OPPORTUNITY-How much more precious is this life if we truly believe that it's our one and only chance at existence? The 27 years of personal experience with Christianity led me to essentially waste many, many days thinking that I had all of eternity to make up for any shortcomings. Within the past two years I have had a "spiritual" revolution of sorts within myself that has ultimately led me down a different path to non-theism. To the "Holy Spirit-filled" person out there (which I once believed I was): how do you explain that my life has never been better since this change? My days are filled with a special quality and attribute unlike any I've ever experienced; that THIS will never happen again. Never again will I get the chance to love my daughter and wife and watch them grow with me. Change is natural, it keeps us mentally fit and provides new life, new hope, new aspirations, and ultimately, it keeps us interested. Without change, what else would keep us fulfilled? The believer's primary incentive for life, Heaven, would undoubtedly be a place without change. Of course, the Bible says that we would be transformed and different in Heaven while not experiencing our painful feelings of the flesh, but the Biblical explanation regarding the details of Heavenly life are insufficient and vague at best (possibly due to the authors' lack of imagination, lack of evidence, or maybe the simple fact that there IS no Heaven.) However, one thing is for certain: there would be no bitter to accompany our sweet. There would be nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth attaining, and ultimately, nothing worth achieving. You see, accomplishment defines our lives, and to take this away from us for eternity would be to destroy what makes us, well...US. After a long day of miserable work, the reward is unlike anything that a day of rest could ever deliver.
As a child, eternity in Heaven actually scared me. I thought to myself, eternity means FINALITY, and what could possibly be so great about being conscious for eternity in a perpetual state of monotony? Add all of this to a picture of kneeling at the foot of God forever while singing the same hymns over and over, and it isn't exactly what I would have in mind for an infinite state of existence. Therefore, what is so terribly wrong about simply rejoicing in the fact that we are all just lucky to be here in this life for the brief moment in the history of histories that our short lives encompass? Is THAT not enough to live vigorously, passionately, and most of all, lovingly? While you may need an eternal reward for purpose, a God to tell you how to live and what to do with your time and money, certainly doesn't mean that everyone else does. If you need God to exist to love or live, then how much is your love or life actually worth? The love that I have for my family is unconditional, the desire to treat people fairly is unconditional, and finally, the will to do good to other people is absolutely not contingent upon whether or not a "Divine Surveillance" exists.
If I am wrong, I can at least say this much: I did not live a life in vain. I lived my life as a skeptic in the deepest sense. I asked questions that many believers were scared to ask, but what remains is the fact that I loved, and lived unconditional to a belief in an "eternal reward." I did my very best to filter through every possibility to uncover truth. On the other hand, if I'm right, and the believer that "bet the house" simply displayed their credulity and erringly served what was purported to be the one, true God out of the thousands available for hire, in fact, wasted their one chance at living. They, actually were the ones that lived in vain, wagering on a wishful hope that their simple belief upon a miraculous Resurrection and a malevolent, genocidal Narcissist, also known as the Old Testament's Yahweh, would save them from the ultimate reality.....that when death arrives, we will cease to exist.
“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.” ~Albert Einstein
