Critical thinker, skeptical about atheism.

[Jenny A]

at the end of the day we all have a desire for fulfillment in this life

With you so far. . .

, and I believe that's why atheism is such a minority belief system in our world,

it leaves one empty, because it has no answers for the most basic questions, and who wants to live an Empty existence,

I've repeatedly asked Christians just what is this fulfillment that they've found through belief in god. The answers I've gotten are: he made us; loves us; we made us to worship him; we aren't going to die; god has an unspecified plan for either each us or for humanity as a whole.

I don't find any of those compelling reasons to get out of bed in the morning. In fact some of them are positively belittling, or depressing. Nor do I see any evidence that any of them are true.

wondering what the point of getting up in the morning is, if one lives a meaningless life that ends in a hole in the ground,

some will say, "There is no meaning to life, but you can just use your imagination to make one up", but thats living a delusion.

I don't use my imagination to make up meaning in my life (that's the job of religion), I make my life meaningful and fulfilling by how I choose to live it. My actions are not a delusion. Neither are my interactions with others. They are real and fulfilling.

And so we will always have religion it seems to me, since the alternative is a despair,

Really? I don't find myself in despair.

even if its veiled in a kind of "positive denial", that everything is OK with the world, despite it being completely meaningless and empty, seems like an oxymoron to me.

No, everything is not okay with world. My little part of it is pretty good. Other parts of the world are not. If there is a god, he created a world with a lot of harsh nasty bits.

That does not mean that my world is all despair.

BTW: oxymoron doesn't mean quite what you think it does. An oxymoron is a word or phrase that logically contradicts itself: liquid gas; seriously funny; original copy, expensive gift, open secret, negative growth, dull roar. But as you might have noticed in the previous examples they do tend to be idioms meaning something other that what is implied by the simple combining of the two words.

You can also make up jokes by calling phrases oxymoron to reveal what you think about certain people or things:

military intelligence,
scientific creationism
intelligent design
Christian charity
true believer
cardinal saint
express mail
religious education
honest politician
biblical inerrantcy
atheistic dogma