But nothing is meaningless. Everything has exactly the meaning the individual asking the question decides it has. It is your freedom as well as responsibility.

As an atheist I actually read the thoughts of some church intellectuals, for example once something from some bishop in the Vatican, that I can completely agree with. In the end sayings like "God helps those who help themselves" go in the same direction as my atheist attitude: You are responsible for yourself, don't look "up" and blame others (incl. "god"). I think the religious interpretation would be something like "since God is inside you and par of you, to look inside yourself is all it takes to see" (my own words/interpretation).

I don't think the line of separation is between religion and atheism, I can find plenty of religious people I can completely agree with, the label "God" of e.g. a religious astronomer and physicist is so "meta" that it is not in the way. Even in history (of religion) I find plenty of attempts that end up in a similar place to what I as an atheist could come up with.

It fits much better the way humans operate - which is a distributed network of specialized individuals. Give every individual a chance to discover their own place for themselves. This is compatible with religious views if/since they assume that "God is within you", so there is no need to look for meaning externally, just do what you have to do - which to me seems totally identical to what a real atheist would come up with. If you restrict humans from using their own judgment it's like telling the brain not to use its own judgment, which was produced based on the inputs that that specific brain collected over its lifetime. This makes sense if you think some brains are defective and need to be controlled form elsewhere.

If you believe in the network (and its emergent properties incl. those of self-correction) and that 3rd party control, that does not have the same data available as the controlled brain, somehow makes better decisions (one might say: controlled economy vs. market economy is an example), than you want to let them make their own decisions. Note that this is about aggregate outcome - in either scenario there will of course be errors. The question is which is better in total, and those who ask for "freedom" should as far as I can see be in the camp of those who let individuals make decisions based on their own experiences (data).

That means for a (more) optimal outcome it is better when people are able to decide for themselves what their own respective "meaning of life" is. Restricting it by setting a "global standard for all" is the opposite of freedom, and whether you are religious or not, in both cases "look within yourself!" is where it's at.

One mistake often seen as the first thought when discussing the issue of no external meaning is to conclude something extremely negative, like "then I can just commit suicide". Why??? You have freedom! Yes you can conclude that - but you may equally decide that learning to play the violin and playing at concerts is your goal. It makes no logical sense to bind a negative outcome to the freedom given to the discovery that there is no external meaning. While you are alive, and you don't need to philosophize about what "alive" means", you may just as well have some fun.

A note about what would happen if you actually found the "Higher purpose", e.g. if we indeed had been "created": Does that really solve anything? You only shifted the problem somewhere else. What's the purpose of that "higher power"? You can ask all those questions about the higher level just the same. A higher power solves and explains nothing.