Something really wonderful there is in seeing beauty for what it is: Letting the sight of a baby, new-born come out of your body fill you with tears. Letting the stars on a dark night after a snow only bring you joy. Having the smell of your man's sweat fill you with gratitude for his being there, working hard by your side.
If these things are fleeting, if they are moments so trivial because we die, so what? We give a man condemned to death a last meal of his choice and this is most absurd.
That we will die is certain. But we still seek--and often find--joy in living.
I used to worry that to give up my last shred of belief in God's existence would make my world hollow. But believing in God did not add to these ordinary yet wonderful moments--not at all. Especially when I understood that, by a caprice I could not understand, He might destroy these simple pleasures--as a part of His Grand Plan for my personal improvement???
Various human societies describe the very practical Golden Rule. It still is the core teaching in christianity. God holds Christians to it. The bible says so. But God Himself does not operate on that basis. He has power, justice, knowledge and love we were told. Yet He has no consistency. He is above the Golden Rule.
The Book of Job calls God out on this--and there is no answer.
It seems likely that there is no God.
and still I am glad I am alive--