How strongly do you agree or disagree?

[Mopsus]

I didn't choose to be here.

That's fine, but whether you like it or not, you are fundamentally connected to a particular cultural tradition. Of course you have the freedom to reject this tradition in favor of your own contrived identity, but that doesn't mean that it's destructive or ignorant to embrace those aspects of one's self that one is incapable of altering anyway.

[Mopsus]

People are incapable of altering whether or not they follow religious belief?

I've already conceded that people are allowed to shape their own identities. What people can't change is who their ancestors are.

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One of my strongest beliefs is that people should look at their faith with an eye that's informed by the modern scientific understanding of the world. I just think that the wholesale replacement of metaphysics with nihilism is a cure that isn't much better than the disease.

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Even if the "religious hordes" resisted every "major breakthrough in human achievement", religion must not have had as strong a hold on society as you probably believe that it did; otherwise, the modern world wouldn't exist.

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But living virtuously is much easier when one rejects the narrow view of human existence that materialism so often demands. 

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I'd say that the ultimate "goal" of human existence is to cultivate an inner peace that can't be disturbed by external events. That's a challenge that the materialist is particularly poorly equipped to deal with. 

[Mopsus]

I'd say that the ultimate "goal" of human existence is to cultivate an inner peace that can't be disturbed by external events. That's a challenge that the materialist is particularly poorly equipped to deal with. 

Why do you distill people's systems of 'non-belief' into base materialism? If materialism is simply reliant on other people/selves, then why can a person not acquire an inner peace through being content with themselves and their friends?

They can (though I would say that if your happiness is reliant upon your social circle, you haven't achieved true, lasting happiness, as your social circle is liable to change). However, my experience has been that many non-religious people (and many religious people) derive their happiness from things - which is a much less stable source of happiness than a relationship with one's deity, or something similarly intransitory.

[Mopsus]

A relationship with a deity is material

No, a relationship with a deity is noumenal.

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Perhaps not. In that case, the believer should reevaluate the nature of his relationship.

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Human relationships are more reciprocal, in that both parties get something out of them. But whether one's deity gets something out of one's relationship with him/her/it is irrelevant, IMO.

That doesn't disprove my point.  You are saying in your experience irreligious people, who you incorrectly identify as materialists,

I don't think that it's necessarily inaccurate to conflate irreligious people and materialists. Or are you saying that most irreligious people don't reject the existence of a realm outside of the material?

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There are no good deeds that an atheist is incapable of. What's your point?

[Mopsus]

A relationship with a deity is noumenal

Only if you are a Kantian. An object is not an object in itself. An object is always an object for a subject. The subject is man and man is material. His senses and thoughts are material. His relationship with anything that he postulates (because the postulation is an object of the conscious mind which is bound to the material) is material. A relationship with god is material because it is processed (whether it is reciprocal at all) within the mind.

I agree that the thoughts of men are bound by the constraints of man's mind (as are all his perceptions), but I disagree that a thought exists in the same way that Jupiter or the chair that I'm currently sitting in does. That's why I apply different standards of proof to claims made in the different realms: If you claim to have a personal relationship with Barack Obama, I'm going to ask for proof; If you claim to have a personal relationship with God, who am I to say that you don't?

1. I guess human relationships are material, then?

Yes, they are.

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It's necessary to some people's happiness.

[Mopsus]

That's why I apply different standards of proof to claims made in the different realms: If you claim to have a personal relationship with Barack Obama, I'm going to ask for proof; If you claim to have a personal relationship with God, who am I to say that you don't?

So essentially, you don't apply standard of proof to anything a person can imagine?

I suppose that I do expect the things that a person imagines to make some degree of logical sense, considering that logic itself is a product of the human mind.

[Mopsus]

Why should you expect that what a person imagines is by default, logical given that it is possible to conceive of illogical things? When asleep the mind mostly conceives of illogical things. Added to the illogical things that the mind infers while awake, you could argue that we spend more time engaging with illogical concepts that logical concepts given that most logical concepts, even if we do not fully understand the reasoning behind them are self evident (and often rooted in material experiences/sequelae/needs) and don't require much thought.

Thoughts can become illogical when they're transferred to the material realm. To claim that one could flap one's wings and fly (to use a trope commonly found in dreams) would indeed be an illogical statement, except that, in dreams, one really can. So to dream about flying is actually not illogical at all.

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I think that a person ought to apply logic to his thoughts in order to distinguish between a mere phantasm, and something that he can build his philosophy on. When it comes to the nature of God, I would say that most religious people have allowed their thinking to become debased, which has resulted in widespread idolatry. If one were to apply logic critically and consistently, I'm sure that one could come up with a conception of the divine that is intellectually unassailable.