We humans have no direct knowledge of God. For knowing a truth or a good is to know what is concrete, not abstract. All communities of knowers share language, information, questions about that data, hypotheses as to their meanings, judgments of validity, and responsibility for what they know. And while what is true or good is always what is true or good about this or that thing or event, knowers only know the real abstractly. This is to say that human knowledge is at best, conditioned, that is to say, virtual: there are always more questions raised by answers.
Beyond the limit that intelligence runs up against is the fact that we can only know this universe, what we theists call creation. When a person asks about the meaning not of something specific, but rather the “meaning of meaningfulness (and apparent meaninglessness)”, the “sense of the sacred” makes itself felt.
No matter whether that person believes that such feelings have no base in reality, this phenomenon is one that all people experience from time to time. It is at the base of idolatry as well as authentic faith. Idolatry seeks to control via ritual and ideology (imposed meaning) both why living seems to suggest both a deep meaningfulness, and, at the same time, a measure of absurdity.
