Only to add that 'meaningless' is not necessarily the case at all. To me, the very question of "What is the meaning of life?" already misses the point, which is THIS, LIFE, this that is all around you - this is the point! Existence is the point, if there was no existence and no conscious creatures in the world, the world for all intents and purposes would not exist, and it certainly wouldn't matter.

Life is all the more meaningful know that it may be the only one we have. So just take a moment to feel what it feels like to be alive. Breathing, seeing, hearing, the field of consciousness that you apparently are, in a poetic and literal sense you are the Universe experiencing itself, because you aren't some other separate thing apart from the universe.

Every day can be meaningful, whether you have some delicious cake, or you hear a bird singing, or you stop to look at a flower or go to a museum or make love to someone or learn something new, whether you push yourself and exceed a previous limitation, whether you are kind to a stranger for its own sake. Life IS the point, it's amazing and mysterious and beautiful and weird and wonderful!

This is it! Right here, right now. You are alive, and there's a whole planet and a whole universe out there to explore and enjoy!

@ Andromeda

I'm not very active here these days, so my reply is a bit late.

I never was particularly religious to begin with and I didn't have to go through anything like the rapid process you describe. But I can relate to a lot of what you have written about your thoughts and conclusions, both here and in the thread "Nihilism".

I like how you seem so positive despite describing yourself as a Nihilist (those who do often seem to be extremely cynical and depressed). Even though I've had very similar realizations about the lack of meaning, I've never thought of myself as a nihilist, only an atheist.

Today, my view is something like this:

We are primates, essentially just animals. But we are animals who happened to gain intelligence. And only very recently, through advances in science and accumulation of knowledge, have we become aware of the world around us and started to understand it. But we are still very much animals, our minds are not adapted to handle the consequences of conscious awareness of death. Grappling with concepts like our own mortality and the mortality of the ones we love is painful and frightening, even more so when one rejects fairy tails. It's a scary abyss most people want to avoid looking into.

(In my opinion, one of the cornerstones of the success of religions is that they all provide some form of "escape" from death.)

But the lack of inherent meaning in life, other than successfully passing on our genes, doesn't reduce it's beauty. The more I understand about our universe, our planet, evolution, the more fascinating and beautiful it gets.
To have gone from single cell organisms with no meaning or purpose except procreation, to the current diversity of life with collaboration and altruism between species, and intelligent conscious primates, is awe inspiring.

The irony of how most of these "intelligent" conscious primates go about their daily lives, thinking they are intentionally created by some invisible magical daddy in the sky, and therefore don't identify themselves as animals even though their animal instincts rule most of their lives, makes it all quite comical as well.

If it wasn't for the horrors that religion causes on a daily basis, I would view it as a gigantic improvisational comedy.

Don't be afraid to look into the abyss, but don't get engulfed by it. Don't forget to look at "right now" as well and appreciate the simple things in life. Accepting reality, accepting what we are and that the life we have is the only one we get, is all the more reason to appreciate it all.