Didn't answer the actual question before (focused on our miniscule place in the universe, which I think answers the bigger question of our purpose), but I think the point in life is to have fun in the short time we are here, that's it.
Dick Van Dyke alludes to this in The Times this week:
"I’ve made it to 99 in no small part because I have stubbornly refused to give into the bad stuff in life: failures and defeats, personal losses, loneliness and bitterness, the physical and emotional pains of ageing. For the vast majority of my years, I have been in what I can only describe as a full-on bear hug with the experience of living. Being alive has been doing life — not like a job but rather like a giant playground."
Is there a purpose or a "higher force"? Dunno. What I will say is I'm not surprised the vast vast majority of scientists are atheists. Our existence is a fluke. Had the dinosaurs not been wiped out we wouldn't be here. The chain of evolutionary events that led to us, that could have been altered at any point. One of those species dying out, as 99% have, that would have prevented us from being here.
Then there is astronomy, and how remote we are, which is sobering.
The nearest sun to our own is Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years away, that's 9.4 trillion km, or 270,000 times from Earth to the Sun (which itself is about 150,000 km). One of the planets orbiting that star is Proxima B, which is in the habitable zone, so possible to sustain life. If we wanted to get of Earth and survive as a species, that could be our best bet. The problem is getting there. The fastest vehicle we have today is the Porter Solar Probe, and that would take us 7,800 years to get there. The pyramids were built 4,500 years ago.
The idea of aliens visiting is is almost laughable when you consider the eye watering distance and time it takes to get from A to B. And the speed of light applies to all species. And the question of "are we alone", given that we are just one solar system of 400 billion on this galaxy alone, so a trillion planets (at least), a thousand billion, just on the Milky Way, and there between 100 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe each with billions of solar systems, when you grasp all that it has to be the most short sighted question ever asked. We are a speck. A grain of sand in a vast desert. When the bible was written we thought we were the centre.