Imagine if atheistic materialism was actually true and humans are nothing more than biological automatons – complexly programmed and reactive robots that behave and think in whatever manner happenstance chemical interactions dictates at any given time. Let’s think about what would actually mean.
There would be no way for a biological automaton to determine whether or not any statement was in fact true or not since all conclusions are driven by chemistry and not metaphysical “truth” values; indeed, a biological automaton reaches conclusion X for exactly the same reason any other reaches conclusion Y; chemistry. If chemistry dictates that 1+1=banana, that is what a “person” will conclude. If chemistry dictates they defend that view to the death and see themselves as a martyr for the computational banana cause, that is exactly what they will do.
All such a biological automaton has is whatever chemistry generates as what they see, hear, taste, smell, touch, feel, think, and do. If they eat some stale pizza and, through a chaotic cascade of happenstance physical cause and effect, accept Mohammed with great faith and zeal, then no determined atheist can resist – that is what will occur. And they will think it was a logical conclusion, if chemistry says so. They can only be whatever chemistry dictates.
Imagine the frustration of the atheist having to admit that they came to their views exactly the same way any religious fanatic came to theirs. Imagine the bleak realization that there is no way to prove it, or even provide any evidence, because such feats would require that one’s thoughtful capacity to consider such things be removed from, and in control of, the same chemical processes that generate all positions that disagree with theirs.
Imagine the misery of attempting to argue that some things are right, and others are wrong, when the same relentless, impersonal, uncaring chemistry produces both. One might as well call the shape of a fig leaf right and true, and call the shape of a maple leaf wrong and false. How pitiful it is when atheists act as if their condition is somehow superior to some non-atheist condition, when all conditions are simply a products of happenstance chemistry and physics. It’s not like “they” had a hand in their own thoughts or ideas or conclusions; they have whatever thoughts blind mechanistic forces shoved in their brain. “They” are nothing but a pitiful puppet doomed to think and act and feel whatever chemistry dictates while stupidly acting and arguing as if something else was the case.
Atheists insist that they live a life as capable of being good as any theist. They are often proud of how “good” they are in comparison to theists they mock and ridicule. What are they proud of? What are the mocking and ridiculing? The inevitable effects of chemical interactions? Any idea or thought or act that anyone has or does is nothing more than just another effect ultimately generated by mindless chemical interactions and effects. You might as well be proud that grass is green or ridicule the color of the sky; the same mindless forces generated those things as your own thoughts, beliefs and actions.
How pitiful is it to rant and rave and argue against physics and chemistry? If atheistic materialism is true, then atheists here are like Don Quixote, acting like windmills are great beasts, or like biological automatons are sentient creatures capable of doing something other than whatever chemistry dictates. They might as well argue with a tree to get it to change the shape and color of its leaves, or with a stream to get it to change direction. They are tilting at windmills trying to convince the windmill to do something other than what windmills do. They are madmen arguing with swirling dirt, animated by natural law and chance.
What a ruinous, ludicrous, miserable position to insist for yourself – arguing and debating against the onward, relentless march of happenstance interactions of matter ruled by chemistry and physics as if such arguments mattered, as if you and everyone else is something other than programmed biological automatons doing whatever chemistry dictates. But then, pitifully, they really can’t do anything else except foolishly act out this absurd facade because they, too, are just the puppets of chemistry.