Most of us know Robert Louis Stevenson as the author of popular classics such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped.  What people may not know is that Stevenson began his career as an engineer.  As he did, he tried to use engineering to make sense of what he deemed to be a purposeless world.  Like many people of his age, the close of the nineteenth century, the human epoch that birthed modernity (the idea that God is absent or gone, and which was given graphic expression in Friedrich Nietzsche's observation that, "God is dead"), Stevenson saw no essential "big picture" meaning in human existence.  He sought many ways to counteract his constant sinking feeling that his being alive ultimately meant nothing.  One of them was engineering.
     Stevenson's observation is well put.  Those who are engineers understand that the world consists of various structures, some natural, some artificial, which are sometimes visible and sometimes hidden.  If the world is to have meaning, it must have structure, some sort of presence around which it can be organized and understood.  Whether these are the eternal mathematical structures of Max Tegmark or reflections of the eternal vision of God, it is these on which meaningfulness depends.  A world without any structure at all has no point; indeed, it cannot be.  Structure and order are essential to meaning.
     Whether we use engineering, art, music, mathematics, or religion, we understand that the world has structure and order.  As do we.  Otherwise, we would not bother.  And structure and order of course have to come from somewhere:  they have not always been here.  We want them, we need them.  So the question becomes:  why are they here?