Well, I’ll break from the pattern here and say yes and yes.
It was much easier for me to make sense of my life when I believed in God. I had a feeling of safety, even in unsafe circumstances. I also had a sense that I was a redeemed being–that my imperfections were okay because God was greater than that my human failings. When I royally screwed up, I could comfort myself knowing it was a part of God’s plan, and that he loved me anyway.
That is gone. Life without God is frightening and uncertain. I already have an anxiety disorder; removing God from the equation just kicks it into overdrive. I hate the way the world is, meaningless and full of suffering. I can’t stand it. I fight it all I can but I know ultimately I won’t change the reality – that we are an ignorant, often viscous, sometimes sadistic and vile race of people who hurt one another over and over out of desperation for a peace we can’t by nature achieve. I include myself as one of those vile beings, and there is no redemption for any of us.
The man I love more than anything in the world is eventually going to die, and statistically he’s likely to go before me, thus any real sense of joy we have is here for a fleeting instant and then gone. Eventually my body is going to break down and hurt every day and I will become helpless and dependent on others to eat and shit and then I, too, will die. And it will probably hurt, and I may be alone, and I will almost certainly be terrified. There will be no comfort other than the knowledge that I did my best, and then it will be over.
Belief in God may be irrational, but I think it’s preferable to the alternative, above.
However, I am willing to concede that the above interpretation of reality is irrational too, or in the very least, one-sided. I am open to the possibility that I can change my view of the world and human nature and achieve the same comfort without resorting to logical contortions. Other responses in this thread would indicate as much. Atheism does not necessarily lead to existential dread. In this case I think the problem is pretty clearly psychological as the above perspective is pretty much a textbook symptom of PTSD.
In other words, I might deal with fear and a sense of meaninglessness, but I can’t attribute that to my atheism, and I can’t assume that a belief in God would eliminate what is essentially a psychological problem.
Also, I am weirdly happy with things as they are. There is a sense of freedom and autonomy in atheism that I never had as a Christian. There is something to be said for making the best of the absurdity that is the human condition.