“I can understand how they can be happy.”
I suspect you understand very little. You project way too much.
"Most people would be very happy to live a life in which you would be able to do WHATEVER you feel is right, regardless of what that was (as long as you weren’t arrested for it).”
Isn’t that most of humanity? ICE is kidnapping solid tax-paying citizens for what they think is right. People voted for a demented, self-serving, draft-dodging rapist for what THEY thought was right. FOX is supporting tyranny for money.
“Not believing in God frees people from the guilt and pangs of conscience that accompanies the belief that some Higher Power may hold you responsible for the choices you make.”
Well, as far as that goes, the way you qualify it, it’s correct. Not believing in Valkryior does mean that i don’t worry that my death won’t attract the choosers of the slain, and i won’t end up in Valhalla.
Doesn’t mean I’m COMPLETELY free of conscience and guilt. I’ve committed to my wife for 40 years and if i cheated on her i’d feel guilty. My conscience kept me from violating Nuclear Weapons Security Rules for 20 years in the Navy.
"If you can convince yourself that there is no Higher Power, then you will believe that no one will judge the choices you make.”
You seem to believe that the only reason YOU have a conscience is divine oversight. You’re projecting.
"In this way, atheism is sort of a faith, a deep hope and belief that there is no God.”
Hope? I came to my atheism through the search for the god i stil believed in.
“If you don’t believe in God, then you live only in the here and now and have little concern about others and their circumstances”
You’re completely full of shit, you liar.
We evolved as social animals. Caring about the society around us is the default. Living within the judgment of that society is how we survive.
"(for example, an atheist would avoid t murder, NOT because some “God” said that murder is wrong; rather, they would not kill someone because of the knowledge that they would be arrested and put in prison, losing their freedom.)”
Have you ever MET an atheist?
I, for one, do not murder because individual people have values. They don’t need a god to sponsor that value. This is why i also support gays, transgendered, migrants, and even Republicans getting the same rights I enjoy. Takes a god to start slicing up society into real and disposable people.
"They don’t worry about consequences or obligations beyond what society would require of them. They believe that if they are “good people” in the eyes of society, keeping human laws, then that is good enough.”
Why would it NOT be ‘good enough?’ Christains allude to the Bible, but judge others right and left (like this pile of tripe), say Jesus’ name but ignore his instructions on the Poor. Why would i want to join a self-deluding system like that?
"Atheists are also content in their belief that humans can solve every single problem on Earth”
Well, there’s no one else to depend on, so, hopefully, yeah.
“ and that whatever problems humans cannot solve are not worth worrying about.”
Pretty sure you’re making this shit up.
"They don’t worry much about death”
So, the Senator who supports ending medicate who said, “Everyone dies,’ you’re saying she’s an atheist?
“ and disease”
The deplorables who want to defund the CDC, they’re all atheists?
“ or intractable poverty or hunger”
Free school lunches. Liberals want to fund them, Conservatives want to end them.
"because either they believe that humans will eventually solve those problems, or they believe that those problems are the evolutionary “lot in life” of people who are not the “fittest” and that the laws of evolution will take care of the matter soon enough. No point in caring or worrying about it at all.”
You are such a sack of lying shit.
“Finally, they think of themselves as individual little “Gods” or “Goddesses” in that they believe that they, as imperfect human individuals, are the sole source of moral authority in their lives,”
More distruthiness from the believer. As above, societal morality is a cooperative effort, not individual projects.
“I can understand how some folks could think this is happiness.”
You understand bupkes.