Critical thinker, skeptical about atheism.

[Simon Moon]

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

Just the opposite for me.

The search for answers is so much more fulfilling than making them up, or by getting them form a Bronze Age text written by people that made them up.

Once you claim you have the answer (God did it), you stop looking for the real answers.

My existence is far from empty. Knowing that this is the one and only life i will get, every second is precious to me.

For theists that believe in an eternal afterlife, this short life of 70 or so years, is nothing but a place to wipe their feet in preparation for 'real life' that starts after they die.

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

Again, stop projecting your idea that atheists live a meaningless life on us. My life, and the good I do while here, is meaningful to me and my friends and family.

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

Providing our own meaning is more real than your god supplied meaning.

Would you put up with your parents picking your spouse for you? Your schools picking your career for you? Friends picking your hobbies for you?

Why would you want anyone to pick your meaning for you?

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

I have no religion or belief in gods, and I am not in despair. But yes, I agree, sadly there will always be religions.

It seems to me you are equating atheism with nihilism, or you believe that atheism leads to nihilism. You seem to make a lot of assumptions about other people's positions. Seems there is a name for that...

Oh yeah, 'bigotry'.