[Piers-the-Ploughman]

RE spending time and treasure on something without empirical evidence

Where did creation come from? Or if you prefer, how did the Big Bang come about?

If life on earth is an accident, so are you, sir. (all of us of course.) And that means if something truly bad happens to you today, logically, nobody even owes you a "tough luck, get over it." Any compassion would just be silly, a waste of time, a sign of weakness.

People may be atheists/agnostics for a variety of reasons; for some, it is a means to an end.

[xJones]

People may be atheists/agnostics for a variety of reasons; for some, it is a means to an end.

Yes, some are atheists because their early church grounding taught them that some things they later liked were wrong and harmful. If there is no God, then there is no sin. IOW, deny God and enjoy your particular forbidden fruit. It was very important to some of the leading Victorian atheists that God couldn't exist because they didn't want to think about hell.