Cary, I'm sorry to learn that, due to your own experiences, you have such a depressed view of life the universe and everything. My own experience is more mixed. - Since I can find no evidence for a creator, but think the universe is just the way it is because it can be no other way, I do not have anyone to blame or praise. I just have to put up with it. - I'm pretty certain that this life is all there is, and indeed perhaps I should spend more of my resources on immediate pleasures, though I find I get a lot of pleasure from intellectual activities (such as arguing on discussion forums and solving puzzles) and that delayed gratification is often worth waiting for. - I still have a lot of things I would like to get completed before I die, though it seems unlikely now that I will ever get many of them done. So I have plenty of incentives to go on living and do not feel the need contemplate suicide. Only very bad health and great pain I think would set me down that route. - I don't see why you think that indulging in pleasures would lead to "karma" catching up on you, unless you mean overindulging in smoking, eating, drinking and sex; but then overindulgence is not pleasure. - You propose gambling on the remote possibility of an afterlife. This is not a bet I would take. You say "a person may reasonably buy a lottery ticket if the jackpot appears high enough". I've never bought a lottery ticket, and as something of a mathematician would certainly not agree with your reasoning here. I would only go in for a competition where I had a reasonable chance of 
winning something. - For me this life that I have is probably the only one I'm going to have, so I'm certainly not going to throw it away for a remote and unlikely possibility. - In my experience if atheists commit suicide it is because they are in great pain and bad health or have got themselves into a impossible situation, emotionaly or financially. On the other hand one reads regularly of believers in an afterlife who commit suicide, often taking their children with them. This I find horrendous. Possibly even worse than suicide bombers.

Cary's emotional, motivational commitment to belief in a just afterlife comes from his will, and is based mainly on fear of suicide. "Life sucks", and if his hope for a just afterlife is not fulfilled, he will have wasted his life, nihilism is true, and nothing matters. - I share George's concern at your depressed view of life and the universe, but am struggling to find a clear line of thought. To be honest, I've never known of anyone before who has embraced Christianity because he thought God had made a complete mess of the world. You seem to be forcing yourself to believe in a just afterlife against the evidence and because it is your only hope of making up for a lousy life.
 
 I find myself largely in agreement with George's response to you, and so I will try to cover ground that he does not cover. Firstly, from my neutral standpoint (there may or may not be an afterlife, it may or may not be just), there are three possibilities: - 1) No afterlife, and we attain perfect peace after "life's fitful fever". OK, so be it.
2) A happy afterlife. Great.
3) A miserable, unjust afterlife. No, thank you. I'd prefer 1). - In terms of this life, we all have our own criteria for what constitutes pleasure and for what constitutes pain. Provided the pleasure, whatever it may be, is not harmful to yourself or to others, I see no earthly reason why you should not indulge. If you think there is a heavenly reason, then sort out your priorities: if you think God would disapprove, then maybe it's not "kosher" and you won't enjoy it anyway, so it won't be a pleasure. I can't see that it makes any difference whether we're in for 1), 2) or 3). - "Nothing matters" (if there is no afterlife) seems pretty blinkered to me. Every moment matters, whether there is or isn't an afterlife. Which do you prefer: a) to eat a good meal, or b) to have your leg broken in ten different places? This has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. If you are happier at this moment doing a) than doing b), how can you say nothing matters? If it matters to you, it matters. And the same applies to every human being you know of, regardless of beliefs. The fact that it won't matter in 100 years' time is irrelevant. I'd go further, though. If there's no afterlife, then the present matters even more. - Life is made up of present moments which become our personal reality. When I lie dying, I hope to look back on a life in which I have enjoyed the activities I like, have made people happier for knowing me, have fulfilled whatever talents I had, have left the world a better place for my having been here ... and all the other goodie-goodie platitudes you can think of. That doesn't make me impervious to the suffering I see around me. I don't know if it's God's fault, man's fault, or the fault of an impersonal universe, but whichever it is makes no difference to my way of life or to my certainty that I am happier doing things that make me happy than I would be doing things that make me unhappy. And so are other people. If those things square with my conscience, I see no reason why God ... if he's there ... should object, and I see no reason to behave differently according to whether there is or isn't an afterlife. - I am now more bewildered than ever by your claim that belief is not complicated. Yours is the most complicated belief I have ever come across.

My life has been extremely fulfilling. With that said, that is probably why Cary and I do not see things at all the same way. I will accept only what I can prove to myself. My need is not for a 'just God', because I do not know that He fills that role. Other than creation I don't know what He does. Also I am a lumper not a splitter, and would define Cary's thinking as simply stating emotions get in the way of reason. However, Cary's definitions are very helpful in clarifying matters in this area of thought.

I have to split this because it was too long. - >Point 1) Cary says that if there is a "just" afterlife, ethics will be the basis of our pleasure/displeasure ratio, and duration of life will depend on rewards and punishments. - You got the second part wrong. I said this: 
Duration of life will necessarily be sustained until all just payments are made ... both rewards & punishments.
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>I didn't know that there was limited "duration" in the Christian concept of a possible afterlife, but maybe you can expound on this later. - Christian concepts of an afterlife are irrelevant to anything we've said so far.
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>I still don't understand why you should think a just God's ethics will be different from your own, - Where did I say anything that would imply that?
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>I find your use of "involuntary" misleading. (Misunderstandings so often come down to different interpretations of individual words.) For me, this does not simply entail independence from the will, but also a lack of consciousness and control, - I'm trying to clarify existing concepts. Different interpretations of individual words is one of the things we must get beyond in the effort to clarify concepts. We're not talking about what a word is for me or for you or for anybody. We're talking about what a concept is ... in this case, the concept "involuntary", which is different from the concept "subconscious". 
Involuntary means not controlled by the will. An involuntary act may be totally involuntary (e.g. heartbeat, digestion, reflex actions) or partially involuntary in the sense of being delayable, but not preventable (e.g. breathing, burping, farting). 
Some acts are sometimes involuntary and sometimes preventable (sneezing, coughing, vomiting). Yes, we may be unconscious of an involuntary act like heartbeat & digestion, but being unconscious of it is not what makes an act involuntary. Not controlling it is what makes it involuntary. Subconscious acts can be voluntary or involuntary.
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>Would it not be clearer to say that JUDGMENT OF PROBABILITY is independent of the will? - If that does it for you, you're welcome to it. But I wouldn't change my essay to match that, because I think it will cause more problems than it solves. Somebody might rightly ask me what judgment of probability is. If I take your advice, the conversation might go like this:
ME: Judgment of probability is independent of the will.
HIM: I didn't ask you what it's independent of; I asked you what it is.
ME: It is a mental act.
HIM: You mean like thinking, perceiving, and emoting?
ME: Specifically it's a thought.
HIM: You mean like adding numbers?
ME: No. I said it's independent of the will.
HIM: You mean it's an involuntary mental act?
ME: Yeah.
HIM: Would it not be clearer to say that?

>Firstly, although belief may be the basis of action, I don't see how it can be called a decision to act. - I admit that the term belief is not often called or thought of as a decision to act. But a decision to act is the basis of what's implied by the concept, belief-2.
Suppose I say, "X is true. Believe me." Am I telling you to do something voluntary or involuntary? Obviously it makes no sense to ask or command someone to do something involuntary. Any request or command is a request or command to do a voluntary act.
Before the act comes the decision to act. The decision is the act of trust, even if immediate circumstances prevent the act from being done. But it must be the decision immediately preceding the action. E.g. the decision to pull the trigger counts as attempted murder, even if external circumstances prevent the attempted murderer from pulling it. Therefore the decision is the basis, not the act. But if you decide to do something a minute from now, but then a minute from now you decide not to do it, that doesn't count as belief-2, because you reversed your own decision.
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>Let me be tiresomely conventional and adapt a dictionary definition in order to clarify what I understand by belief: acceptance that something is true, real, or has other qualities, underpinned by an emotional or spiritual sense of certainty and/or by a probability judgment. Lacks the certitude of knowledge, although the two concepts are sometimes confused, and the borders are indistinct. Perhaps it would be helpful if you were to say why this is unsatisfactory. - It's unsatisfactory because the two concepts are sometimes confused, and the borders are indistinct. Perhaps it would be helpful if you were to say why this is satisfactory. - In fact it didn't even correctly identify the right two concepts.
But if you WANT unclarity, there's no point in us talking.