void where prohibited: 2015

How did the universe begin? What is its structure? Where is the universe headed? I feel like I should be interested in these questions. That I should care about the answers.

When I read about theories that deal with these questions, I find the content interesting for awhile, but then I realize that the information conveyed is not important to me. I can't use it to connect with other people, appreciate art, do my job, pick a hiking route, stay healthy, cook a meal, and so on. It has entertainment value, and that isn't without merit. But like most forms of entertainment, the content is mostly inconsequential. How does it matter if I, or you, have a better understanding of the possible origin of the universe? Will the potential fate of our universe have an impact on us during the handful of decades that we are alive? Most branches of physics obviously have a profound impact on our lives, and in fact we experience these impacts many times every day. Physical cosmology, however, seems to be superfluous.

Other than providing us with conversational material to pass the time with, I don't see a use for investigations into the origin and fate of our universe. However, I wouldn't mind having my mind changed. Do you think such investigations are important? Why?

I remember watching TV once and a story coming on about a village near a lake in Africa.
Sometime during the night, it is believed that a landslide occurred somewhere deep in under the waters, sending up a massive plume of c02.
This toxic cloud spilled up and over the crater rim of the lake and sank downwards killing everything in it's path including entire communities of sleeping humans.
I remember thinking to myself as I often had when confronted with the vicissitudes of nature, why is it that you never hear anything like this from religious people?
One of the things that makes American fundamentalism so smug, is it's general isolation from everyday horrors that are faced in most of the world.
Oh sure, they may face the occasional hurricane (more as a result of their SUV's than any supernatural force), but even that is somehow lost in their assertion that god almighty had spared them in some miraculous fashion. Forgetting, I suppose that this very god generated the storm to begin with.

When Biologist David Attenborough was repeatedly asked if he believed in god, his response was that if he chose to believe that, then he had to believe that the parasite robbing the child of his eyesight in Africa, was deliberately created and directed.
That he said, he could not accept.