Oncedeceived
Senior Veteran
Thanks for the detailed response, but most of what you said represents a philosophical difference. I asked what difference it makes in practise. You presented the example of murder. If atheists were really more likely to murder than theists you would have something there, but I guarantee you will not find any source that records such a trend. So while you may feel that the "sac of chemicals" view should make murder acceptable to someone who holds that view, this is not actually the case in practise. If it were you should be able to present some statistics to support this.
Thus I repeat my question. Can you outline the practical difference between the two views? What difference does it make to the way you and I actually behave?
Edited for duplicated text.
The basis of the argument is what should be the case if materialism is true; what if we are just a sac of chemicals and the laws of physics ultimately determine what we do and what we think. The matter is that what we experience is not consistent with a materialistic worldview. We do experience "I", we do experience "thoughts" we do experience "emotions" and we experience "choice". If materialism is true, we can't even know if it is true. There is nothing that informs us that materialism is in fact factual. Materialists live inconsistently with what they believe. In the case of murder, there is no valid "reason" that murder is actually wrong in a materialistic worldview. There is no real good, bad or evil. The fact that materialists do believe that there really is good, bad and evil is not consistent with their own worldview.
So in practice materialists do not live consistently with what should be true if it were true.
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