I'm replying to both of your posts, but only quoted the shorter one.
Yes, things are far less black and white than I'm making them out to be and obviously my post was skewed far more at my personal view than that of all non-theists. My concerns about 'the end' probably come from having no belief in anything like a conciousness that exists outside of, or beyond, the body and mind.
I believe that my conciousness is the result of chemical reactions in my brain and that once I die, it'll die with me. No pool of conciousness, no afterlife and nothing left for me to experience. That's what terrifies me - it's all meaningless unless I give it some kind of meaning, but then what meaning does even THAT have because once I'm dead, why does any meaning that I apply to anything matter? I'm gone.
Especially this concept of 'to love and be loved'. I find it very difficult to place absolute value on it since I've come to the conclusion that my existence is finite, so it has limited, constantly depreciating value. The value of my life is nothing once it's gone, so why would my opinions, my fears, my love or anything else I think or feel retain any kind of value?
If I die leaving people I love and who love me alive - they'll be sad for a time, maybe even for the rest of their lives if I'm incredibly loveable. But they'll die too as will any memory of me. Give it an incredibly short amount of time in the grand scheme of things and everything I've worked towards in my life is wiped from the blackboard of the universe.
So depsite all these things mattering a great deal to me, I often feel like I'm on the outside looking in and judging the petty existance which I know has no real meaning beyond my blinkered, limited experiences.
That's what I find so terrifying. I'm not going to experience the future and affect it directly, but the chance of anything I do in my life being of any value beyond it is absolutely minimal too - so I find that I place no value on anything.
I wasn't trying to say that all people who believe in nothing else will find it terrifying, like I do, but just that it's something they have to live with. There are people like me who struggle with it and there are people like you who welcome it, but we're all living with what we perceive to be information that this one life is all we're getting.
Yes, The Invention of Lying definitely deals with the exact thing I'm talking about - very underrated movie, too.
Yeah, see, this is the stance that I can sometimes shift to when I'm either hugely drunk or hugely stoned but other than those rare occassions I'm not so calmed by that line of thinking.
Edit: Just to be clear, I'm aware that my issues are all a product of ego and probably serve to highlight some unfortunate histrionic personality issues I've got.
