I have to think the reality is more about wishful thinking. My path to naturalism was coming to terms with bad news, specifically my own mortality. Not just that, but any legacy I might leave is going to be extremely brief.

(Of course, in recent times I learned that Pythagoras didn’t actually work out the Pythagorean theorem, rather one of his cult minions did and attributed it to him. And it’s quite possible that the same theorem was known by cultures that were millennia older, so even brilliant Hellenic mathematicians are forgotten.)

When we’re raised to believe in heaven, and then find out that all our hopes of salvation are dubious, it’s tempting just to pretend that believing in Jesus will make it so like clapping for Tinkerbell. Confronting our absence of spirit or divinity, especially in light of 20th and 21st century understandings of the the universe (it’s huge and we’re microbes on a speck of dust), especially as the human species is on the brink of self-annihilation (a run of 250,000 years, contrast to the 2,000,000 of Homo Erectus, or the Tens of Millions of some dinosaurs), really makes life feel like a candle-flame in the wind.