That's an interesting statement, and I understand that in most Christian theology, life is seen as more than just a trial to see who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell, but the actual lived experience is sometimes different from the more intellectual understanding. I was describing more the way that I felt about it, rather than any formal theological understanding of the meaning of life.
Obviously that's not how everyone feels. A lot of people draw a lot more of a sense of meaning from Christian theology and may even experience a feeling of meaninglessness if they lose their faith (and in this case, I do mean that they've actually lost something). I just had the opposite feeling. As it is now, I feel very much connected to the world around me, in a sense that doesn't involve any weird New Age woo. It's more like what Carl Sagan meant when he said that we are all the remains of destroyed stars than what a "yogi" who doesn't know a word of Sanksrit and who has never left Scranton means when he says that we're "all one". Before, I felt like everything around me was pretty much pointless, and I had a hard time getting any joy from studying it (and an even harder time enjoying the studying of humanity, which was problematic since it's kind of totally my job). Now, I see beauty in everything, because it's so permanent and cosmic, and I'm so fleeting.
