Evolution has no purpose but it a biological action. We can only pick something to be our purpose. If you choose something that makes you unhappy; so be it but I cannot understand something like that.
If that’s indeed a religious claim, then I have to agree with them - and even a broken clock is right twice a day - on this point: If we can see no purpose to life, we simply won’t bother living. Why should we? The big difference between theist and atheist re the meaning of life lies in the way in which it is obtained: subscribers to religion unquestioningly receives it wholesale from it’s clergy, while secularists must derive their own through reason, sentiment, or whimsy. But we all need it. Even on weekends.
What prevents the biological survival imperative...Nothing. It as reasonable as anything else that we may find inspiring.
Well, true, but I’m not following how it ties in … are you saying that the purpose of life is to resist change in general?
Rigil
Actually, it’s a wishful woo-woo claim that virtually all religions exploit. There is an evolutionarily beneficial and obsessive drive in humans to seek agency and meaning behind any and all events, and this probably lies at the root of any disappointment we may feel by the thought that our lives are meaningless except for what we ourselves and our loved ones assign to them.
Perhaps the problem is a difference in what we mean by “purpose” and “meaning.” Meaning is always contextually determined but humans are very good at hiding this contextual dependence from themselves. The life of an Aristotle or an Einstein or a Mozart was hardly meaningless in the context of humanity’s history, whereas the universe could hardly care less. Religions and other forms of woo-woo simply can’t resist positing — usually as undeniable fact — some or other absolute and eternal yardstick for meaning and purpose. But such is a chimera, otherwise most of us would probably agree already. The real question is why anyone who has contemplated the issue should feel that an autonomous, internally decided and possibly transient meaning/purpose should be inferior or any less convincing than the hopeful fiction of some ostensibly absolute and immutable one.
Even the “ultimate” purpose that most religions punt is very dodgy: You live a saintly life, you die, you go to heaven and enjoy everlasting bliss. Now what? And what about the habitual seekers who aren’t so easily appeased? Or is it a given that their seeking will vanish once they’ve achieved this “ultimate” purpose? If we retain, post mortem, any shred of our humanity, this must be the most stultifying of experiences, and, what’s worse, by definition it never ends.
Except that in itself it’s about as basic and unexciting as you can get, which is why people typically underestimate the long reach of its pervasively overpowering force. However, my point was much more that it can give rise indirectly and even by several removes to some of our more powerful urges or drives to thought and action. Religions came about in large part because of it with life-after-physical-death notions being just the most obvious point of reference.
No, what I’m saying is that resisting potentially detrimental change as well as striving to understand all aspects of the world we inhabit, our fellows and our surroundings in pursuit of a total sense of security, individually and collectively constitute powerful motivators to action on our part. It staunchly challenges the idea that a Grand Purpose™ is necessary for us to get up and do stuff.
'Luthon64
I am never too sure about what people even mean by “the meaning of life” or “happiness.” Don’t know why anyone agonizes over it either.
The answer is 42 of course.
Because, my chum, without such introspection we are liable to overindulge in mere sensual pleasures. 0:)
R.
Who says there is anything “mere” about sensual pleasures? 
The funny thing is, I actually live fairly ascetically, perhaps a bit according to the original Epicurean idea But I no longer bother trying to answer questions that seem to me to be essentially meaningless and unanswerable. Or to which “42” is as good an answer as any.
The pursuit of happiness should not be confused with the pursuit of pleasure. We find happiness in different ways and hedonism may be a component thereof, but so may the sense of achievement or altruism give rise to happiness. The lack of a universal answer to the meaning of life does not imply a hedonic lifestyle and Mr Creosote is in fact mocking this fallacy. Setting yourself goals and achieving those goals need not be subject to some overall purpose of existence. Eventually our species will become extinct and all our achievement will appear to be in vain, so not even propagating ourselves can have an eternal purpose. However, in the space and time in which we live, our actions can be significant.
The religious concept that our purpose is to serve an almighty god reaffirms the self contradictory nature of almightiness: I cannot see how an almighty being can be in need of any servants.