Ciro Galli

[T]he conflict between atheism and theism is primarily an epistemological one: it is a conflict between naturalism and supernaturalism, between the knowable and the unknowable. According to atheism, all of existence falls (in principle) within the scope of man’s knowledge. According to theism, however, some aspects of existence are forever closed to man’s knowledge. This fundamental conflict sets the stage for the inherent antagonism between science and theology. It is common for modern theologians to argue that there is no conflict between science and religion, that these are concerned with different spheres of human existence. Yet there is a deepseated friction between these two disciplines with regard to their basic assumptions. Science represents man’s attempt to systematize given aspects of reality into a coherent framework of knowledge. Since science is dedicated to understanding reality, it rests on the premise that reality can be understood. Theology, on the other hand, is ded

[M]ost of our moral intuitions are clear but their origin escapes us, because it lies in mental processing that we cannot consciously access. Seeing these intuitions as someone's viewpoint is a simpler way of understanding why we have these intuitions. But this requires the concept of an agent with full access to strategic information. [W]e know that religious codes and exemplars cannot literally be the origin of people's moral thoughts. These thoughts are remarkably similar in people with different religious concepts or no such concepts. Also, these thoughts naturally come to children, who would never link them to supernatural agency. Finally, even religious people's thoughts about moral matters are constrained by intuitions they share with other human beings, more than by codes and models. [Far] from religious supporting morality, as we might think, what happens is that our intuitive moral thinking makes some religious concepts easier to acquire, store and communicate to

Yet, as Boston University psychologist Deborah Kelemen has found in study after study, young children erroneously endow such natural, inanimate entities - waterfalls, clouds, rocks, and so on - with their own teleo-functional purposes. Because of this tendency to over-attribute reason and purpose to aspects of the natural world, Kelemen refers to young children as "promiscuous teleologists". For example, Kelemen and her colleagues find that seven- and eight-year-olds who are asked why mountains exist overwhelmingly prefer, regardless of their parents' religiosity or irreligiosity, teleo-functional explanations ("to give animals a place to climb") over mechanistic, or physical, causal explanations ("because volcanoes cooled into lumps")...  ...For example, when asked why rocks are pointy, the seven and eight-year-olds in Kelemen's studies endorse teleo-functional accounts, treating rocks as something like artifacts ("so that

Designoid objects are living bodies and their products. Designoid objects look designed, so much so that some people — probably, alas, most people — think that they are designed. These people are wrong. But they are right in their conviction that designoid objects cannot be the result of chance. Designoid objects are not accidental. They have in fact been shaped by a magnificently non-random process which creates an almost perfect illusion of design.

It's not really correct to say you're insignificant because the idea of significance and insignificance makes no sense when you consider an inanimate cosmos. Significance is a term that only applies to some sort of conscious evaluation. But nonetheless, in a sense, you are not that significant as far as the totality of the universe is concerned. So far as the problem, "What purpose is there in man's life?", there is no purpose in man's life. There is a purpose hopefully in your own life but it is up to you to set it. Again, if you don't, no one will for you.

Value doesn't proceed from the supernatural realm but from the natural one. Value has to be physical because the capacity to value A or B over C can only be favored by natural selection in a physical world where resources are limited. Different brains value different things under the same circumstances. An ethereal approach could never account for value, for souls don't need. Need and survival shaped value in the brain. But even if a religion could tell you what to value, that still wouldn't prove the existence of any gods or souls. There aren't objective reasons for value, for value is subjective by definition. Different neuro anatomical structures value different things depending on their evolutionary history. If you claim only your religion could tell you what to value objectively, it wouldn't be your personal value but someone else's. In that case you could only behave as valuing what you actually don't. External sources might suggest you what to value