Accepting Death & Destiny.
When agnostics and atheists speculate about why people believe in God or other supernatural systems, an oft cited reason is that without the comfort of the ultimate triumph of good and an afterlife, living would be too hard for many to bear. I suspect that this is true. Through sheer biological accident, I came into this world infatuated with everything in it, and while very prone to anxiety, very resistant to depression. (Yup, they are not the same thing.) That and the (also accidental) blessings of my life have equipped me to generally find life pretty fucking awesome. (Here’s hoping that general lucky streak never runs out.) But I’m very aware that this is not the norm and, many have been dealt the opposite hand, both in terms of disposition and experience. And I can never really know what others endure unless I experience it myself. So this has always seemed the best argument, in my mind, for laying off people have certain beliefs that do no apparent harm to anyone else, as unfound...