Reply #19: I find life has more meaning as a non-believer than as a believer

[RainDog]

Life is infinitely amazing and beautiful - full of wonder - full of love and beauty - full of joy to be a part of life itself.

without god - the issue of evil makes sense - evil is the inhumane things people do to others - not some god figure full of contradictions and negative human emotions.

without god - the choices people make are based upon ethics and reason - suffering is sometimes caused by those choices - even when those choices are the good and ethical thing to do - and sometimes we simply have to accept that the world is not set up to honor the ethical or good - there is no reward for choosing this right thing other than the knowledge that you have chosen to live your life in such a way that you honor the well being of others and the idea of an ethical principle. honor, in other words.

we are all immortal - we are the stuff of matter and we cycle infinitely through life in one form or another.

ego - the bane of religion, and also its cause - is consciousness in one form or another - with the death of one's ego - someone's life goes on, but not in the form in which the ego wants it to - but, again, that is the limitation in thought of our corporeal selves - and religion plays to ego by presenting it with a belief that a particular ego will be immortal. the ego's fear of not being is our source of survival in this world - but it's not the reality beyond death in the view of some of us - and to accept this is to accept that life lived here and now matters more than any promised reward - do good in this life because it is simply the ethical thing to do.

religions tell stories about why life has meaning but those stories don't create meaning for many people - in order for religion to give existence meaning, someone has to agree to the premises behind them - when those premises make no sense for some people - religion provides the opposite of meaning.