Thank you, both Lee and Scott. In the interest of creating a dialogue, I think I will start with Scott's question first.. We may eventually come back around to your question, Lee, and I know that your question is an important one, but Scott's question is a good one to begin a dialogue with.
Scott: Do you believe there is a purpose or meaning to life? If so, do you have any sense of what that purpose or meaning would be?
Daniel: Yes, I do believe that there is both purpose and meaning in life; that can be found in both the smallest part of material existence and in the greatest complexity of a galaxy. Now I know that you will be interested in how or why I think that way, so I will attempt to demonstrate. Without getting into too complex physics, I believe I can demonstrate that light and subatomic particles behave in strange ways... ways which are difficult to both comprehend and foretell. Of course, we could hypothesize that a mirror curved at such and such a degree, and tilted at such and such an angle would reflect light in a specific direction. And we can see that this is indeed often the case. But that is not all. Although a majority of the light captured and harvested in this way might indeed be sent off in another direction, we can still see that light.... which means that not all of the light is being controlled. I am not sure if this is a good way to answer this question, or that you understand the relevance to the question you asked with this example... It might not be a good idea to continue if it's not. The point I will eventually be making is that:
A. Not everything in the Universe can be controlled by scientific measures.
B. Consider that scientific measures represent one of the strongest forces of manipulation, namely in that the scientific method is mostly an ironclad process in identifying cause and effect, among other contingencies.
C. Even though science cannot control or reproduce certain harmonic effects of the Universe, which lead to life and the pursuit of diversification of life, their presence is an indication of forces which are not yet understood by scientific disciplines. (I will be coming back to this later, for I am sure it will haunt me.)
Now all this is to me a major indication that life (animal, vegetable, and mineral) and the organized structure of the subatomic particles and atoms which help to make up the grand network of life, is a miracle. There is no plausible scientific explanation that excludes some type of intelligent force at work. Perhaps we can better understand this by understanding the complexity of what it means to be "intelligent".