Question for Atheists

[Esquilax]

Hi! I've been trying for a while now I get an atheist's response to a particular line of thinking, but have thus far been unable to help anyone understand it or give a coherent thought about it. I'm hoping here is a better place to find some discussion on the matter!

Hi, welcome aboard. So long as you don't mind swearing and getting a rough time of things for what we see as bad arguments, you'll be fine. We warm up quickly if you're willing to speak reasonably with us.

... Most of us, anyway.

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

There needs to be a correction here: the universe "must" be material, for an atheist? Methinks you're mistaking "christian god," for "every immaterial thing there could ever be." But that's not the case. The only requirement for atheism is disbelief in god claims, every other possible claim there could ever be, ever, is still open to us. So when you say we're bound to think that the universe is only material, my answer is that no that's not true.

Personally, I'm happy to just say that I don't know if there's anything "beyond" the material universe, because that's the truth. I don't know, and so far nobody has been able to produce a reason to believe that there is, that would demonstrate that they know. The only rational course is to believe in what's demonstrable and to withhold judgment on anything else.

then everything that exists or happens is fundamentally just chemicals reacting. 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.

We get this a lot. It's not particularly true either, since there's nothing specifically in a materialist viewpoint that precludes the existence of a self aware reasoning process arising from sufficiently complex material components. I would argue that this is what we see in consciousness, though I would also note that that whole area isn't too well understood yet.

Besides, "reasonable" behaviors arise from observations of the material world, and morality is borne of conscious beings constructing a system of acceptable behavior based on their evolved social instincts and the physical realities around them. Neither of those requires anything more than what we see in nature to begin with.

Humans and their thoughts and beliefs, as parts of the universe, are merely chemicals as well.

Does that make you uncomfortable?

Every idea is a natural string of reactions in the brain. 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.

I notice that, though you disagree, you don't seem particularly interested in presenting evidence for whatever soul or awareness or what have you that forms ideas in place of these chemical reactions. What that means is that you aren't presenting an alternative case, you're making something called an "appeal to consequences" fallacy: "If you were right, this bad thing would be true, which means you must be wrong."

The potential consequences of something has no bearing on whether that thing is true or not, though. So, at best, all this is is an attempt to scare us- and possibly yourself- away from what you perceive to be the atheist mindset. It's not particularly compelling.

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

Based upon how well it reflects observed reality. Irrespective of how our thoughts form, they are still observations of something objective that we can monitor, after all.

Dead chemistry can't be spoken of in terms of reason.

"Dead chemistry" is a characterization that you won't find many atheists agreeing with, if any at all. Mainly, it's a strawman set up by theists in an attempt to silence us, without bothering to see if we actually accept it or not first.

We are all parts and products of a giant chemical universe, atheists and theists alike. How can the universe be behaving unreasonably in one place but not in another? It just is.

And if one part of the universe is making a claim about another part of the universe that does not reflect the objective reality of the scenario, then the former part of the universe is claiming something that's a little thing we call "untrue."

Lines of reasoning become totally subjective since we are all slaves to our particular chemistry.

Not where they concern the real world and the logical absolutes, they don't.

But if reason is subjective, we lose any grounds we had of evaluating statements. If my chemistry makes me think you are unreasonable and yours does the opposite in your brain, since no reaction can be said to be rationally superior to another, then there can be no meaningful debate. Ideas are all equally natural. Isn't that kind of a problem?

It's only a problem if you can find someone to agree with everything you've said above. I doubt you'll be able to do that, though I'm sure that, curiously, you'll find many theists that are all too eager to tell you that's what we atheists think, especially among the ranks of the presuppositionalists.

I wonder why that number would be so high, while the number of atheists saying they believe that would be so low?