Hi All

There may be no purpose to all life, no global goal towards which all come into being, but that doesn't stop the restless urge/purpose of survival and reproduction. Purpose enough in "lower" animals - we're all equal survivors of our respective lineages because of it.

Our purposes are within us and only matter to each of us. Occasionally we come together and share a common goal, but that doesn't extend off to infinity. But the impermanence means we're adaptable, not ossified. We don't exist in a statically perfect Aristotelian world with a Prime Mover that endlessly contemplates its own static perfection.

Permanence, intransience is a 'goal' of both Hinduism and Buddhism - becoming the axle of the Wheel, so to speak. Neither viewpoint could give us technology that actually benefits all because all lesser goals are pointless. Equally the fact in Islam that God's Will is the only true purpose and is absolute also means there can be no autonomous natural law, no Nature worth knowing.

Christianity and Judaism both oscillate in their attitudes. Aristotle's God was baptised and made into the modern philosophical version, but it does cause no end of confusion when popular religiosity tells us that God listens and cares, something a Prime Mover can't do. But do Christianity and Judaism have an autonomous natural world worth knowing?

Maybe, maybe not. A God who works arbitary miracles is akin to the Islamic God-picture, but a God who voluntarily becomes one of us, as limited and confined as us by choice, means there's room for freedom. He chose to die, instead of becoming invulnerable, when we nailed him to that cross.

God has given us a gift of freedom and that's why there's no global purpose imposed on us.