Scientists estimate that there are about 8.7 million species of plants and animals (gleaned from an AI Bing search):

• 6.5 million species on land
• 2.2 million species in the oceans

There are millions of more detailed life forms on Earth, encompassing a wide range of biodiversity, including:

• Animals: Over 1.2 million species described, with many more undiscovered.
• Plants: Around 390,000 species described.
• Fungi: Approximately 144,000 species described.
• Bacteria: Millions of species, but only about 10,000 have been described.
• Archean: A lesser-known group of microorganisms, with thousands of species.
• Viruses: Millions of types, but only a fraction has been studied.

These numbers don't account for bacteria, archaea, and viruses, which could add millions more to the grand total. The discovery of new species and the understanding of biodiversity are ongoing processes, so these figures are always being updated as research continues.

Nevertheless, they provide a large pool of living things from which to form a few critical questions about whether there is or could be a purpose to these lives, and do they portend the prospect that we are here for reasons that go beyond our own lifespans as we understand them.

For starters, we are unable to create even one of the aforementioned species. Nor are we able to bring life back to one sample once that its life has expired. And so, we are left to go beyond science to speculate as best we can about how we might be able at some future date to formulate the appropriate tests to answer the title question.

Although we cannot create lifeforms, we can state that human lifeforms are distinctly different from all others, the we can think, act upon, choose, surmise, postulate, study, and make tests and measurements about those of which we know little.

An afterlife implies life after death of the body. We do not know how, when, where, why, or for whom we might construct a test, or even just to contemplate how to go about fabricating one.. Still, there are hundreds of millions of humans who believe. During near-death-experiences, some have said that they rose up to the ceiling where they could listen and observe event around them. Others have reported that they moved about in familiar plaess and accurately saw much of that was taking place. The great majority of them felt that they had been in spirit form, rather than in life-as-we-know-it form. Moreover, they had visited with others who had preceded them in death. Nearly all welcomed their experiences, while most did not want to return to their lives in-the-body.

Still, there is no life-like evidence that anything more than certain parts of the brain could be active for 15 or 20 minutes while that person is experiencing greatly heightened earth-like experiences. They could be random as most dreams are random. And they seem to follow the kinds of experiences that many of us would welcome as a different kind of proof other than length, mass, time, temperature, luminescence, or amount of substance. None seem to be restrained by gravity, dark matter, or dark energy, or the speed of light.

These are all extraordinary experiences that require extraordinary proofs. So far, there are none. If such experiences exist out-of-the body, and if time is irrelevant, could they all be part of a Grand Design? Yes, they could be. At a minimum, they tend to erase the fear of death, and that is a worthy and good thing.