I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed, but religion almost never fully, truly comforts people who go through bad times from what evidence would suggest.

Not really saying atheism is better.... Except that in psychological aspects, it kind of is! Atheists realize that if someone dies, it's a result of biology, or physics working against biology (someone falls from a cliff, for example) and not some deity picking on us. And then there are life's problems.... Poverty, conflict, etc. We realize that we change those things, not some invisible being with infinite powers and whatnot.

Did you lose your new car? Were you paying your bills on time? Logic suggests if you don't, your car gets repossessed.
It's reality, not some man in red pajamas picking on you from the shadows or some 'great deity' who forgot about you, it's just the way things tend to go. There are solutions to problems though, so it's worth investigating solutions rather than talking to a ceiling or crying about how much a god/etc must hate you or blame you for something and take interest in your life.

...Which, considering all things is pretty insignificant. Even without deities, we're only 1/7,500,000,000 lives on the planet considering humans alone. I don't think any deity (if they were real) would have the attention span to punish you about your F-150 debt because you looked at your neighbor's ass one Sunday evening.

For personal loss, people who are highly religious (for example Baptists or Catholics here in the USA) always run to the defense that their religion comforts them, that their god makes them feel better, or loved, and so on and so forth.

From what I have personally witnessed though I'd argue that this is not only untrue, but entirely the opposite of what happens when people depend on religion.

Case #1: A child who lost her mother, deals with homelessness off-and-on, and entirely stays fixed on the fact that she has a mental disorder. Her web pages are filled to the brim with rants about how much god loves her, but otherwise everything she writes is about how depressed, scared, and alone she feels about life... Constant homelessness, missing her deceased mother, etc.

How is this harmful? Her religion tells her that an all-loving, caring Jesus/god combo will get her though life and everything will be peachy. The priests and her religious family will also tell her that her mother is watching over her/in a better place/etc.

Now, how is this harmful? Simple! Telling someone that a loved one is "somewhere else" makes it seem that they're just out of reach. I'd argue that this only increases a person's anxiety, and does nothing to calm it down. Secondly, if this same child was "happy the way god made her" then why does she spend so much time obsessed about how unfair it is to have a disability? In the bible after all, a deaf man complained to the Hebrew god and the same god was infuriated that someone with a disability would dare complain about how they were made.

Case #2: A man who lost his lover. A personal friend of mine, he is obsessed about his girlfriend's death... A devout Catholic, he's certain she's "in purgatory" and that he needs to pray for her. He is also adamant about his god's "plan" and how everything is meant to be a certain way.

This is just ridiculous, because if it was his god's plan, shouldn't he be happy his GF died when she did? Is that not part of the plan? And if he is unhappy, why? If she was a good person, why does he worry about her "purgatory stay", and how come she doesn't get automatic acceptance?

Now, I know what theists would argue: "So not believing in an afterlife, you'd argue it's better just to think that when a loved one is dead, that's it? No soul, no better place to go, just dead meat sacks?"

In short, yes. That's exactly what I'd argue.

Without an afterlife, life itself is dearly precious... It makes a person realize that time with others is precious. My own mother won't live forever, so I know that I should spend time with her and enjoy her company before she's gone.

Secondly, realizing that a person doesn't magically disembody and 'float away' when they die means that there is closure. They're dead. They're not coming back. And you won't see them again which is why a memorial is so important, and remembering the time you spent with them was important.

Also, I find that an afterlife ideology diminishes the value of a person's life. If you know they're not going to a 'heaven' or a 'hell' where people will talk to them, you're more likely to tell their story. More likely to write about them, make a memorial, or to talk about them to other people.

I'm not saying go and tell people they're wrong... Instead I mean to say maybe it's time we begin to ask people why they're so unhappy, when their beliefs say they should be incredibly happy... And maybe people will begin to see how absurd religion really is.

I hope everyone has a good autumn, been a while since I've been on here!