A Good Life, without God(s)

This just about sums up my take on religion (or at least, on the possible repercussions of atheism):

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

~Marcus Aurelius (apocryphal)

I strive to live a good and worthy life because I believe in honor, in beauty, and in helping the less fortunate. I am an atheist because I believe in science and its methods of proof; I will believe it when I see it (or evidence thereof). (In a similar vein, I also believe in Occam's Razor -- that is, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. I see no need to create a mythology to explain natural phenomena if it is plain that science is progressively explaining more and more of said phenomena -- I trust that science will eventually be able to explain enough to satisfy me, and in the meantime, I am content to wait.) If there are indeed gods, and if they find these two tenants to be somehow contradictory, then I would not be able to reconcile my own morals to the rule of such beings, and therefore would not want to abide, for all eternity, by their laws. (Yes, I just applied social contract theory to heaven.)

Would I rather remain in hell for all eternity? Obviously, from a practical standpoint, fire and brimstone and torture isn't my idea of fun. But continuing in the above vein of political science, all these tortures are the Christian God's way of punishing sinners. Cruel and unusual punishment aside, notice that none of these tortures are the Devil's doing. They are the work of a being who, having cast the undesirables from his kingdom, insists upon punishing them in somebody else's territory. (If you try to claim that hell is a vassal territory, albeit gone rogue, by virtue of Satan's lesser magnitude of power, I will laugh, and point out that a state in rebellion for however many millenia without active attempts at reconquest or administration by the claimant state has de facto sovereignty. Moreover, God has violated His social contract with the denizens of Hell by actively detracting from their welfare. I suppose one could claim that hell is something like a penal colony, but the literature describing hell as "evil" and governed by a rogue, hostile entity suggests that for all that God quarantines sinners there -- and without due process, mind you -- it is not actually under God's control.) Anyhow, the Biblical (or at least, Old Testament) God basically seems to be a very powerful egomaniac who demands worship and compliance with his (albeit well-intentioned) rule. Quote Plato at me all you want, but I'm not sure that in this case, the wise and benevolent dictator is really all that benevolent.

Hmm... that was perhaps more than I'd intended to write when beginning this post. I suppose this counts as an increase in self-generated content? Expect this to continue, I'd say, especially over the summer, when I won't be writing papers about Revolutionary French politics and the Enlightenment for classes; I'll need an outlet.