Atheism/agnosticism affirm that life is a part of a natural process. We are born, live, and at some point die. Living for this life affirms life and being alive. Death is as natural as birth. We live but a short time which makes life all the more precious. We were not always here, so why should it be so awful to affirm that one day we will be gone totally. The realization of our temporality is the very beginning of wisdom. Let's live life fully and be glad that life whatever it is has given us a moment that shines brightly like a candle. Celebrate the world. Let eternity take care of itself. Richard, a free person

"The belief in the resurrection denies natural life. It betrays the preciousness of natural life with its dream of believing in a saviour who saves us from a death caused by sin. Such a belief in an afterlife, makes light of natural life and nature of which we are a part. Somehow, the resurrection suggests that natural life is not enough, and must be seen as a preparation for eternal life."

There's a lot of truth in what you say.

I have no problem with resurrecting.  If there were any basis for it - scientific or otherwise - I'd be happy to live forever.  I think life is definitely precious, precisely because it's finite.  However, I'd be happy to make the adjustment if life weren't so finite.  My problem is not with living forever but with the people who tie that desire to their own particular bill of goods, promising they'll give us what we want if we just give them what they want: our credit card number.

I'm also not keen on saviors.  If there were a God, why couldn't God save us himself?  Why would he need somebody else to do the heavy lifting?  That seems to contradict the claim that God is all powerful.  And even somebody claimed that God did save us - by coming to Earth as somebody the Romans executed - I don't see the connection between buying that claim (which would take a lot of gullibility) and being worthy of being saved.  If God requires people to believe some arbitrary fairy tale - or to prefer it above all others - God is a pretty arbitrary being.  And since God is supposed to be morally perfect, this sort of claim must be false.

Stated another way, if God is all powerful, he doesn't need a savior to save anybody.

By the same token, if God is morally perfect, it doesn't make sense that he'd demand us to believe something unbelievable in order to merit salvation.

Then again, if God is all powerful and morally perfect, why does he allow death and injustice in the first place?  It seems to me that God's salvation is as much for his sake as it is for ours, since God isn't just "saving" us; he's cleaning up the mess.  He's fixing holes in all those attributes he's supposed to have.

This kind of patch job is inconsistent with the idea that God is perfect.  A perfect God wouldn't mop up the mess he made when he dropped a bottle.  A perfect God would never have to clean the mess because he'd never have dropped the bottle in the first place.

Death, suffering and injustice are like broken bottles strewed across the countryside.  I'm not trying to be whiny but there's a lot of horrible stuff in every place that has a history.  There's no end to the number of women raped, children molested, people beaten out of their homes, birth defects, massacres, acts of discrimination, etc.

Nor is it just what people do to each other.

If you look at all the suffering that people have faced in this world created by a perfect God, it is utterly amazing.  There is a tremendous amount of suffering that is simply the natural order of things in God's perfect world.

Countless attempts have been made to apologize for this.  God has benefited from the work of countless apologists, each trying to be the next Steve Job in creating a reality distortion field big enough and powerful enough to protect the bruised reputation of the Almighty.  And yet, for all these efforts, God still comes off looking like a jerk.

In a very real sense, Atheists are the most reverent people on the planet.  We do God the greatest service possible.  We refuse to affirm any claim that subjects God to ridicule and infamy.  Unfortunately, the best thing you can say about him is that he doesn't exist.