The world functions like a machine, both natural and human constructs and energy are on the whole pretty chaotic and "meaningless" viewed on that grand scale. On the personal scale though, when bad things happen to good people, you can see that chaos at work on the personal scale, and that the chaos can be put into order by timely action on the part of the bystanders performing real aid. It's how we react as individuals that makes us human versus Humane.
Here's an example of just acting "human" when a bad thing happened to a good person;
http://jtotheizzoe.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/bill-nye-and-the-bystander-effect/How many of those people were raised in religious households? Did it make any difference whether anyone there had beliefs or not? Lack of action and lack of willingness to stand out from the crowd and
respond physically to the emergency was the problem. People reacted, but only within their own minds and they only responded with useless chatter. A flock of somehow mindless humanity, basically. If a person there had prayed for Nye, would that have helped any more than tweeting?
If people really do want to find "meaning" within their lives, they are more likely to find it through actions, not prayer or meditation or writing or chattering or updating their FB status or w/e. It's amazing how much time and energy people waste on lip service to their belief systems, and how that detracts from the doing of things that need to be done ever happening.
