It occurs to me that atheists are such only until they die, Then, it either doesn’t matter anymore (because they were right in their denial of a creator being), or it matters greatly, because they will, at that very moment, discover that there IS a creator being who will prove them quite in error in their former thinking. For them, their eternity will mirror their former lives, only in far less pleasant ways.
On the other hand, theists will be such for all eternity. Their understanding of the nature of that creator will determine what the rest of their eternity will look like - either the same as the atheist, far less pleasant than life was before, or for those who understood what Jesus meant when he said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
In a round-about way, you have laid out Pascal’s wager. Look it up.
It some ways your post mirrors Pascal’s Wager.