While I appreciate and enjoy many of the references to Monty Python, Hitchhickers and other things about such a question I do feel the answer can be forthright as well as entertaining. I haven't yet seen reference to the one-liner versions of such questions yet, though they too are funny often (I think they are a spin off of characterizing the computer systems by how they would run the airlines.... DOS would be about gliding the plane until it crashes, rebuilding broken parts, taking off, gliding....)
An article reviewing some of the issues is
here
Perhaps it would be good to have some quotes from a Baha'i perspective:
The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence....
Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He, through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him--a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty....
O My servants! Could ye apprehend with what wonders of My munificence and bounty I have willed to entrust your souls, ye would, of a truth, rid yourselves of attachment to all created things, and would gain a true knowledge of your own selves--a knowledge which is the same as the comprehension of Mine own Being....
Now to reconsile these statements and the drift of the conversation so far...
If the point is to know God, as well as ourselves, and as everyone has pointed out through humor and other means this is a very impossible thing to do... the resolution of this paradox is the most paradoxical thing - The Manefestations of God, the Prophets. And Their Messages, God's One Message, has always been stirring the pot of our endevours. We achieve a certain measure of the impossible, weighed directly against our efforts rather than it's impossibility.
