The purpose of life is to reproduce. Those organisms who duplicate themselves exist and those who don't are gone. Ones purpose is to improve their situation such that indirectly or directly they improve the odds of gene propagation. One is merely genetic information fighting for continued existence.
Without conscious life, the universe has no observation mechanism. Without simple life we could not evolve to conscious life. Collective life exists as a sum of individual parts, so all individual life is meaningful. Life and the Universe are 2 sides to the same coin and grant each other purpose.
You could be elected president of a united earth, solve world poverty and hunger, cure all known diseases, and still – at the very end of the universe – nothing will be different.
It will be as if neither you, nor anything else, ever existed.
Life is pointless in the whole aspect of the Universe. What we humans do today will not matter in a million years (if we can exist for that long). But, what we do on Earth influences us. Life is meaningful from a human point-of-view.
Pointless mean that YOU don't know why it happens. Its merely a question of how much knowledge about the situation you have. A good analogy is in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the earth point of existence is to of calculate The Question.
The meaning of life is to live one's life meaningfully, which is empowering because it allows you to define your entire being. Nothing is more liberating than answering this one question for yourself. And life's finite nature makes every second that much more embedded with your own purpose.
To know no purpose is to know freedom. The far more depressing possibility would be having a set purpose leading you only to be a cog in a machine rather than a living individual.
God gave humans the purpose to love God and take care of the Earth. Yet, if you do not believe in God, that does mean life is pointless as there is no other purpose for which you can live that would truly matter if there was no God
This is an unjustifiable claim, as we cannot make claim whether there is or is not some ultimate purpose or goal. It is fallacious to claim there is no point without also claiming knowledge about things which are ultimately unknowable. This claim is as ignorant as people claiming an afterlife.
We study twenty years, then we work for the rest of our lives. What for? Nothing. Well, keeping us alive. But life has no objective like going to the heaven or something.