Why are you unafraid/happy/etc?

[Teoka]

Christians often assert that we atheists should be afraid because we're rejecting their god's protection/love/umbrella of 1337, or that we're sad or should be depressed. So I'm here to ask: why are you unafraid, happy, and/or have a good life?

I believe very strongly that everyone has the power within themselves (figuratively speaking) to achieve their goals and have a productive life without the help of some supernatural being. When they surrender their will to such a deity, they waste what personal will they already have. We don't need to be reassured by a higher power. That what I like to think when I feel alone, helpless, or hopeless - I can do it on my own!  

[Le Pere Duchesne]

I am happy, because, on the whole, life is currently being decent to me. That is really what it comes down too.

The whole idea that religion is 'just a waste of personal resources' is idealist. One has to understand that religion does actually play a social and personal role. It is not something that can just be 'convinced' out of existence, or declared non-existant by a decree of law, but something which must be replaced. Not replaced by another religion, but by conditions which do not provide the soil for religion to develop:

Quote:

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.

 

[OmG NoMoR3]

GOD BERRY, KING OF THE JUICE!!!!

Well, my lack of faith lets me know that I'm no safer or less safe than any believer. I'm happy because at the moment, life is pretty good.  

[Superior Jazz]

There should be another option in the poll...
When life gives you lemons...
o ... find a kid with a papercut!

Anyway. I'm not afraid.
I'm perfectly happy as I am. Happier, actually, since I rejected religion. I can conform to myself, and not to ideals that hold no basis with my reality.  

[Reichkovich]

The assertion that having a God equates happiness is a bogus one at best. What I think is that at some point in life people begin to grow desperate to find a meaning to it all. It's just that most cop out and choose the easiest explanation offered by religion. Though to me, an out of date, ancient text that holds no weight in modern life, will never offer a fulfilling meaning. But hey, I'm not those people.

Anyway, Personally, I don't believe in there being any true meaning to life as religion would have you believe. Life only has meaning if you give it meaning and the most logical meaning I've come to give my life is to make the most positive impact on the world before I die.

There's a certain fulfillment that can only be achieved from making others smile and just being a nice person in general. Knowing that others care about you and would help you if you were in need, as a result of your own kindness towards them, is something I wouldn't trade for the world. The idea that you need to find a religion to achieve this is inane.

So, yeah... That's basically what keeps me going every day.  

[Reichkovich]

P.S. I also think another option should be added to the poll where you die while praying for something worthwhile from your God.  

[-GS-Sailor Nemesis]

Lol Powerthirst reference.  

[Meirelle]

Why am I happy? Oh, ********. By all means, I am not happy. I suffer from clinical depression and take like 10 pills a day. I am not ******** happy. But you know what? I go to my atheist psychologist and b***h about the neo-cons and the crazies and I feel a little better. And I may not be happy, but I know damn well that I'd be even more depressed if I had Jesus as my homeboy. I might be sad, but at least I'm not an addict like YOU. *points to fundies*  

[Daffodil the Destroyer]

I suffer from depression, anxiety, OCD, and I will find out soon if I also have ADD. That being said, I'm still a mostly happy kind of person, and I'm much happier than I was in high school, when my mother refused to take me to therapy on the grounds that it was my dad's fault I was ******** up and that it would hurt his feelings if I sought medical attention. In those days I developed an unhealthy obsession with thinking of dying and going to heaven and it helped me slide into a very dangerous type of religiousness that it's taken years for me to finally break out of.

I'm not worried about what happens later cos hell, I've already been through a lot of s**t, so it can't get too much worse, right? Plus, there's no way for me to know what, if anything, happens after I die... so why waste my life worrying about it? It creates unnecessary stress and takes away from the experience of living.