Religion is most decidedly not the search for the meaning of life. It is the very opposite. It is an attempt to impose a totally implausible explanation for life and the world and the universe on people, and, what's more, one which attempts to assert a measure of control over people's behaviour and (maybe worse) their intellect. It closes down enquiry by encouraging people to be satisfied with a wholly unsatisfactory "explanation" of everything. It purports to provide an "answer" for everything that, out of all possible answers, is the one which is by far the most improbable, requiring us to suspend belief in all the hard-won laws of physics and believe in a being who has never revealed himself and for whom there is no evidence. It pretends to ask philosophical questions, but these are asked only within a ringfence of utter falsehood. Science is not opposed to religion. It would be more accurate to say that science need not concern itself with religion, but that religion obsessively opposes and demonises science whenever science starts to answer those awkward mysteries that religion would much rather keep as its own.