Atheism's holy cow
To be atheist, as opposed to agnostic, is to find predictability and comfort in the belief that the prime constituent of the universe is matter. In this view, consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that arises from matter that has accidentally been organized sufficiently. Belief in a materialist universe offers an illusion of metaphysical certainty. There's comfort in believing that our current scientific understanding is substantially complete, and substantially correct. That all that's left to work out are kinks and details. The belief suggests what is to be valued, and provides purpose: science, knowledge, technology, experimentation. The atheist points to the many successes of this process as evidence that brightness lies this way. What the atheist gets from the materialist hypothesis is much the same thing that the Christian gets from God: answers of a firmness that otherwise could not be obtained; a metaphysical framework on which to build life, and find meaning. Muc