Can science answer the question of the meaning of life? I think the biggest misconception among a large portion of the population today is that spirituality and science is one and the same thing. Sure people use science to refute various religious dogmas and scripts, that's fair enough, that's science, but as to the question of why we exist, it is futile to suggest that science will one day tell us, but yet people persist in idolising science.
The argument goes like this. In history, certain understandings have been held, for example, the elements are fire, water, earth and metal, or Newton's laws of motion. These have been accepted until science suggests otherwise, and new theories are produced. The periodic table is now understood to be a better description of elements then the fire and water description, and Einstein's theories have improved on Newton's. It then follows that the theories we have today are far from complete, and that improvements will continuously be made. This is known as the scientific method.
Just as early people thought they knew the earth was flat, we think we know certain truths about reality, and just as a new revolutionary understanding of the world came about when it was discovered to be round, so too will revolutionary ideas emerge that will give us ever-deeper understandings about reality. This has been shown in history to be true, and there is no reason for it not to be true in the future.
And we have surely only barely scratched the surface. We are in an age, and have always been in an age, of ever increasing knowledge and rapidity in which these knew revolutionary ideas emerge. Think about an arbitrarily long time from now. Surely in the future at some point, knowledge and understanding will reach such a point at which even the question of the reason for our existence, of spirituality, will be answered. This is the view people take.
In fact, a lot of people think this has already happened. Religion and dogma have slowly given more and more to science, with theories of creation being completely abandoned by the scientific community. God, they say, is a god of the gaps, pushed back further and further. Science, a lot of people say, has already disproved religion. God is now so miniscule, he exists only at the moment of the big bang, and the rest is science. And this will be ironed out, as science becomes an omniscient art, as knowledge rises to new knowledge, and the whole of reality, including the big bang, is utterly void of the need for a god to explain anything, as hawking has been trying to show.
The process of science is to use logic to determine relationships between manifestations of our experience. Tests are made that can determine some truth about reality. Newton observed the planets and deduced the law of gravitation to describe their motions. Electromagnetism has emerged as a unifying theory that describes the relationship and action of the electric and magnetic forces, which govern the simple laws of motion we experience. There have even deeper theories, of quantum mechanics, used to describe ever-deeper aspects of physics, and relativity, used to describe strange effects that only appear in very fast systems. The reaches of science go further and deeper, and the consequences of these laws inform engineering and technology. At the moment, the big problem for physicists is trying to unify the theory of gravity and relativity with theories of quantum mechanics using logical arguments that give rise to predictions about the reality we live in that are testable.
I suppose one of the biggest questions in science is how consciousness arises out of the universe. Recent advances in technology and research has probed the workings of the brain and shown how various components work together, how memory works, how the brain functions. More advances and further research will illuminate the answer to this question further and further.
So what is science actually doing for us? It's telling us more and more about the universe we live in, probing deeper and more fundamental reaches of physics, and illuminating how these physical laws create consciousness. It's providing knowledge that can be applied to technology, advancing human civilisation in this way, as it were. That's great. Science ultimately is trying to link fundamental logic right up through physics to chemistry to biology and to the existence of consciousness. We are a long long way from achieving this. We have indeed only scratched the surface, and maybe we won't ever actually reach this point. Maybe it's impossible. But this is the framework in which science can inform us.
There is this massive problem that we always come back to though. No matter how close science comes to achieving this continuous and complete link between logic and consciousness, it will never explain why logic should exist in such a way that consciousness can exist in the first place. (see sidenote)
So what is the link between logic and consciousness? Why does logic create consciousness? Science might be able to show us how it works, but why?
To answer this question, which is really outside of the scientific realm, philosophers say that logic is itself only a construct of our minds, and is really just an illusion. In this way, the logical problem that we ultimately reach, this problem of why logic creates consciousness, is somehow made irrelevant.
I disagree with this though. Logic is what the scientific method is based on, indeed it's what all our decisions and thoughts and even consciousness itself is based on. Using logic, we have successfully understood certain things about science to the point that we can build working technology. To say that logic is an illusion is to deny science as a way to gain a description of the universe and if you follow it through you deny your own existence. If Descartes is wrong, then you are literally nothing. In order to rise beyond this, to accept your experience, which is something we all do in practice, you must accept logic. Whether it's true or not is irrelevant.
What's the point of all of this? The point is that logically science and philosophy cannot tell you the meaning of life, and in that way there will always be room for spirituality. God is outside of science, not because god is a god of the gaps, but logically so. There will never be a way to know whether god exists or not. The problem of the meaning of life is one you have to answer not by looking at science, but by other means.
Given the Anthropic principle, all science is doing is describing the universe that is already there in an increasingly accurate way, but the universe is the way it is no matter how little or much we know about it. The only thing we know, and that we can't deny, is our experience, and this is a combination of a great many things.
I would describe pure experience as a mood. It can take many forms, and is affected by the universe you inhabit, including the people you build relationships with. The meaning of life doesn't lie in quantum mechanics and unified theories, which exist without having to know about them, but somewhere in experience and mood itself. Are you happy with your life and the way you've lived it? Do you feel fulfilled or guilty? Do you give in to the moment you are in or do you constantly worry about the past and future? Do you live a life that is conducive to sustainable happiness, or do you give in easily to momentary pleasures and temptations that harm your well-being? Do you abide by morals you believe in? Do you want what you know you shouldn't?
Whether you believe in God or you don't, both beliefs are equally valid, and you cannot prove or disprove either one. I think whether there is a God or not is beside the point; it's the experience of life and giving in to the conflicts within our own minds that is important. How you achieve this is as obvious as it is elusive.
Thanks for reading 
Please comment.
BEN
(Sidenote): On a side note, the argument that life is inevitable given the vast scales involved in the size and age of the universe is beside the point. The vast size and age of the universe is necessary for life to exist, but it's the laws behind the universe, not the universe itself, that are impossibly perfect for the existence of consciousness. Another common misinformed line of argument tries to use the Anthropic principle as an answer to the reason we exist. It has many confusing forms, but basically states that the universe has to be the way it is such that life can exist simply because we are here to observe it and so this must be the case. This statement is inherently true, but does not tell us anything about why we exist in the first place.