I think we need to start with what 'meaning' means. If I say 'cat' I expect an English speaker to know that I'm talking about a furry animal with retractable claws. Cat 'means' the animal. If someone says 'what is the meaning of life' it presupposes that life is a signifier of something else, a symbol of something else. But this gets it backwards: Life is, and it's a deeper mystery than the cheap words we attach to it when we sing or pray. Life isn't a symbol that means something, it is the definition that the symbols seek to explain. Life is the meaning, falling in love with the words is just looking down the big end of the telescope.I think you definitely CAN logically derive ethics, Hume and Lewis notwithstanding. All you need to start with is some very basic assumptions- that some things hurt and other things are nice, and that other people have feelings broadly similar to your own- and you can get the golden rule without any supernatural-ness whatever. The second commandment is this way derivable, and, as Jesus apparently said, from this hangs the law and the prophets.  By contrast, religions tend to ban arbitrary things like wearing wool blends and eating ferrets and define morality on the basis of divine will. This inverts the believers' concept of ethics; rather than a morality driven by consequences and natural repositories of moral value - people , planet, critters, knowledge and art- some supernatural personality's will (as revealed by magical Hebrews or Arab warlords) gets to decide what is good and evil.