a long way to go into tracing the causal relations that lead to why the Universe is, fundamentally, the way we see it.

Why colour exists? Because we perceive colour. We perceive different bands of light as different colours. There are different frequencies of light; a particular one, our brain learned to identify as what we came to call "Purple". And so on. If we saw only intensity and not frequency of light, the question "Why is there colour" would be meaningless to religious people, since they wouldn't know what colour is.

Science can answer why the Universe is the way it it. It can't provide purpose, but I don't think I, or anybody for that matter, needs, or benefits from, being handed down purpose and meaning. We make purpose and meaning for ourselves, and the fact that our purpose and meaning isn't woven into the fabric of the Universe doesn't mean it's not meaningful and important - From our perspective, sitting here in our pale blue dot, it's vastly more important than the odd behaviours that emerge from what strange, charming, up and down things we can't see too well are doing.