If God and the Afterlife don't exist, why do we need to live?

Note: this individual submitted many responses to various parts of the website with the same basic rant. Some have been addressed, some have been deleted. Here will be the final look. It's different enough from the previous to be worth addressing.

If we are just created by chance and nothing else,

As an atheist, I don't believe we were created at all. "By chance" is also not an accurate description of my position. In the same sense that there's an inevitability for it to snow in Canada every year, I believe there's an inevitability for life to arise in the universe, based on how it runs. It's neither "intentional" nor "accidental".

then what's the point of living if in the end, we are just gonna die and be forgotten?

That's up to you. I can't decide it for you. Personally, I'm fine if the only thing I accomplish is to improve someone else's life. And pizza.

In a way, it's one of those instances where you're dropped into a situation, and left thinking, "Now what?", and then you come up with things to do. I can't tell you what you ought to do. I can only observe what people do, and then make my own decisions.

For people like me, "we are just gonna die and be forgotten" isn't even a relevant point.

If we are nothing but a bunch of cells and sperms that had evolved over time

Evolutionary theory doesn't hold that sperm evolves. Evolution is best measured as the difference between one generation and the next. 

then why must we care and love one another?

I'm not going to argue that we should... but we do, because we can't help it. This is the "is" versus "ought" distinction, and is probably indicative of the different ways we think about thinks. I'm talking more about what is, and you're talking about what ought to be.

I'm not going to argue as to why you should like pizza. You either do or you don't. It probably depends largely on your upbringing... and things don't need philosophical justification to exist. They can simply exist.

And no, saying that we need others to survive is not an valid answer.

For the "ought", no. For the "is", yes. Also, I'm sorry, but it isn't invalid merely because you say so.

I don't care about surviving.

I'm sorry to hear it. I do, and many others do. Luckily for the human race, most of us do.

If life's is just about surviving,

That's not what most atheists think. I would say that life isn't "about" anything, any more than liquid water is "about flowing". I think it should be sufficient to observe that it exists, and has particular properties.

... but most atheists would say that life can be about something. It's just up to you what you make out of life. Personally, there's more things I want to do in life than I have time and energy to do.

then that means we should only care about ourselves and nothing else.

One could argue that since evolution baked us into being a social species, we should care about each other. Then again, evolution isn't about "oughts" and "shoulds". 

Just to be clear... atheists don't view evolution (or physics, chemistry, biochemistry, etc) as a philosophy that must be followed. It's observations and tested-knowledge about how the world operates. We then separately decide what we want for dinner tonight (pizza).

So that means that hospitals and medicine and things like that should not exist.

This reason why I want hospitals and medicine to exist is to reduce suffering. That's because I feel empathy for others, in addition to not wanting to suffer myself. We can best accomplish this by pooling our resources for science and engineering and society.

I don't care if "life is just about surviving". I, along with humanity in general, have decided we want more than that.

Nothing in ever matters so we might as well die

That's your opinion... which may be part of your confusion. It is a question of opinion. As I've alluded to before, there's a difference between a lump of clay having some kind of intrinsic meaning imbued by existence itself... versus that lump of clay having meaning to you, that your own mind generated and assigned to it. 

You're not going to argue me out of a photograph having meaning to me, that I keep on my shelf. That's up to me, and you have no say over the matter.

and not exist since nothing we ever do as humans will accomplish a single thing.

That sounds important to you. That's your issue, not mine. Every line of code I write, or every drawing I draw, will eventually crumble into dust. It matters to me that I got to experience this little corner of the universe, and express my thoughts. If that doesn't matter to you, then I'm sorry.

So why bother?

Again, it's up to you. You either decide why you should bother, or not.

God does not exist. Heaven does not exist. Spirits don't exist.

That's expressing my personal views rather strongly. I'd say that these things haven't been demonstrated to exist. It could be that what happens after death is something we haven't even imagined yet. Ultimately, I try to only believe things that are sufficiently demonstrated. With other atheists, your mileage may vary.

The only thing that exists is just us in a dark, empty void with a bunch of gases that we call the universe.

That's still not my position as an atheist. What we know of that exists is a mostly-dark (with an occasional bright fusion ball) void, with gasses, planets, stars, galaxies, black holes... and a bunch of people who have decided what meaning their lives have, despite the universe.

 So we should need to live a long, happy life since we will just die and soon be forgotten and wither away.

We agree!

Life comes from nothing,

This is neither the usual atheistic view, nor the scientific view. We (the scientists) are working on figuring out how life arose, and are making progress... but you won't find a single person saying life came "from nothing"... except maybe from theists who don't understand science or atheism.

death means we become nothing,

Well, no. It's not like my body just vanishes suddenly. My molecules return to nature, as I'm done using them. 

therefore life itself means absolutely nothing.

Yes, and no... life doesn't "mean" anything by itself. Any meaning that exists is that for which thinking minds generate (which shouldn't be shocking, as that's what theists think God(s) do). But don't get me started on what God(s)'s purpose is supposed to be.

I hate atheism.

Yet you don't appear to understand what it is you're hating. You've been off the mark on literally everything.

Opinions like yours is why this website exists. Atheists are extremely misunderstood, and we aim to correct that. "Atheism" is not a synonym for "nihilism". The views I have expressed above are more aligned with "existentialism".

Just like you can't argue me out of my meaning and purpose, and can't argue you into meaning and purpose. Frankly, that should (at least to me) excite you. You have a life. It's yours. What do you want to do with it? Are you really going to wait for some random atheist website on the interwebs to give you some kind of philosophical justification?