Having such a nihilistic outlook on life is hardly a sign of mental health, if you believe a Creator would have to be evil for creating such a universe, you make a necessary judgment on the universe in the process. Do you really feel life is so horrible? I don't. Yes, it is unpleasant at times but that is not all life is.
Nihilistic? Really?
I'm not in the least a nihilist, I love life and all that goes with it.
But, I am realistic, there's a lot of terrible things that happen out there. For example, natural disasters. If you consider them just to be natural disasters (meaning in a universe without a god), then they are unfortunate, tragic occurrences. However, that doesn't make life any less precious. In fact, it shows us exactly how valuable life is. You can't really call those things evil either... they just happen as a part of nature. It sucks, but it happens.
If you have a creator god though, that means those natural disasters are a direct result of his intentional design. The Romans who were buried under volcanic ash at Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted, the 230,000 people that died in the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, etc.
Even if you want to argue god didn't purposefully start those specific incidents, he still created a world with volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, plagues, wildfires, and many other forms of nasty ways for people to meet a painful, gruesome death. It's inevitable that those things would cause said gruesome deaths by the millions over time.
Now, again, if those things just unintentionally happen as a part of nature, it's unfortunate. However, if those kinds of things were purposefully designed, then that's evil. And whoever designed it is evil as well.
And yet I bet you look at the statistics, those people are probably just as healthy as everyone else, because elements of their religious beliefs discourage them from engaging in physically harmful activities, such as drinking or smoking. You can't judge a faith by looking at one belief in isolation.
Well, actually yes you can, here is why:
You don't need religion to provide good reasons to not smoke, or drink to excess. To demonstrate that I'll use myself as an example. I'm an atheist, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life, nor have I done any form of drug (including pot). I drink socially when I'm out with friends, but usually keep it to a drink or two (which I think anyone would agree is safe behaviour).
My reasoning is quite simple. As for smoking, I've never gotten the point behind paying a fortune to suck on a burning tube of chemicals, which will eventually ruin your lungs and potentially cause cancer, while making you smell terrible in the process.
As for drugs, I've also never gotten the point of paying a fortune to "alter your consciousness" while leaving yourself susceptible to any number of physical problems, or life crippling addiction, or overdose causing death. I like my consciousness as it is, I don't need to pay to alter it, especially when that's the potential cost.
It makes no sense for me to ever want to go down those roads. I don't need a religion to tell me that, and neither do the Mormons as my reasons also apply to them.
What you do need religion for are situations like parents who decide to pray over their sick and dying infants instead of taking them to the hospital, or Jehovah's Witnesses who refuse life saving blood transfusions because of what the bible says, or adults who are duped into visiting faith healers, and promptly giving them all their money for false hope, and no actual treatment.
The point is, if your religion happens to preach something that is good health advice, then it's good because it's good health advice, not because it's what your religion says. The message, and effects of that message are still the same regardless of your religions position on it.
On the flip side, if your religion preaches bad health advice, then it's still bad health advice for the same reasons as above. The problem is though, without religion no rational person would ever think treating cancer by talking to themselves (i.e. praying) would be remotely effective, and therefore nobody would ever do it. But because of the religious element, thousands of people do just that, often to fatal results.
FWIW, mainstream Christians don't discourage doctors visits. In fact the book of Ecclessiasticus, a piece of literature from the Second Temple Jewish period, honors doctors (Sirach 38:1-2), and a doctor has always been second to a rabbi in the Jewish community in terms of prestige. The early church had two saints, Damian and Cosmas, who were physicians that treated the poor, and they are still honored today in many churches.
No question, but that doesn't actually change the reality of what we see in the world. Every few weeks there's the inevitable story about how some fundamentalist family had a kid die from a very treatable condition, because they decided to pray instead of taking them to the doctor.
