OK, my two cents for shits and giggles:
I'm too lazy to go back and quote whoever said this, but it's grossly inaccurate to characterize atheism as "just another belief" or "just another way of dealing with [whatever]." Atheism is the proposition that God is the answer to a question that doesn't need to be asked in the first place.
Why am I here? Because at some point my parents fucked. Not pleasant to imagine, but true. Why do they exist? Because at some point their parents fucked. Problem solved.
Why does food taste good? Why does sex feel good? Because no one would eat if food tasted like battery acid, and there wouldn't be very many people if we weren't physically wired to seek out food and sex. So a planet populated by creatures that hate eating and fucking wouldn't make very much sense. Problem solved.
What happens when I die? "I" ceases to be a meaningful concept. The materials that currently make up the physical
gestalt indicated for convenience' sake by the shorthand "Roger Mexico" will be reclaimed by the larger physical
gestalt out of which they were originally combined into such. I won't be around to see it, so I can't say as I'm too invested in the particulars. (Although if I had a say I would decidedly prefer an Irish wake to the noncommittal, atonal warbling of Scandinavian Protestants that has been the preferred method of getting me closer to God thus far in my life.) Problem solved.
Why are some things in my life difficult? Because I suck at those things. If they're important to me, I'll work on not sucking at them. Problem solved, at least in theory.
Why is there evil in the world? Because people invented "good,' which required an opposite adjective in order to be useful as a means of conveying information, and it turns out lots of things that happen all the time fall into the "other" category. (See Nietzsche's
Genealogy of Morals for more on this. Fascinating book.) "Problem of evil" solved. Actual problems involving evil? More difficult, although one should note that since "good" and "evil" are human inventions, evil will cease to exist as soon as humans do.
How do I find peace and contentment and warm fuzzies and special unique specialness in my life?
You know, I'm starting to think having more sex might be an important component of this process for me. Ironically, God in pretty much all of his incarnations seems to want me to hate and fear my own sexual impulses, so I can either spend a lot of money on new-agey self-help books and spend a lot of time and energy on trying to reconcile the demands of my "spiritual self" with my physical body, or I can remember that the same people who told me about God when I was little also told me about Santa Claus. It's not "problem solved," but it's definitely "problem simplified."
I'm tired, so I'll just bow out with some Slayer lyrics:
Drones since the dawn of time
Compelled to live your sheltered lives
Not once has anyone ever seen
Such a rise of pure hypocrisy
I will instigate, I will free your mind
I will show you what I've known all this time
God Hates Us All, God Hates Us All
You know it's true, God hates this place
You know it's true, he hates this race
Homicide-Suicide
Hate heals, you should try it sometime
Strive for Peace with acts of war
The beauty of death we all adore
I have no faith distracting me
I know why your prayers will never be answered
God Hates Us All; God Hates Us All
Yeah, He Fuckin' hates me
Pessimist, Terrorist targeting the next mark
Global chaos feeding on hysteria
Cut throat, slit your wrist, shoot you in the back fair game
Drug abuse, self abuse searching for the next high
Sounds a lot like hell is spreading all the time
I'm waiting for the day the whole world fucking dies
I never said I wanted to be God's disciple
I'll never be the one to blindly follow
Man made virus infecting the world
Self-destruct human time bomb
What if there is no God would you think the fuckin' same
Wasting your life in a leap of blind faith
Wake the fuck up can't ignore what I say
I got my own philosophy
I hate everyone equally
You can't tear that out of me
No segregation -separation
Just me in my world of enemies
I never said I wanted to be God's disciple
I'll never be the one to blindly follow
I'll never be the one to bear the cross-disciple
I reject this fuckin' race
I despise this fuckin' place