Don't forget that to some of us religious stories contain nothing of particular interest or are similar to ancient fairy tales, and the history of various churches and religions is a mere part of the general human history of power struggles between elites in various countries. When you haven't been raised in religious ways, you feel no guilt about making blasphemous remarks and do not fear the wrath of supposed supernatural entities.

How is that arrogant? It seems humble to me to acknowledge that I as an individual and a society on the whole don't actually mean much.

Everyone of us wants to feel significant, loved, and giving up on an idea that we live forever, that there's always someone external looking out for us etc is an emotionally difficult process to go through.

But that's what personal growth is. It doesn't mean that you go nuts and do crazy shit - consequences exist. What it means is that your perspective changes and you become OK with just being you, and taking a journey on a speeding rock through space.

People think that you lose when you give up religion, which is in part true - but there is also a lot to be gained - in personal development, seeing life from a different perspective and appreciating the limited time we have before donating our atoms back to the universe.

So replace religion with unscientifically naive optimism? That too is a delusional narrative. "Donating your atoms back to the universe" as if a personified "universe" cares about you on its way to heat death, someone get me my spirit crystals.

You might say you're off the religious dance-floor, but you're still doing the moves. In fact it's almost more rational to get back into one of the holy books, at least there you can connect the dots on attaching meaning to the present.

Not sure what's so delusional about having your atoms be reused for other purposes when you die... what else would happen?

As for the word "donating", that's more a personal mindset. What I'm saying is, I'm OK with death, I'm not so egotistical to think that I'm anything more than a moment in time.

Optimism and naivety, well you can interpret whatever I said however you like, but there's actually no real argument that you've made in relation to what I wrote.

I find that disturbing, too, even as someone who believes it's likely true.

But when I was deeply Christian, I also found my denomination's view on the afterlife disturbing, too. If you live literally forever, what happens when you've done everything that matters? What even matters anymore in a world without need? How can everyone be happy at the same time if happiness depends on other people whose wants may not align? If existence in the afterlife is fundamentally different from the mortal life, there's still something of familiarity to me that will end forever. Maybe that's equivalent to my current conscious experience blinking out.

I've come to view life as a ride. It's valuable for its own sake, not because of some greater meaning I can't ascertain. It's an absolute miracle that we all exist, in the thousands of years of culture and writing, we're nowhere close to knowing why we're here, so why bother wasting my one life worrying about it when the joys of existing are self-evident.

I think humans have an in-built moral compass but sometimes that compass gets warped and distorted by our environment.

Name a society that hasn’t valued love, friendship, family, etc.