You make two separate points. Let me respond to both.
You say there is more to life than living. And what might that be? Living again after you die? I never understood the claim that religion gives us meaning. If anything, religion devalues life. It is the understanding that we emerged through natural processes, against all odds, that makes our story so striking. If I am to accept Christianity's depressing view, then we're nothing. An all powerful god created us with little effort, put us on one of the trillions of trillions of worlds that he created. He imposed a set of demands on us, that we are to follow blindly OR ELSE! And in return, he promised he'd permit our continued existence unmolested.
The view that you existed before birth on this earth, and that your existence will continue after death on this earth does not devalue life at all. The people that will devalue life will do so with or without this knowledge. If anything it gives hope, perspective, and a goal.
Your take on this also lets me know you really have a limited understanding of who God is, what he asks us to do, how we can find out for ourselves, and what the consequences of our actions are. There were no demands, but commandments we could choose to follow. We are asked to come and see and to prove out what he asks us to do and there is no blindly following although at times there will be blind steps here and there, but they are only for short distances. There is no OR ELSE! He has given commandments. Attached to each law there are consequences. We can choose to follow the law, or not follow the law... but we do not get to choose the consequence. In return of us choosing to follow him and do our best (etc... long story) we will receive our just reward and most likely we will understand and accept it as correct. This whole permit our continued existence unmolested... not sure where you are going with that.
On the other hand, I see the universe as dumb matter going down the path that it forged for itself the moment of its inception. And through all the indifferent processes that govern the void that is our home, molecules came together in a way that enabled them to self-replicate, and life was born. A delicate system under continuous assault from an uncomprehending reality, it managed not only to survive, but to give rise to billions upon billions of machines that are as unique from one another as the hand-crafted sculptures of a skilled artist. And those machines lived and died, and from their ruined parts new machines sprung forth. And from that cacophony, our species was born. And that most "insignificant" entity robbed the entire cosmos from its incomprehension. The universe created a mind for itself. And you want me to give up this inheritance and become a slave? I don't think I can do that.
What is your inheritance? To die and be gone? Not sure I get that. I don't get your idea of becoming a slave. You think believing in God and choosing to follow him makes you a slave? I don't think so. Being forced to follow someone or something would be closer to slavery.
Let me put this into a basketball scenario. A basketball coach has a team, there are various talent levels on this team as well as heights, weights, builds, athleticism and brains. This coach puts his team through drills, conditioning, practice, and all that over and over and over. They practice drills. They practice plays, they practice full court press, they practice press break, they practice layups, they practice free throws, they practice multiple positions in each of the plays, they practice in bounds plays from under the basket, from the sidelines. They practice plays at the end of games. They find out in practice who can do what, and who can run the plays, and which five run best as starters, and who the best players off the bench are. They figure a lot of things out and try to get them down. Why? When it's game time, who is the coach going to put in? The coach will first put in the players that listen do his direction, and that can run his plays. It would be nice if all players got the buy in of his schemes and game plans. That is not always the case. Some players just don't believe in the coach, won't listen to him, and don't buy in to his game plan. They might do their own thing, and argue about things.
Imagine that God is the coach. He knows everything, knows the opposition backwards and forward. He knows his team like the back of his hand. Let's just say for example we are his team, and this life is our practice time. He will see what talents and abilities we have, will see our conditioning to know how many minutes he can play us. Most of all he will see if we know the plays, and if we have bought in to his game plan. He wants to see who can handle playing in a game time situation, and he wants to see who can start, and who can come off the bench, and even who does not buy into his game plan and might dnp if they continually choose to fight him and his game plan.
Not a perfect "parable" but passable.
As for the transience of scientific thought. It's incidental to the process. If you truly are looking to understand, then you're going to have to build one paradigm after another, until you find the one that explains all you observe. If science did not grow with our knowledge, then it would not be science at all. The fact is, Newton's approximations turned out not to be a fundamental truth. But that's unimportant. It was the best truth we could come up with given the information we possessed at the time. As the amount of observations that violated Newtonian mechanics grew, the need for new understanding arose. And I hope this continues. That's the whole point.
I have no issues with science, as a part of life, but not the have all be all. It is a good thing, and leads to good things, but it is not the everything that leads to everything. It is a branch of a tree, but is not the whole tree.
