And just so. Without human consciousness, without the ability of homo sapiens to write its own beginning, middle and end, there would be no story. Without a story, there would be no meaning. Science, more and more, begins to recognize both its strengths and weaknesses. And as with human evolution generally, such illuminations take time, trial and error to refine. Science, after all, is a set of tools, enabling humans to manipulate and exploit their environment to best advantage. Science does not usually dabble in art or literature, but there have been some notable exceptions, some of which  led to unexpected outcomes with beneficial consequences. Science does not know it all. Nor will it ever. But that too is part of the meaning of life. I think so anyway.
Neuman.

The meaning of life is living.
As for science, science is measure and measure is the flaw.
And the point of it all Ken is infinite eternal Oneness. Be one!
=

Physicists regard matter as a marvel. Its behavior is an astounding puzzle thsat cannot be reduced to the mundane. A photon from the beginning of time can and will interact with the last Photon at the last moment of time. This is not meaningless, There is no science that portrays matter as meaningless, or even "dead". We portray matter in this light to facilitate our designs upon it, just as some of us portray low-wage workers as undeserving, as part of a scheme to defraud them of their real worth. But the most enduring and pernicious sense in which matter is devalued is as a rhetorical device used by preachers in order to so dispirit us that we become susceptible to their lies. Their is no "point" because there is nothing unilateral worth is. Worth is the freedom the act of welcome loss is enabled in the response welcoming the responsibility of the worth of that loss being recognized. That is, worth is the drama differentiated that welcome from that welcoming. There is no interstice divided them, but neither is there any "point"  centering it. Love is eccentric. That's why "oneness" or some transcendence or divine unity cannot help us. Kierkegaard and Nieitzsche were both bent on having an effect on us. This puts them firmly in the camp of the preachers. Try Hume instead, a materialist of a much higher quality.

I found Ken Taylor's essay, and the responses so far, all to be eloquent expressions of legitimate human yearning.  The opening description of what "science tells us" was probably an attempt - a successful one! - to catch readers' attention, but I would point out that it is really a piece of rhetoric, not an actual scientific finding or consensus.  
Most objects and processes that are recognized as legitimate objects of scientific study, whether surface tension, synaptic transmission, or sedimentary transitions, are emergent: they arise, and are explained scientifically, through interactions among smaller-scale or more basic components and forces.   Usually those more basic phenomena are in turned understood in terms of even more basic ones.  Journal articles and science textbook entries about emergent phenomena like the ones just mentioned never refer directly to quarks or string theory, though it is understood that ultimately those most basic features of the universe, or even more basic ones still to be discovered, could be described rhetorically as "all there is."  The most complex phenomena and activities we know of - human minds and their products such as art and literature and yearning for meaning - are also highly emergent in this sense.  Claiming that they are "nothing more than...,"  though, is another piece of rhetoric.
One current field that claims to be scientific and that I believe regularly does engage in the rhetoric of debunking, reducing, and eliminating is sociobiology / evolutionary psychology / human nature studies.  (Its practitioners seem to need to change the name of the field every decade or so).  It could be a good topic for this forum to ask whether these fields have anything more to say than the tautology that complex human behavior evolved.   (A tautology because the behavior is an attribute of humans, humans are organisms, and organisms evolved; therefore the behavior evolved.)  
- Steve George

The Buddha's last words were, reputedly: All accomplishment is transient, Strive unremittingly. Prior to those last words, the Buddha was supposedly with some of his acolytes, in the home of a compassionate host. They were dining and several of the acolytes noticed that the food did not taste all that wholesome. They stopped eating and warned the Master of the danger. He replied that he did not wish to insult his host by refusing the food offered and continued to eat the tainted meal. There were other matters pertaining to his actions that were associated with his beliefs regarding life and death---matters with which followers of the Noble Eightfold Path would be familiar. Anyway, The Buddha fell ill from food poisoning and died soon after. He was, or so it has been written, eighty years of age. Pretty good for an ancient ascetic, I'd say. So, his accomplishments were transient and he strove unremittingly. Right conduct (and food poisoning) led to his demise. Now the pragmatist's questions might be: had he heeded his followers' warning, could he have lived a bit longer? There is no way to know for sure. Would his having lived longer have made any difference in the totality of his accomplishments? Again, we cannot know.
Clearly, whether he would have admitted it or not, the Buddha's life had meaning. He eschewed the material world. In its transience, it was meaningless to him. Today, of course, people are enamored with the wonders of the material world and transience is merely business as usual. Striving is unremittingly pursued. Now is a long time away (2400 years, give or take) from the time of Buddha. Most of us do not think twice about avoiding tainted food, right conduct notwithstanding. Times and people change. So do the priorities of living. Some of this is meaningful in its own right. It all depends upon your point of view.
Neuman.

Reject the world? Not so "nice"! The promise of time unworthy of us is the promise unkept. Time, however, keeps its promise. Which is more worthy? We should ask, are we worthy of time? But this does not fit the narrative. Just let "Jesus" into your heart! Follow the law (of Moses or Mohamed)! Follow the "path"! Be righteous! Be "mindful"! Obey and be free! Heard it all before.
Nope! Siddartha Gautama was just another spoiled brat who escaped his rich parents' cocoon to find the world full of the cruel effects of their privilege, but who then turns to excuses for that crime in a transcendence far less "mindful" than touted. One could almost say the Buddhist "mindfulness" is mindless. Insofar as it supervenes an unkept and unworthy promise upon a worthy and kept one, it indeed is mindless. The issue raised, 'Chief', is the result of not pressing the rigor of that promise to its final and most rigorous term. Indeed, not so "nice"!
 

Platon Karatayev was Pierre's "teacher", and look what happened to him! I think Tolstoy was making him, Pierre, the sap of the story; not the hero, the anti-hero.
American philosophy is indeed a shambles, but this needs far more explaining. Ever read Time in the Ditch, by John McCumber?

Some of us find meaning in philosophy. Others seek solace in religious devotion of various breadth and depth. Several of my friends are into secular humanistic endeavors---or, at least, they pretend to be. Still other folks rattle around from one pathway to the next until they drive themselves quite mad with disenchantment and frustration. I enjoy parsing philosophy for those shorter or longer nuggets of rhetoric which either exhibit unfathomable depths of wisdom, clearly inane shallowness, or some paradoxical combination of both. Although according to some individuals he may not have been a real philosopher, Karl Jaspers' writings  lend themselves to the full continuum of entertaining possibilities. For example(s):

Only one who is consistent with himself can agree with others. To achieve harmony in oneself is to make friends with oneself and gain others as friends. ( a far cry from: to thine own self be true)
Understanding is present in every perception. (pretty simple--we all intuitively know this, yet tend to ignore it)
Categories have given form to the chaos. ( this one, found in a work from the 1950s, is particularly applicable to our 21st century society in which chaos appears to be worshipped rather than eschewed)
Everything that exists for us is an object of thought. (well, sure. Or pretty sure anyway.We are pretty sure that if we were unable to think, nothing would exist for us)
So, I can deduce that it is better to find meaning in things that are of lesser complexity, unless, of course you simply wish to rattle around, driving yourself mad with disenchantment and frustration. The choice is yours. Heck, you can even read philosophy written by those who are not really philosophers! Avoid Habermas, though. Unless you find solace in obscurantism.
HGN.

Don't all personal choices and "insights" have universal implications? If so, the idea of a purely personal "path" is fallacious. The case of Anne Hutchinson, in the early days of the Puritan colony at Boston, proved an intolerable disturbance to its faith. What pretended to be a purely personal devotion proved to be an insidious claim of divine voice. This was disastrous to the Puritan sect, since it's core belief was that a personal engagement with the text they deemed sacred would obviate a purely human edifice of devotion. The result was a fundamental disturbance that led to the gradual erosion of the idea of a personal "path", and the community in Boston would become the most secular, and most materialist, in the colonies. In terms of the "Family of Love" (Hutchinson's sect) they would evolve from the "covenant of grace" to the "covenant of works". The point is, the search for a "personal path" is an oxymoron. You see, if you come to some opinion or view, and look for reasons to believe it, you will find them. But this hardly means you have found truth. We can only reasonably believe we know anything if we have comprehensively searched for and impartially reviewed every reason not to believe it. In other words, knowledge is comprehension, not 'insight', not a sudden revelation on the road to Damascus, or any other 'path', but a slow trudge through all paths. You cannot cherry-pick your way to enlightenment! Habermas, by the way, is actually rather simplistic. But, like you and so many others, he assumes that synchrony, rather than responsible dissent, is the 'path'. And in doing so he condemns himself to the oxymoron of a personal universal.
By the way, Ophelia's dad, I don't remember his name, is intended as a buffoon, and the remark about 'to thine own self be true' is meant as a joke.