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I will respond to both posts.
First, I do not think atheists have a depressing life necessarily. There is an ultimately bleak aspect to atheism in that within that world view (assuming materialism which is not exactly synonymous with atheism) when you die it will be as if you never existed. The life you are living will not only end, it will cease to exist and your state will be indistinguishable from never having existed.
I think that relative to the Christian worldview, materialistic atheism is bleak. I would prefer eternal life to mortality, the bliss of heaven to the nothingness of death, and confidence that the universe was ultimately just to the recognition that, as the Preacher says, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
However, I think it is a mistake to conclude from this that materialistic atheism is bleak full stop. For many atheists, such as myself, we do not see this as a bleak worldview because we are not using Christianity as our baseline. I, for instance, use non-existence as a baseline. Do I think of my life, understood within the materialistic paradigm, as bleak, dry, or empty of meaning? No, because my existence is superior to non-existence. The fulfillment of my hopes, dreams, and desires (among other things) makes me value my continued and prior existence more than my not existing at all.
There is nothing necessary about this. My life could be so miserable that it really was bleak, even worse than non-existence, or only a little better. But that would not be the result of my being an atheist. Rather, that would be the result of having a bad life.