I think you are really confused.
Straighten me.
You have spent page after page establishing the premise (with which I don't agree) that because things are temporary, there is therefore no meaning to them. Remember Brahms 1st (good choice, by the way).
Glad you like it. Actually I have since come to prefer Bruckner.
However, not just temporary is a problem without God. Forever, without God is a problem.
You may think that being an atheist is enjoyable. Is it so enjoyable that you would like to live this way for eternity ?
Before I met Jesus Christ I went to bed with one opinion and woke in the morning with another. I was like the tossed sea - no rest. I was like the endless churning of the waves of the sea.
The Bible latter told me that there was no rest for the wicked.
"For the WHAT ??"
Ummm ... for the wicked ?
Rejection of God and wickedness go hand in hand Lord ?
Anyway, you are going to convince me that I am confused.
Now you are saying that a universe where Brahms 1st could be listened to for all eternity is also meaningless.
Sorry to say, fellow music lover. But what the listening to that beautiful music does is inspire more hunger for something more.
This is why Jesus told the woman at the well -
"Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water gushing up into eternal life." (John 4:14 my 1rst quoted bible passage )
I believe that God has provided many things for us to enjoy. None of them can replace Himself. And what things we delight in can only stir up our thirst for more.
So if the old Brahms 1rst did last a million years, that would be a million years of hearers hearing it and afterward longing for more beauty.
Do you not long for worlds of beauty after hearing a beautiful THING - a piece of music or literature ? As enjoyable as they are they are still things.
WE NEED A
PERSON ultimately.
I ain't confused about it. I got straightened out. I found out what I really need is a Person, a Father, a Savior, God, a living God.
It might help clarify what you do mean if you could give an answer to this question.
Why would an eternal life with your friends, family etc not have meaning, but an eternity with God would?
Good question.
According to what I see in the revelation of the Bible there is an eternal kingdom with both a vertical and a horizontal enjoyment. The oneness with God of all these billions of people necessarily means a utter oneness in love with one another.
I do enjoy my brother and sister. But that enjoyment is quite limited because of differences in opinion and taste and other things.
The Bible shows something higher and better. That is not everyone becomes like me. But everyone becomes like Jesus Christ. Or shall I say everyone becomes infused with, saturated with, permeated with Christ.
This is a oneness with the Triune God vertically yet also a endless oneness of agape love between the inhabitants of that world.
Sinners cannot be one.
Men and women saturated with God as their divine nature united with their human nature can be one, for His expression and for their enjoyment.
Tonight read the last two chapters of the Bible - Revelation 21 and 22. That is the meaning of the existence of the universe, of human life, and of being. It is pictured in symbolic terms.
It means the union of God and man. It means the expansion of Jesus Christ into a "city" as the capital of the new universe.
I think you are going to struggle to explain this, by the way, except by variants of 'because I would be with God'. Which is not an answer. What exactly gives this any more meaning?
I would not just be with God. We will not just be with God. We will be God in man.
WE will be man and God incorporated together. Jesus Christ - mass produced and expanded. That is what He has in mind.