If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Gemini]

I'm not a theist, and I don't intend to be one.  Atheists are usually pretty hard on religion, and I was trying to discuss the fact that religious belief does have the advantage of automatically giving individuals a sense of meaning, and I was exploring the possibility that that may not be a bad thing.

I don't think religious belief automatically gives individuals a sense of meaning. Kierkegaard struggled with finding meaning in theism, and I did as well. If something is meaningful, then I think it should be meaningful for its own sake, whether some incorporeal agent commanded it or not. And if it's not meaningful, then it doesn't matter whether it's god's will. I very frequently found myself frustrated by what I heard in church. It would tear down my faith, and then I'd have to build it back up over the course of the next week with my own idiosyncratic theology. Until I abandoned it entirely.

And I'm not unique. I know an atheist couple who go to church simply because their kids like it, but they find the sermons depressing and meaningless. So they volunteer to lead the youth group.