(November 11, 2014 at 6:04 am)ZeldaAdmirer Wrote: I am an atheist myself and don't believe in a God or the supernatural. But I wish I wasn't an atheist because an afterlife of eternal joy would give my life the ultimate meaning and would make this one and only life more beautiful and worthwhile.But that's just a state of mind. If you are focused on the end of your life and what happens afterwards then a belief in an afterlife is comforting, while the belief that there is nothing else can be depressing. If you focus on the life you are living and seek ways to give it meaning and purpose, you will find comfort in setting goals and achieving success and will not be worried about what comes after, regardless of whether you believe in an afterlife or not.
If you are miserable as an atheist because your life lacks meaning, you would probably be just as miserable as a theist, finding reasons to justify your depressed mental state instead of finding meaning or value in life. The biggest influence on how you view life is... how you view life.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
