Hey xtisme - I was trying to be inclusive here! 
What photopat said.
The meaning of life is easy. Ridiculously so. It is to live forever, or at least as long as possible, as comfotable as possible.
That’s why virtually every culture has a religion, regardless of whether or not they’re divinely inspired. It’s reassurance that you will live forever (sometimes only if you’re good).
That’s why we have kids, so that some of us, at least, will live forever, assuming your kids have kids.
Why do we work? To make a living. Living gives meaning to life. That’s all. Screw trying to end pain and suffering. My fellow man can eat shit and die, for all I care. As long as I’ve got mine. =)
“The meaning of life is that it stops” ~ Franz Kafka
I know the meaning of life!
Life: The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
The age old quandry has been solved!
Why do we care about the purpose of existence? We live because we live, and do things because we do them. Like photopat and hansel said, life’s meaning is the meaning we give to it; if we know the meaning of life, what then? What will it change? If we haven’t been fulfilling the purpose of our existence, will we do so after finding out? Or will we continue our lives with another trivial question answered?
And if there’s a god, what’s the meaning of say, eternal life? In what way is the issue different when you assume life to be eternal rather than limited in duration?
I don’t think there is one. Is there a meaning of chairs? No. I know that’s glib, I’m just saying: life is a thing. If there’s a meaning to life, it’s one you give yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that.
And I want to note that saying “I don’t think life has a meaning” is different from saying “life is meaningless.” As others mentioned, one assumes that life should have a meaning and is empty without one.
That’s appreciated. I hope you find the answers interesting.
No. We weren’t ‘blinked into existence,’ first off, and from what I know of physics there isn’t really an end of time. To concur with others, this implies that someone did the blinking.
Just so you realize the diversity out there, are ALL kinds of atheists. You’re not going to get a unified answer. Atheism isn’t a religion, it’s a classification encompassing many, many different views - some religions with followers, others just individuals with their own takes.
In fact, it could be argued that everyone is an atheist: it just depends on what it’s in relation to. Catholics don’t believe in Vishnu, Shiva and the many other gods in Hinduism. Jews don’t believe in Osiris. Some people unify these gods in various ways, but at the very least, different faiths choose to interpret, worship and follow the paths of life laid out by different gods and religions.
I don’t consider it an assumption. In my opinion, no, no purpose. But others will see it differently, atheist or no.
Oh, and when I say no purpose, I’m talking about a philosophical purpose imposed by an outside being, e.g. god., as opposed to a more biological purpose like survival of the species.
In my view, there is no “meaning.” In existential terms, my life has no more value over that of an undersea tube-worm. We’re just both just life forms, and as life forms we try-through reasoning, instinct, or just dumb stimulus response and luck-to survive, and procreate. The reason life works this way is because it’s the only strategy to leave “adherents” alive.
Capability for complex and abstract thought is our greatest strength as a species, and is what we have used to survive in the world-and, indeed, thrive in such a unique way.
Xenophanes, I believe, said: “If horses had gods, they would look like horses.” That, I think, Is what “we” have done as humans. Since we concern ourselves with our own species’ concerns, first before any other (which is only natural), we assume the “story” of existence is about “us,” rather than an existence based around Cuttlefish, or earthworms, or pine trees.
In short, I think that any “meaning” life has is what we give it ourselves, theorizing or rationalizing with the big brains of our species. And since no “meaning” has any more validity than any other, any “meaning” is essentially as good as arbitrary. Which, oddly enough, also can be used to say that because there’s no “overriding and true” meaning, and all meanings are equally pointless, than ANY meaning can be declared “valid,” for the sole reason that declaring one meaning or another more Valid than the others is, by definition, meaningless and arbitrary. It’s like asking “Who wasn’t a cannibal: A. Alfred Packer or B. Jeffery Dahmer?” If you answer “Alfred Packer,” you’re not any more in error than if you answered “Jeffery Dahmer,” neither answer would be more correct than the other one.
Nihilistic? Maybe. Could I be wrong? Of course.
But I don’t think I am.
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Thanks for asking politely. (There are some religious fanatics out there…)
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What darkrabbit said.
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This is a question mainly for the believers. If there is no meaning of life, what is God?
Humans have this bizarre tendency to want to attach some kind of overriding explanation to everything. Like, all of the things in the world and the universe and everything must boil down to one simple idea or goal. First of all, why? For anything to have a meaning, something sentient must give it meaning, because meaning HAS no meaning outside sentience.
To ask “what is the meaning of life” is to ask “why is life?”, and to ask for a reason for life’s existence is to assume that everything that “is” must follow from something else or make sense in terms of something else. So you see, this question only makes sense if you make a lot assumptions before you ask it, and certainly not everyone is in agreement that these are valid assumptions. After all, who or what told you to make those assumptions? Or did you figure them out from experience, and can you test or prove those assumptions to hold true? If not, you may be making faulty assumptions.
We are life, asking what our own purpose is. So, where do we address this question? Certainly not to ourselves, since we don’t know the answer. Who can tell us the answer? “Who”, indeed–and we have now run the circle that is this question.
What is a car’s purpose? To get us from here to there. What is a knife’s purpose? To cut stuff. What is a movie’s purpose? To entertain. Do you see how we can only define a thing’s purpose in terms of what it accomplishes for us? And, we can only define the purpose of these things because we created them, and we know what our intent was in doing so. For example, what’s the sun’s purpose? Our instinct is to say “To light the world” or “to provide energy”…but there is an implicit “for us”, or at least “for life”, at the end. Does everything that exists exist for us? If everything exists for us, it was intended for us. And nothing that is not sentient can “intend.” Purpose is not intrinsic, but ascribed, and purpose ascribed must have an ascriber. Thus in asking what life means if there is no God, you have already assumed that there is one (or some basic equivalent), which renders your question invalid. Invalid, but kind of fun to think about. =)
By the way, while we’re on these types of questions, what color are invisible unicorns? wink wink, nudge nudge
Well, blah. I accidentally hit “submit reply” when I was still working on the sentence after “First of all, why?” …I was going to say something about how it’s kind of a random, unjustified generalization, and some other stuff, but… anyway, just so no one gets confused trying to connect that with what I said next.
Speaking of which, I apologize for the general disconnectedness of my post; that’s the way I think sometimes; sorry if it’s confusing. (This is why I was never on the debate team, heh.)
You are here to alternately amuse, entertain, and horrify me. At some point in the next 50 years, you will cease to have a purpose.
I would say “purpose” and “meaning” are different things.
Take sperms for example. Clearly, they don’t have any meaning. Yet, they do have a purpose, which is to fertilise eggs. 
If God, what is the meaning of God?
Isnt it possible for there to be a mening to life without the existence of a superior being? And i dont think’Blinked into existence’ necessarily implies a divine creator daveslink but i could be wrong…its your language after all
And great post nevermore…
And a lot of mindboggling reversals of my question…kinda reminds me of the mother of all mindboggling threads…‘i think therefore i am’…But this thread has definetly given me something to think about besides Charlize Theron…
There is no meaning or purpose to life. It just happens that self-replicating molecules came about by chance, and through natural selection evolved into things that usually desire comfort and existence and reproduction.
To assign meaning or purpose to this is about significant as trying to find meaning or purpose into the results of a coin toss.