Question for Atheists

[DeistPaladin]

Sorry I'm late to this party. My apologies if I repeat what others have posted.

If the universe is entirely material (which it must be under atheistic thinking),

My wife is an atheist and she earnestly believes in ghosts. She tells a story about how her grandfather visited her a few states over from where he died and she found out later that morning that he'd passed away. She's a big fan of the show "The Dead Files" and watches it all the time.

I'm a deist and believe that we live in a strictly natural universe. I have no idea what happens when we die and won't form any opinions on the "afterlife" (or "beforelife" for that matter) as it is something I regard as unknowable. I'm comfortable with the idea that God gives us one shot at the brass ring and then it's fade-to-black, credits roll.

Atheism is just a lack of a belief in any god or gods. It does not necessarily mean the person believes a negative, that there is no god. It only means there is a lack of a belief in one. It does not preclude other beliefs in the supernatural.

I believe in God. I do not believe in souls.
My wife believes in souls but does not believe in any gods.

These are two different subjects.

Chemicals, however, cannot act reasonably or morally. We can't take one test tube and say that the mixture in it is "more right" than the one in another tube. Natural laws simply dictate their behavior.

Morality is a philosophical issue, not a scientific one.

This is an important distinction for the Christian, or other religious person, to understand. With religion, the "is" is often intertwined with the "oughts". As in "God made it this way" follows with "and so it ought to be". Religion covers topics dealt with by both science and philosophy.

Science just deals with the "is". It makes no prescriptions of what "ought" to be. It makes no prescriptions about politics, philosophy, morality or the sense of meaning we get from life. The latter are subjects dealt with by philosophers.

If it turns out souls don't exist and our consciousness is a matter of brain chemistry, that would not have any impact on our discussions of human rights, morality, meaning and purpose or any other philosophical issues. We still exist as conscious beings, souls or no, and as such the lack of anything supernatural does not preclude having meaningful discussions on philosophical issues.

Again, separate issues that you're conflating.

The reactions in one mind lead someone to be an atheist while the reactions in another mind lead to a theist. Sort of like different outcomes in two test tubes.

Again, you're conflating issues, this time "free will/determinism" with theism.

You can be a theist (God exists) and believe choice is an illusion, that all is planned by God (providential determinism)

You can be an atheist (no belief in any god) and believe we make choices, that there is no fate but what we make for ourselves (atheistic free will).

You can be a theist and believe in free will.

You can be an atheist and be a determinist.

These are two separate issues.

On what basis then can we say that one thought or belief is more rational than another?

On the reasons we have for what we believe. Can you present an argument and back it up with empirical data?

Another conflation common to the religious is the idea that the lack of a god means "anything goes" and all opinions are equal (a.k.a. solipsism). The reality is that not all subjective evaluations are equal. Some are better supported than others.

Once I had a salesman working for me for a few months. When we sat down to review his performance, he and I had different subjective evaluations of his accomplishments. He felt he was a good salesman and I disagreed. My subjective evaluation was supported by objective data, specifically all the zeroes he had in his "new customer", "cross-sales with existing accounts" and "recovered accounts". He had only the conviction of his beliefs and his excuses for all his zeroes. My subjective evaluation was therefore stronger.

But if reason is subjective, we lose any grounds we had of evaluating statements.

See above.

Hope this is helpful.

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I don't agree. I think there are basic moral truths which transcend cultural and national boundaries and are, therefore, objective.

I understand what you're saying but I make a distinction between "subjective morals" and "cultural relativism".

The former is merely an acknowledgement that morality is a matter of evaluation and can't be plugged into a spreadsheet, reflected in numbers and units of measure that can tell us what is more moral in an empirical way. Temperature, velocity, mass and other measures are objective. Whether these things are "good" or "bad" are subjective evaluations.

This is distinguished from "cultural relativism" which takes subjectivity to the extreme of solipsistic thinking. We can make the case that stoning adulterers is wrong as a violation of human rights, based upon Mill's "Social Contract", Rawl's "Veil of Ignorance", Jesus' "Golden Rule" or any other number of philosophical tools.

Not all subjective opinions are equal.