Life is a phenomenon that occurs under extremely specific conditions in the universe. This phenomena is the result of the abundance of chemicals in a highly specific state that allows the formation of small bacteria made of those chemicals and living of the nutrients provided by those chemicals. After billions of years of this condition remaining stable complex life begins to form. Allowed to form because the abundance of chemicals and specific conditions that support life, and existing solely because it can. In this we realize that life exists only because it is in efficient conditions to exist. Life will only exist where it can and only because it can. This takes away much of the marvel beings like us of high intelligence associate with life.
In reality life and intelligent beings are purely the result of chemical balance, and specific astronomical conditions, so the abundance of life in an area or planet is no more a phenomena than a rock floating in the vast insensateness of space. Though life could be described as a universal anomaly it is no different an anomaly than a black hole in space.
However it is part of the efficiency of existing that we, as highly intelligent beings who are more self-aware than any other life, need to give life some deeper meaning, deeper than other forms of life would care to think. Most forms of life seek pleasure, and sustenance and that is all the meaning they need to live as efficient forms of life.
This carnal sense of things seems to primal for our logic, so we as humans are made to find a deeper meaning of life, so that we to can live as efficient beings set in a logic that enables us to act in a manner that benefits us. This in itself may be the meaning to life that is that we seek meaning because it is efficient for us as complex organisms to do so.
However I think that our negligence of this is a sign that we should not be set in one united meaning of life, it is our duty as intelligent beings to wonder and provide hope in our theories and logic, hope for our fellow humans confused by the vastness of the universe and the meaning to life. This ties in with another one of my realizations. That is that the unpredictability of humans that results from the small genetic mutations our biology allows is both the saviour of man from extinction, as well as the saviour of man from himself, for with this factor of biology implemented no one idea plague the whole of humanity. Therefore we as a species will never be able to be completely and unanimously united as long as our biological spectrum remains in the form it is now.
So it is our duty not to simply say that the truth (that life exists because it can) but to wonder and provide answers that make us feel, bring us the sensations that we acquire in being intelligent beings.
With this said I suggest the meaning of life is this.
To do whatever is in your power to help your fellow man, to respect all persons and to realize that it is necessary for some people to be evil, because without our own evils we could have no good, and with either of those opposing forces gone we would be subject to the insensateness of the universe, a hell worse then our sensate minds can imagine. To realize that it is our biology that enables humans to be so diverse and to realize that we need this as a species if we are to continue our existence in an efficient manner. That being said the only crime I see are the convictions people put on themselves, the convictions that inhibit them from being a benefit to society or even an ill to society. This is the crime of insensateness. A crime rarely seen because it is the evil we all ultimately dread, the evil suppressed by all of mans efforts.
-Dr. Braden Phd