this thread seems to have taken quite a different direction, but to answer aloha (from way down the thread) - um, YOU said beauty was all actually. i never quote people back at themselves because it sounds smug & trite, but it'll be better than paraphrasing in this case i think: "We do what we can to make life beautiful because that is all there is" (aloha).
a serious question tho for the atheists - if they're still on board with this thread! - which goes back to the original question....
if you believe in evolution/big bang theory or whatever for the origins of the universe...then so far, no problem. what if you try to imagine the universe (or void, or whatever term you can use for something hardly imaginable) BEFORE this process or event? personally this is where anything outside of the idea of a creator god falls short. & yes, when i try to imagine being an atheist - & trying perhaps to 'explain' my atheism to someone else - that's when the anxiety, the panic even, sets in. logically, however you reason it out, there's nothing else that makes sense to me. i guess we've all heard the quote (provenance escapes me) that if god didn't exist, man would've had to create him, but that just doesn't do it for me.
just a thought & a genuine curiosity in how atheists explain this, which to me would be the crux of why their 'belief' is ultimately unsustainable.