h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You made a good point about there being many answers to these why questions. Not all water does flow downhill. Or not all the time at least. Snow may rest on a mountain top for quite a while. Glaciers are, to an onlooker's view, stationary. What about water going upwards when the hill happens to be between to panes of glass that are very close together and the edges dipped into a bath of water?

Is the real question whether the questioner is looking for a "purpose".

I remember a lecturer making a big deal over the difference between purpose and function. He said that someone needed to have had a reason for its existence for something to have a purpose, while the function of something is just its role in a system which may have come together by happenstance.
Purpose of life would indicate a creator. I think this would cover the term "the meaning of life," where meaning is something we read into things as a message left there by a previous entity. A why question.
The function of life would not cause me to think this way. This is a how or what question.