Atheism, A Grim Position?

[Esquilax]

Hello, I'm new to the forum. Full disclosure: I'm currently a non-traditional theist. However, I have considered atheism a few times but it seems to be such a grim position. Let me explain.

Ooh gosh, never heard this one before.

As I understand atheism, these would be a few of its tenets:

You don't understand atheism, and there's only one "tenet,": lack of belief in gods.

There is no ultimate meaning. Therefore, all lives and events are ultimately meaningless.

What is "ultimate meaning"? Externally derived meaning? Why would you want that? You wouldn't want your parents deciding your college courses for you, let alone your life's meaning, and yet somehow you yearn for that from god?

Besides, "ultimately meaningless," doesn't mean individually meaningless; you're overreaching by calling this grim.

There is no ultimate basis for value. Therefore any moral position is ultimately arbitrary and logically, equally defensible. This means that things like genocide, pedophilia, torture, etc. are equally defensible to any other moral position.

Wrong: the ultimate basis is called "reality," of which we are individual components thereof, with objectively verifiable natures as biological beings. Due to this, some positions, like genocide and torture and all that, are not equally defensible, and are, in fact, indefensible. You just need to rationally reason through these things, keeping in mind the facts of our biology and the world we live in.

Perhaps, next time, you could ask what we believe, instead of just stating what you think we believe?

There is no ultimate intentionality associated with/in reality. Therefore, all events, actions, thoughts and behaviors are determined by chance and necessity. Thus, an individual's thoughts and actions are determined solely by prior causal events and chance.

Oh no?

At least for me, if I take these atheist positions to their logical conclusion this all seems psychologically pretty grim.

Good thing you're neither a psychologist nor an atheist, and thus what it seems like to you is not binding.

Besides, do you want beliefs that are true, or that make you feel good?