The purpose of life and other silly questions

Recently, I had a long chat with a clergyman from my church. We were exchanging our views on many things and he suddenly asked me, 'What is the purpose of life?'  Now, I have seen this question bandied about in online debates and the person who is asked the question usually seems at a loss for an answer.
The reason is clear to me. It's an unfair question. It immediately presupposes without any argument or evidence the existence of a higher being who must have created life in order to have a purpose for such a creation. But I have not seen any convincing argument or evidence to support the proposition that life was created by a higher being.

I told my clergyman that and his response is typical of deeply religious people: 'So, to you, life has no purpose?' Again that is an unfair question.  It does not at all follow logically from the first question. The first question asks about THE purpose of life. The implication is there must be a creator and he must have a purpose. The second question appears to be about me. Do I have a purpose for living? Of course I do. I have a purpose but it's not THE purpose of life. It's MY purpose of living.

My purpose of living is to have fun and to have a great time. In short, pleasure or joy. He then asked me the next question which I could have already guessed - there is just one way a religious mind can function: 'Is that not a selfish purpose? Do you not want to raise your kids properly or benefit your family and the wider society?'

I told him that everyone has about the same purpose for living - to have pleasure or joy. If you call that selfish then we all are selfish. But we raise our kids properly and we benefit our family and society because these things also give us joy. Or rather, in order for someone to experience joy, he must be able to see his own family well provided for and he must see the society around him in peace and prosperity. It's just how we are as social animals.

'Then you rule out God? God has no space in your life?' he asked. But it's very hard to explain to him that I am in fact doing the work of God by having a great time. The standard Christian answer to the question what the purpose of life is is that it's to glorify God. Rick Warren says that in his best-selling book The Purpose-Driven Life. The purpose of life is to glorify God.  But what does that even mean?  How does one glorify God? That's what most religious people fail to understand, and if I may add, Rick Warren himself has missed the point totally. It's very well to say that the purpose of life is to glorify God but when you use words with difficult definitions such as 'God' and 'glorify', you unnecessarily obfuscate the clear meaning and value of life. So, how does one glorify God?  The Bible tells us that there is only one way to do that and that is to have a great time ourselves. St Paul himself writes that we are to REJOICE!  Now, that's an easy enough word to understand. How does one rejoice? One does so by having a good time. And when should one rejoice?  St Paul gives the answer:  ALWAYS! 

In case you think I have made all this up, you can always Google 'St Paul rejoice always' and you will find the precise biblical quotation. In fact, the exhortation to rejoice is so important that St Paul even repeats himself. After telling all of us to always have fun, he adds as if he knew that the church in the future would adopt a puritanical approach, 'and again I say rejoice!' 

So now, you know what the biblical purpose of life is - to have fun always. Don't let a man wearing a cassock tell you otherwise. This is what the Good Book itself says!