Catching Idle Butterflies

I don't understand

What’s it like to be an atheist?

It’s a question that’s been bugging me ever since we talked about it in Disciple a few weeks ago. Not a single one of us ever had a time in our lives where we did not believe, at least on some level, that there is a God that created the universe and everything in it.

I’m not interested in what an atheist thinks about how the world around us came to be with such perfection and have it be an accident. What I’d like to know is how an atheist goes through life without the hope of something better at the end of it. What reason does a person use to live from day to day, and try to improve that life when in the end there is absolutely nothing to show for it?

I’m not looking for an involved theological discussion, or even arguments for or against the existence of God. I just want to know where an atheist finds hope in both the good times and the bad. To me, the very idea of no God at all, whether He be one that loves and cares for us, or one who merely created the universe and then left it alone to take care of itself, makes life seem so very bleak and pointless, and that’s a life I could not live. So how does an atheist do it, because I honestly do not understand.