There's a stereotype out there that atheists must be miserable people because they have no hope of an afterlife.  Atheists are often depicted as gloomy, angst-ridden people who had an experience they couldn't deal with, such as the death of a loved one or a serious brush with the problem of evil.  Having had their faith shattered or bruised, they're at war with God, like Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump.  We are the angry amputees, shouting at the storm, demanding to be stricken and then surviving to see the sun come up again.

Pass the popcorn.

My experience has been just the opposite.  The attempt to justify God, in the midst of a world where anything goes, was a carnival funhouse.  Being told that God was watching my every word, taking notes on all of my faults, waiting for me to screw up, demanding my repentance, et cetera - THAT was the storm.

I find it a relief to realize there's no all-seeing eye watching my every move, that I don't have to somehow justify things like the Crusades and the Holocaust.  I don't have to hold my breath or squint when God makes less sense as God than as a cartoon character invented by people who had neither running water nor electricity.  This pre-deodorant crowd saw everything in terms of a grand opera.  The universe was a giant theater full of angels, devils, spirits and the like.  Just read the Bible, without the revisionistic wall-paper to cover up the obvious, and it all begins to make sense, the first real sense any of it has made since the book was written.

What does an atheist get out of life when there's no God to worship?

He gets Sundays off (or Saturdays or Fridays).  She gets a ten-percent raise.  He gets the dignity of being treated like a person, with rights, rather than a peasant, a sheep to be led by "the shepherd."  She gets to eat what she wants.  He gets to make choices, and to evaluate those choices in terms of how they impact his goals as well as the rights of others.

You get your life back.  You get to stop pretending.  You get to be yourself.  You get to find yourself.  If this is Hell, sign me up.

Evangelical Christians and others use the threat of hell, if you don,t believe. I find it interesting whay they think people should do in heaven. Praising a god forever indicates a god with a really big ego. I am agnostic about god, and living this life fully and in kindness to my fellow people and the rest of nature means much more than some "pie in the sky"! Richard

SkipChurch -- Take a look at the Church of Humanity.
www.churchofhumanity.org

[QUOTE=SkipChurch;33229]I just don't have an active enough imagination to believe in gods and angels and magic crystals and resurrected god-men, and turning water into wine and all that.[/QUOTE]

I have a very active imagination.  But I also know how to separate my imagination from reality.