According to my cosmology there are four levels. North, South, East and West
We live in the North. The “smart people” think this level is all that exists where as the “normal people” believe there is more to life than this.
The first group is using their rationale and intellect to deduce that this is the limit of life and it makes good sense but it is not true. The second group however feel, believe or sense another dimension to life but they cant explain their conclusion in a convincing way and they certainly cant prove their position to anyone but themselves, yet they are right. There is more. It is very unlikely that they have a correct interpretation of the realm though.
The Atheists come to the conclusion that this is all there is and understandably so because this is a closed system and what lays beyond does not need to be known for this physical life to be lived to a full and satisfying level. As closed as this system is the next world does penetrate into it. We experience this as our minds which bestow on us the power of imagination and thought. Non believers don't believe that the mind is an opening where qualities and powers from another dimension encroach on to this one. To them the mind is so weak having only the power to generate phantoms and phantasies that don't touch this plane except by the actual actions that our thoughts and ambitions inspire us to take. The mind though is so much more than an image generator and the reason that it seems unable to impact the actual world directly, which our atheist friends take as a proof that it is a later development of our evolution, merely a result of chemical processes in the brain, is because it is subtle, light and thin compared to the real worlds which is dense, heavy and solid.
The dimension that the mind exposes is so far removed from the physical world that it is higher on the spectrum of existence than even light which marks the border of the physical world. The substance of the next world is as if it was nothing at all. What is imagination and intellect Are they even things? To the atheist no. But to the believer they constitute the soul. What it really is is the next order in a spectrum of reality that stretches from earth to the abyss. Beyond imagination and thought is an even deeper level of being. This is a presence, a sense, it’s a real thing that everyone has felt as a child though likely forgotten. It's a feeling but not an emotion those are so small and linked closely to objects and subjective ideas. Being is the sense of existence its self. When the non believer experiences it it is as awe inspiring for him as for you but where the believer may aknowledge a personal connection to eternity the sceptic sees eternity from the observatory of the body and the doom of it’s inevitable loss will never be removed from that perception.