Atheism and the Fallacy of the Empty Life

This is probably the most common and most prevalent obstacle for most people in adopting a rational atheistic worldview.   That being the inherent temporary nature of our existence and embracing our collective mortality.

As most people are indoctrinated with the belief,  in one form or another, that there exists this thing called "eternity",  whether or not eligibility for that eternity is tied directly into one's beliefs and behaviors,

it is certainly the most difficult thing to divest oneself from when you spent your life investing in that.

The issue becomes how one makes the paradigm shift between believing that the potential for living forever, albeit in a different "form", to having a finite number of moments allotted within your existence.  I think for most people, the single most potent component of this opiate of belief is divesting oneself from the idea that our ancestors are somehow "with" us, whether it be as passive spectators or as meddling participants.  Let me articulate, first of all, that independent of what you might evolve to believe in this regard, it changes NOTHING about the reality of the situation.   Because you may go from being one who believes in the "eternity" and the "spirit" to one who does not, does not cause some chain reaction where, once present spirits are somehow relegated to a giant tree-shredder in the sky, where they once existed they no longer do.    No.   Those whom you once believed existed in an "afterlife" did not, in fact, exist there before you had you're revelation about reality, any more than they DO exist there now.  You've lost nothing.   There is, in fact, no "there".  You've simply divested yourself from a segment of magical thinking which afforded you nothing more than an imaginary sense of "something".   Imagination is a very powerful thing, no doubt.

The next obstacle which i think is common to many people on the precipice of this epiphany, is grappling with their own mortality in the sense that, if "eternity" does not exist, what is the purpose of doing anything of value during the time when we have a pulse and are at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit?   That any one grapples with this astounds me.  It was at the point where i truly understood the temporary unit of my existence that each and every moment, breath, and heartbeat took on infinitely more importance.   Every experience, every perception, every opportunity and every interaction became exponentially more relevant and useful.   It was the revelation that there was no "prize" at the end of the race which made every step in the race the experience that i think it was intended to be all along.   Acute awareness of how valuable each interaction is

and how, with each passing moment, the prior moment, in it's substance was permanently gone, to be survived only by that which i could choose to remember and appreciate.   No score-keeping to be tallied at the end my days to determine if i were worthy of any sort of "bonus round".  No evidence to support that at all.   All evidence is to the contrary.   And that is NOT a BAD THING.   It's a true thing, and it's not an "unfair" thing either.   "This" is "it".  Of that i have no doubt, and i have no doubt either that my choices, my actions, my words and my relationships have value IN this moment.   That those items may carry on beyond my existence, is a direct consequence of my investment IN those items in the present day.   That is the "eternity" that is within our reach.  How we make our mark, positive or negative, on the material world around us.   There are no angels in heaven keeping an account of our deeds.  There are people right beside you, who are keeping track of those and being affected one way or another by those.   That is what deserves my focus.  Not some mythical creature from a story book of old.

So in making this paradigm shift, for myself at the very least, the acceptance of the temporary nature of my existence has provided me with a much fuller "frame" for my moment to moment life than any belief in an "eternity" in an ethereal, make-believe world EVER did.