I don't need the false promise of an afterlife to justify my life. My life justifies itself through my actions.
I don't need to put flowers on graves to remember the dead. The dead live in the living, not in graves.
The claim is often made that climbing is a selfish activity. Perhaps this is because it does not benefit one's "country", like military service, or "science", like being an astronaut, or "the consumer", like being a faller in the Coastal lumber industry - all professions which have a similar risk profile to climbing. Yet it is undeniable that climbing can benefit others than the climber. Why else would the voracious appetite for accounts of climbing exist? Why would non-climbers come up to climbers and tell them how inspiring they are?