I once might have called myself an atheist, or at best, an agnostic during my 20's. I thought my intellect was enough, that knowledge and understanding of the universe would suffice to allow me to get through life with a modicum of comfort and reliability. And indeed, in my youth, with all my vigor and abundance of knowledge about things, I managed to survive fairly comfortably. Certainly I was able.
But in retrospect, throughout those years of "ability and capacity", there was that sadness, that loneliness that plagues all human beings who incarnate in a dual world. There is no way around the dark side, when there is a light side. The body wakes, and sleeps, feels joyful, and tearful, is in a state of health, or not, and so forth. We are satiated, or hungry, wise, or foolish, back and forth, from light to dark. We are by our very nature, isolated within a body and a mind which is dualistically programmed, and therefore, separate. It is the very essence of bodily incarnation, after all.
I believe it is this persistent state of separateness that generates the loneliness and sadness, and consequent fear. And how an individual can live a full, contented, peaceful and complete life, relying solely on itself, while at the same time competing for survival (and that is the dark, and inevitable side of bodily incarnation), strikes me as absurd, and unnecessary. But the "godless" perspective tries to do just that. And interestingly, frequently comes up disappointed.
This loneliness and sadness, therefore, seems to me to be generated by reliance upon something no greater than oneself, and oneself is, by all rational observation, deficient, limited, destined to die, and therefore dependent, despite protestations to the contrary by the intellect of the human being. It is irrational to believe otherwise, and at the very worst, verges on a kind of insanity. A limited mind cannot encompass more than its limitations, and while it may conjure up great visions and hopes of immortality, omniscience, and all the rest of it, unless it is unfettered from its limitations imposed by bodily incarnation, it is fooling itself and living in an illusion.
This, therefore, suggests that something greater than oneself is the way out of the darkness, and you can call it God, or the Force, or spiritual consciousness, or whatever, but it requires a leap of "faith" in its existence, since the limited mind is incapable of escaping itself without that leap. Of course, AFTER that leap, in time, the universe begins to conform to the new state of consciousness, literally, but until the mind escapes its fetters, the separateness remains, and the sadness consumes the spirit.
So, from a rational, and practical point of view alone, it makes sense to investigate this process, since, whether or not God truly exists, is not the issue. The issue is the mind's psychological balance and health, and without a vision greater than itself, without a loosening of one's inherent limitations imposed by a mind of limited concepts, we will remain eternally separated and therefore sad, alienated, and frightened. Limitation implies fear, because of its separateness, and it is inevitable that we will be afraid if we feel separate and isolated.
So, then, the atheistic point of view may be intellectuallly appealing, and certainly egocentrically satisfying, but it does not offer safety nor escape from fear. If a mind, that is without recourse other than to itself, or other, similarly limited minds, relies upon that limited consciousness, it is whipsawed by desire upon desire, attraction and repulsion, and lives out a life of uncertainty and multiple purposes and priorities. It is constantly disappointed by unfulfilled expectations, of itself and others, and sadness therefore prevails.
I have found in my own life, the only way out of fear and sadness is to get "out of my skin", and the way out of that situation is to leap out of it, leaning upon something greater than myself, and unlimited. If fully understood, these two "concepts" wrap me up in a blanket of all inclusiveness, miraculous possibilities and enveloping rest and reliance upon other than my limited self. The latter point is crucial - to lean upon oneself may work for a time, but inevitably it is flawed, because we are flawed. And oddly, once one gets out of one's skin, the unfulfilled expectations, which still remain, and the sense of separateness which still continues, become unimportant and certainly non-binding.
The curious part of this process is that, once experienced and anchored, one feels more comfortable "in one's skin" than ever before, and life, with all its apparent horrors and disappointments, does not bring one to despair any longer.
Of course, writing or reading about this is not the same thing as "doing it" in order to "be it". That takes focus, commitment, and enormous surrender to the unknown and uncertain. It requires a "turning away" from much that is distracting and attracting to the mind, and a consistency and persistency to and through years of frustration and heroic efforts. Of course, this is true of life, whatever we do with it, and whether or not we consider God, or the accumulation of knowledge, or money - they are all equally real, available, and pursuable. It is a choice, after all is said and done, and we make choices throughout our lives, on a moment to moment basis, as well as those "big" decisions we make from time to time, and we often bemoan the consequences, because we didn't truly consider the choices and their consequences.