The only thing there is is materialism. You and I are just atoms and molecules. Everything is predetermined and feelings aren't real.

This position got really popular in the late 90s/early 2000s under Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett, but it's definitely waned in popularity, as we see that there is no way to achieve societal wide atheism while maintaining order and morality.

This 2013 article is excellent regarding that topic. Here's a quote:

quote:
Some of the biologists thought the materialist view of the world should be taught and explained to the wider public in its true, high-octane, Crickian form. Then common, nonintellectual people might see that a purely random universe without purpose or free will or spiritual life of any kind isn’t as bad as some superstitious people—religious people—have led them to believe.

Daniel Dennett took a different view. While it is true that materialism tells us a human being is nothing more than a “moist robot”—a phrase Dennett took from a Dilbert comic—we run a risk when we let this cat, or robot, out of the bag. If we repeatedly tell folks that their sense of free will or belief in objective morality is essentially an illusion, such knowledge has the potential to undermine civilization itself, Dennett believes. Civil order requires the general acceptance of personal responsibility, which is closely linked to the notion of free will. Better, said Dennett, if the public were told that “for general purposes” the self and free will and objective morality do indeed exist—that colors and sounds exist, too—“just not in the way they think.” They “exist in a special way,” which is to say, ultimately, not at all.

On this point the discussion grew testy at times.

Regarding a personal God, I believe in Christianity because it makes the highest of claims and goes further than any religion has ever dared. God became man to redeem mankind. It is the greatest conceivable story. So great, that every other story ever told has to incorporate aspects of it in some way, whether knowingly or not.

Please, when I say Christianity, know that I'm talking about Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and all 8 billion Protestant denominations out there (or however many Stitches says there are).

This post was edited on 1/2/23 at 7:57 pm