Question for Atheists

[robvalue]

Hi, welcome to the boards

If the universe is entirely material (which it must be under atheistic thinking), then everything that exists or happens is fundamentally just chemicals reacting.

This comes down to definitions. If you say that "material" is "something that exists", then by definition, the universe must be material. So must god, if he exists, in fact. If "material" refers to what we currently understand about the universe and what we know "exists", then I don't think any atheist would say that there aren't things going on that we are yet to discover. So it's not that they are "immaterial", it's just that we don't understand them yet. But bottom line, being atheist has nothing to do with your opinion of the make-up of the universe. All being atheist means is, "I don't accept your claims about a god because I see no good evidence to support it." That's it, anything else you add to that is just the opinion of an individual atheist.

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.

Morals are a man-made thing. They are one life form making its judgements about another life form doing something. So no, chemicals are neither right nor wrong. I agree, natural laws dictate chemical behaviour. So a group of chemicals happening to be a form of something that could be considered "alive" then having a "thought" about something, is just chemicals doing stuff.

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

Yes, I agree with this.

On what basis then can we say that one thought or belief is more rational than another? Dead chemistry can't be spoken of in terms of reason. 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. Lines of reasoning become totally subjective since we are all slaves to our particular chemistry. 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?

As has become clear, we're kind of talking about different levels of "zoom" here. If you zoom right in and are just looking at what everyone's chemicals are doing, then there is no "rational" or "reason", such things make no sense at this level. There is just the laws of nature, causing chemicals to do a bunch of stuff. Once you talk about a "thought", you're zooming right out, and looking at groups of chemicals as things in their own right (which they're not really, it's just convenient) and giving a label to an incredibly complex chemical reaction. This touches on consciousness, which is very poorly understood and maybe will never be understood. A part of our brain fires up this consciousness, and within this model of reality, "we" (whatever that even means) have "thoughts". In order to then compare one thought to another, you have to let go of the chemical model and just assume we're talking about the zoomed out version. We could just stop and say, "hey this is all just chemicals", which is true. Nothing really has any meaning or truth. It's artificial labels we are applying, once we accept that the zoomed our version has some merit to consider, at least as an abstract.

Once zoomed out, we're left with these thoughts and ideas, and arguments. We have to decide in what way we decide whether a particular statement is "true" or not. That is, is the statement consistent with everything we have observed up to this point. To do this, we need a set of criteria. Otherwise, we are just saying any statement is as good as any other statement. And clearly no one (except perhaps insane people) would ever live their life this way with regard to (almost) any other subject than religion.

So an idea is rational if it is consistent with reality. If someone proposes an idea that is not consistent with what we have understood about reality until this point, it is up to them to provide evidence that they have a genuine idea and haven't either (a) made it up or (b) been told by someone else and just believed it without evidence.

A theist is presenting an idea that a god exists, and in particular, the one described in a book that they have. And that he has done x,y,z. This is not consistent with the world as we know it, as the best scientific minds have come up with excellent and testable explanations about the world as we know it, and no god needs to be involved. In other words, a world with this god in it seems exactly the same as this world without god in it. So unless there is any actual evidence of the god, then the logical conclusion is that these claims are bogus. An atheist isn't necessarily saying "no god exists for sure", it's just the rejection of these specific claims. All that goes to show about the atheist is that they are following a logical pattern of thought and only accepting ideas that make sense. If a theist believes ideas based on insufficient evidence, then they are not being logical. If you say that being logical isn't important, then why do you use logic in virtually every other aspect of your life without even pausing to think whether it's a good idea? We need to base what we do on what is actually happening and what is real, to be able to make the best decisions. Otherwise, we may be harming ourselves or others.

There are no absolutes, we can only do the best with what we have. Logic and evidence has repeatedly been the best and pretty much only way to generate further understanding. Until such time as a better method is put forward, all we can do is continue to use this method. Is this all just chemicals? Yes. But if you go down that road, then nothing means anything. So you can't then use this to make a conclusion about a "thought" being of equal merit to another "thought", since that requires this zooming our and acceptance of the abstract notion of life, thoughts and actions to begin with.