Purpose indicate a meaning an objective that a group of people have in regarding to something (deity, money, health, other...).
Atheists don't believe in God but they don't have a faith: so the word purpose has no meaning to them.
You know that. I know that. Try explaining that to BADecker.
Look, even if atheist all thought that the universe doesn't have a purpose - not all of them think this way -
Yes, they do. If the universe has a purpose it must have a creator. If you believe in a creator, you're not atheist.
Does an atheist do anything in the universe? Does an atheist dream? Does he make plans? Does he use the things of the universe? For him the universe has a purpose. If it didn't, he would go off and commit suicide out of despair. If he didn't commit suicide out of despair, and the universe didn't have a purpose for him - at least in his own mind - he would have to be a vegetable.
An atheist views himself as god, although he may not recognize that he is doing so. Since he doesn't know much about himself - the way-down-deep human self that he is - yet he believes that he knows, he has a personal religion going.
We are talking about different things - the Universe having a purpose, and making your life have a purpose.
So you think that a person can have purpose outside of the universe? Since the person is in the universe, and the purpose is in the person, purpose is also in the universe.
Furthermore, since people are a product of the universe, and since people have enough intelligence that they can have purpose, the universe that made them has purpose as well. Why? Because nowhere in the universe have we found that complexity is ever made by something that is less complexity. On the contrary. Everything we have found shows that what is produced is at least slightly, bun mostly largely, degraded from what has made it (entropy).
This means that not only does the universe have purpose, but it has intelligence, as well. Such intelligence fits the definition that we have of God. Since an atheist denies God in the face of the fact that we know God exists, the atheist has a religion for himself.
Grant you, this is a simple explanation. If you flesh it out, you will see that it is entirely accurate.
An atheist believes his or her life can have a purpose, while the universe does not have a purpose.
How about this example. There are some very small monkeys in the world. We make some of them into pets.
Imagine that you have a small, pet monkey in your hand. The monkey has a peanut in his hand. Do you not also have the peanut in your hand? The universe has purpose, even if it is only your purpose.
Since one's life is not identical to "the universe", it is possible for one's life to have purpose, but not ones universe.
In the theories of the mega-universe, where there are parallel universes that all occupy the same space, what you say might be true. Why? There is theory that the spirit/soul/identity of each person resides in a separate universe from the spirit/soul/identity of every other person, even though it is expressed on earth in a body that occupies the same universe as all other human bodies.
If this, or something like this, is the fact, it is possible that there are some universes that don't have purpose (of course, only if universes don't have purpose of themselves... a thing that we don't know). Why? Because there might be some people who don't have purpose. Thus, their universe might not have purpose, as well.
As you can see from all this that I have written in this post, atheism is almost definitely a religion.