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They found out the question in the trilogy. I think it was in book 4, where they had made a scabble board/letters and they get the idea that if the guy pulls letter out at random, he could spell out the question.

Its been a while since I read the trilogy, so I may be off, but I could have sworn that they found the question.

Well, of course my fist instinct was to simply say "42", but then I never was capable a giving a simple answer to any but the most simple of questions. Alright, here goes;
*clears throat*

I believe there is a God. I believe his son came with the intent to ultimately give his life to save us. I do NOT believe that Jesus was God, as I so often hear. Otherwise a LOT of that portion of the bible suddenly takes on a bit of a schitzo feel. "Me, who art in heaven, hallowed be my name", "I am my son" or "Why have I forsaken me"...doesn't quite seem right.

I do not believe the universe is barren OR lush. Look at our planet; we're running our of room, resources, and food. Eventually, we've got start spreading out. The challenge is getting to another planet, and then "terraforming" it. Asteroids, for instance, are mostly ice. Drag a enough of those down to a new planet's surface and those which don't completely melt and evaporate into the atmosphere, immediately becoming a part the planet's natural cycles (hower complex or simple at that point) could be melted down. Carbon is one of the most abundant gases here as well as on mars (though I do not know how abundant exactly in the case of mars). Plants need carbon, sunlight, and certain special nutrients from the soil to survive. Many of those special nutrients can be found outside of earth as we've already discovered looking at moonrocks, meteor remains, and such.

More importantly, assuming there is a God (which I do), take a look at our planet. How many billions of different species, plant or animal, are not even around anymore? And how many billions are in existance now? CAN one ever even begin to project how many more species will come and go in just the next 1000 years? Go look online at the photos of other galaxies (particularly this one that if I didn't know any better I would SWEAR is the eye of god). God seems to very much love variety and complexity, and the idea of all things being reliant upon all other things in some way. So why would just one tiny planet in all the universe be blessed with life? I liken it unto the earth in mans earliest history. An entire PLANET created for us back when we were just Adam and then Adam and Eve. The world was WAY to big for two million people, never mind two. But in time we WOULD need the space. And when it came time to spread out beyond our homelands, we had to learn what was needed to master new environments and their unique qualities, be it natural phenomena, plant and animal life, or whatever. The universe NEEDS to be so vastly empty for now so that those planets which DO support life will not quickly run out of space. And empty space is, after all, an absence of substance; nothingness. It's a void believed to have no boundries. That's fairly big.

Now here is where I tend to differ from a lot of people, and make some people fairly angry, so I advise you now that if you are a die-hard sticler for traditional beliefs that you might not want to read on.

I do not believe that there was a majik tree in Eden that if you ate of it's fruit gave you knowledge of good and evil. I believe that, as with most of the bible, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a metaphor. Trees, especially in religious texts, are always used as a symbol for work and toil, and their fruit is the result of that labor. So looking at it that way, we get "Eve made use of the end-result of the knowledge of good and evil". Perhaps she... killed a creature in the garden, maybe something entirely different. But that makes more sense to me. And then we all know the whole "she convince Adam to do it to, too, blah blah blah, evicition notice".

But now HERE is a big one. I believe the original sin was vital to our development. One can never truely understand just what it means and the impact it has upon you to take another things life, animal or human, until one has actually been in that situation. If you never know warmth, how can you describe cold? If you've never seen light, how do you define darkness. Opposition is the only way to give a true and final definition to anything. Without having first lived in a world of evil and death, we could have never truly understood just what it really means to live in such a world; we could have never truly understood WHY we mustn't allow evil to take hold of us. I'd go on, but I'm seriously stretching the page here... sweatdrop