> This always annoyed me about religion. Such a lazy cop out no answer to such important question.

Religion, or at least Catholicism, recognizes four things that humans look to for happiness: wealth, honour, glory/fame/power, and pleasure.

* https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2002.htm

It concludes that these things can be good, they are not the highest good. The thing that will make humans most happy is love: love for one's neighbour, and love for God, who is Love:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_caritas_est

Or if you want to get more philosophical and less theological, Aristotle goes over why those four things are not ends in themselves, but means to an end:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics

There is a growing amount of evidence that the need for love (community), which other people are needed for, is central to human fulfillment:

* https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-8...

* https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/good-life

right but the "only in communion with God" part seems less supported than the general need for love in a community/ fulfillment. You have to do some leaps to get a universal loving god.

> right but the "only in communion with God" part seems less supported than the general need for love in a community/ fulfillment.

In the Christian tradition, love of neighbour is important:

> "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He [Jesus] said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Commandment

And how does one love both God and neighbour at the same time? By loving one's neighbour one loves God as well:

> Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you; or thirsty, and give you a drink? When did we see you as a stranger, and take you in; or naked, and clothe you? When did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?'

> The King will answer them, 'Most certainly I tell you, because you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.'

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_of_mercy

Right, but you're taking as granted that people believe this, that they know about Christian theology, that it's true, that God exists, and so on?

That's a lot of leaps in logic. Knowing that people find community fulfilling can be observed in the people around you without any of that background, so surely it's the simpler concept?

How is it a cop-out to say "the whole of human meaning and fulfillment is found in perceiving face-to-face the source and end of human meaning and fulfillment"? Are you complaining that the answer is too easy, too hard, or without further direction? (As I see it, "Come, follow me" is full of direction and while it's definitely not easy, neither is it impossible.)

The cop out is perhaps the flawed conception that keeps one from looking: that archetypal plank.

And, there are many ancient philosophies and practices that help people resolve this without god or religion

We don’t need god to find meaning or fulfillment

And we definitely don’t need other people pretending to be the one true channel through which to connect with God either

If you thought it a conincidence that they didn't grow very big, you would be mistaken. Your conception of the Loving Metaphor of God might be flawed, in perpetuity, if you stay too prideful or cowardly to let go of your dogmatic conceptions.

And we don't need IDEs to develop software, yet IDEs are the way, sometimes only way, for some people to develop good software.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html