The less they believe, the better for their own happiness and development. . . .

The following quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton pretty much sums up my feelings about finding peace and happiness after leaving gloom and doom, death-focused religion by the wayside. It isn't because I want to "ignore" this god of the xians, it is because I came to accept that there is no god to ignore. No one knows how much time they have here so why spend it dwelling on a fantasy afterlife that will never be. Life is here and now.

~I have endeavoured to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church. . . . The less they believe, the better for their own happiness and development. . . .

For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power, and the canon law. ("The Degraded Status of Woman in the Bible," 1896)

I can say that the happiest period of my life has been since I emerged from the shadows and superstitions of the old theologies, relieved from all gloomy apprehensions of the future, satisfied that as my labors and capacities were limited to this sphere of action, I was responsible for nothing beyond my horizon, as I could neither understand nor change the condition of the unknown world. Giving ourselves, then, no trouble about the future, let us make the most of the present, and fill up our lives with earnest work here. ("The Pleasures of Age," The Boston Investigator, February 2, 1901)

The happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the miseries of others. (Eighty Years And More: 385)