Blackwater, you're from Georgia? I've been there. Visited Forsyth and Macon, spent some time with local officers. I particularly admired all the bullet holes in the road signs, especially the larger calibre ones!
Anyhow, you are clearly a Southern Gentleman and one to spend some time in discussion with. Reading this thread, I would like to say a couple of things. Firstly, you mention you have never met a happy atheist, well, you have at least corresponded with one, for that is me. At least, this will depend somewhat upon semantics, for I prefer to use the word 'contented' as I regard happiness as being what you experience as a change of state that happens when you experience a mood lift. This doesn't stop me being a grumpy old git sometimes, but from personal experience I don't think this stops Christians from being the same on occasions.
Life is good, for all the misery I have seen, both personal and professional. My earliest clear memory is when I was seven years old and I stood and watched my best friend fall into a canal and drown, his face inches under the water. In 2004 my life felt like it had stopped when my 20 year old son died as a result of a road traffic collision after being unconscious for 19 days in intensive care. Many disasters fell in between and after, and are not for sharing on a public forum, but in many ways I have been very lucky and, perhaps most importantly, I have been able to recognise that luck and enjoy life in my own way, enjoying the good, enduring the bad, and hoping I can tell the difference.
Now, I'm not going to say the other until such times as I reach the pit (on this forum, not
the pit in case anyone is getting their hopes up!) because as I have said, I wouldn't walk into any chapel and start arguing with the faithful. I have, on a few occasions, given some evangelical types a bit of a hard, but polite, time. If they go knocking on doors to preach then they have to be prepared to face the music. But my debates are only ever intended to elicit further understanding of what people often call faith. My downfall is that I am too ready to respond in kind if someone should overstep what I consider to be the mark.
All the best, and as Dave Allen used to say "May your God go with you."