Quickly:

1. Neurological processes, the quaint nature of synapses; nothing more, nothing less.
2. No.
3. Darwinian evolution — cut, yea, dried, science.
4. Ourselves? A fast track to nothing. The universe? Who knows? I like the idea of multiverses that are born of dense energy and matter and that expand and contract and which overlap and collide. But honestly? We, as a race, are going to become extinct before solving universal puzzles.

Well, no. A joke assumes a narrator, of sorts, and a created narrative. Life is so much less than a joke. And so much more in it’s random abandon and it’s evolutionary nature. Confusing philosophy and astrophysics or astrophysics with philosophy begets another Tower of Babel with no common languages or alphabets.

The best that we can do, as we live and die, is to be kind to one another.

Everything else is a hobby.