To be satisfied with something means to consider that it is enough, and not to desire more.
That is word quibbling.
The religious people I have encountered in life and interact with almost weekly for that matter, are happy, optimistic, loving, giving people. That to me signifies a joyous appreciation for life, and not mere satisfaction. Perhaps that re clarification was necessary to avoid misunderstanding. So be it.
Religious imagination about life after death arises from dissatisfaction with the suggestion that we cease to exist at death. Religions consider the materialist theory of human identity to be unsatisfactorily bleak, and so they postulate spiritual ideas that do not have any evidence.
You are being overly presumptuous here, Robert.
If anything, I've concluded that the reason people of religion seem more optimistic and pleasant than atheists, who to me seem much more pessimistic, bitter (because this is the only shot at life), and arrogant, is because the very thought of a rewarding afterlife makes them that much more eager to do good deeds here on earth and do unto others what they would have them do to them.
And, of course, the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Perhaps you are suggesting that the people you know regard eternal life in heaven as a bonus on top of a completely fulfilling terrestrial existence.
I have never heard a religious person claim that heaven is a "bonus" on top of life on earth. I have heard people of faith describe heaven as being a part of the eternity of existence, but never a bonus. If you are not a religious person in the traditional sense, then perhaps speculations about how religious people define religious concepts is difficult at best for you.
My own view on this topic is that 'eternal life' does not mean living as an individual for ever, but rather attaining an enlightened perspective where we understand that the important things in life are unchanging, such as the value of relationships and moral ideals.
That is interesting.
We are talking about perspectivism here:
To you "enlightenment" means understanding the value of relationships and moral ideals in a non-religious context.
To a religious person, brotherly love (relationships) and ideals as setforth by Christ's teachings (mercifulness, humility, sacrifice) enlighten one's spiritual nature and is pleasing in the eye of their god. It is both personally and spiritually rewarding in a Christian context.
There apparently is a difference in belief as to the origin of morals:
An atheist ascribes morals to happenstance that became advantageous to the survival of a species.
So, for instance, the immorality of the crime of rape. To an atheist, who does not need religion to declare what is moral and what is immoral, the immorality of rape is just as arbitrary as the development of 5 instead of 6 toes.
That seems pretty vacuous to me.
