Why do we need to know the meaning of life?

Question:what good will it do us, one way or another if we know? why do we have this urge to know?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: what good will it do us, one way or another if we know? why do we have this urge to know?

Here's a poem written by Kurt Vonnegut:

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly,
Man got to sit and wonder why, why, why.

Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

Who said we need to know the meaning of life? I would more describe that urge as a desire to understand life and comprehend it. The meaning of life is probably pretty simple anyways, like to make babies, live, or praise God.

If life has no meaning then what's it worth?

so we have a point to live our live the right way i just think that you just need to live it the best way you can have a good goal and work hard towards it

i dont know i just need to know maybe it cuase we feel insignificant

There is no meaning to life. It's just a question for idle minds on YA.

In actually, if we find out we might be rather disappointed. If we found Christ's body tomorrow , millions of people would be disappointed. They would lose their sense of purpose.Humans need a purpose-> A reason why they exist and what they are suppose to accomplish. That is why there are so many faiths, people don't want to accept they are some random anomaly, even if it was proven to be true.

To know WHY you are here clarifies WHO you are and brings into focus WHAT you should be doing with your life.

I asked a similar question:

What is your Purpose of Existence that defines Why you are here and gives Meaning to your life?

Curiosity, the desire for purpose, or to learn...so many reasons based on the individual. Many don't want to believe," I was born, I lived, I died." What good will it do? Personal satisfaction, moving to the next level, avoiding reincarnation, being reincarnated - it all depends on one's beliefs or non-beliefs. We have the urge because we don't want to believe all the "trials and tribulations" that seem the world to us are for nothing.

I already know............it's 42

It's similar to a trip is not about the destination it is about the journey. Knowing the meaning of life wouldn't change anything but how we as people attempt to discover it, shapes and molds us.

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.
Popular beliefs
"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success
...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to be always satisfied
...to live, go to school, work, and die
...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to eat
...to prepare for death
...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life
...to seek and find beauty
...to kill or be killed
...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge
...to master and know everything
...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions
...to expand one's perception of the world
...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
...to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos
...to lead the world towards a desired situation
...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical
...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual
...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God
...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to become like God, or divine
...to glorify God
...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement
...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
...to discover who you are
...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced

Philosophical
...to give life meaning
...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
...to know the meaning of life
...to achieve self-actualisation
...all possible meanings have some validity
...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:
...to die
...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever
...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )
...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other
...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make conformists' lives miserable
...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)

Meaning and purpose are really the same thing. Meaning refers to actions and purpose refers to objects but both require God:

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell

If God exists, then our urge to have purpose/meaning must have been placed in our human nature by Him to get us to seek Him. And I think to honestly seek Him is all He asks of us.