Life is limited only to survival and reproduction for many naturalists

Life is limited only to survival and reproduction for many naturalists who have given up on religion and Godhood because they think that without spiritualism, which science cannot affirm, there can be no religion or Godhood. That tends to lead to what Thoreau called lives of quiet desperation.

When the question is asked “what is the purpose of existence? even our supposedly best minded philosopher's think such things as we are “condemned” to freedom, which is a highly arrogant thought since our “free will” is constrained by the biological origin of our social behavior, among other things.

Darwin's stunning discovery of natural evolution, which showed that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors by way of natural selection and branching, greatly weakened the religious worldview, although some tried to hang on to a spiritual religious purpose by saying that we evolve to a non-material spiritual God.

The biggest sticking point for most scientists comes in believing in the complete randomness of evolution, denying any kind of direction to evolution, which when asking what is the purpose of existence? tends to put them in that quiet desperation camp.

Evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward “higher and higher more effective living forms,” as Cattell put it. When we define internally activating life evolving toward higher and higher forms, shaped by outside natural selection and genetic evolution, always moving toward ascending levels of Godhood, then the goal of materially evolving to supermaterial Godhood gives natural purpose and direction to modern life and culture, and it need not deprive us of either science or religion.