"If there were no god, we would need to create one" This simple statement says it all for me.

Most religions promise some sort of afterlife which, to my thinking, is a creation fostered to appease mans desire to believe there is more to life than what we know in the time we're here and ... belief in an afterlife gives followers exactly that. I feel this only truly appeals to a sense of vanity that is an integral part of mankinds makeup and is actually detrimental to personal progressions that could be realized otherwise.

Not putting faith in this ideology of an afterlife doesn't appear bleak to me. What that leads me to feel is that each moment is all the more precious as this is all we really have anyway. Quite honestly we'd all be better off in focusing on the assured here and now than on some idea that there's something else that is not an assured reality that "might" occur. Or to look at it another way, how much energy and time is expended by believers in pondering the afterlife and how that might play out personally once their time is ended that could be more productively utilized in instead pondering the life they are currently living and how to improve that instead?

It seems to me that every follower of every religion that embraces an afterlife HAS to believe that at their lifes end this belief instantly becomes the saving grace for their salvation throughout the remainder of eternity, and ... most religions will also take that idea a step further and state that disbelief in THEIR god also in turn invalidates all good works, righteous living etc. and doom those who believe in any other version of "god" and certainly disbelievers, to eternity in some miserable existence.

If one espouses and places faith in all the above I am constantly confounded in how these actions and eternal consequences can be the results of a god showing his capacities for love, forgiveness and kindness to his creations. This seems totally incongruous, not to mention an exhibition of unrealistic expectations to me.

If you feel like hedging your bet and believe in whatever deity suits you, more power to ya. I'll just be over here doin it my way and IF I'm wrong about it all at least there won't be any cherries involved ..... but I'll still accept the risk as the most logical path