In order to believe in strict materialism, which is a variant of atheism, you simply can’t believe in reality as a whole. If you are a strict materialist, you must reject any evidence of a spirit, or soul. Therefore, phenomena like corroborated veridical NDE events must either be explained away or simply denied to be real, no matter how compelling that evidence might be. The material brain and spiritual mind must be deemed inseparable because the alternative smacks of religious implications.
You can only acknowledge that subset of reality that confirms to your existing worldview, which can never hope to explain the sum total of reality without requiring the abandonment of logic and reason when it comes to the best explanation for a given event. No matter how implausible, luck must always be the default answer to every question in an unplanned universe, whether the question is regarding the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or the origin of intelligence.
If properly understood, atheism is the same thing as nihilism. Our bodies are nothing more than organic bags of chemicals that code for protein, and our thoughts are delusions produced by chemical reactions. If there is no God, and therefore no objective source for intelligence, then intelligence must be assumed to have arisen from unintelligent sources. If strict materialism, or monism, is true, then there is no rational explanation for the intelligence being used to convey these ideas.
If the universe has no purpose, the only reason we can say the universe exists is luck. We cannot invoke some “laws of nature” before nature itself exists. Science tells us that before the universe existed, there were no stars, planets, galaxies — not even one single atom. Overcoming enormous improbability problems, you and I exist, and more importantly, we each possess the ability to use our intelligence to communicate ideas in writing. I’ve written this essay, and you are using your intelligence and your ability to read and comprehend my words to understand the point I’m making. Ironically, if strict materialism is true, then the words you see here are gibberish and you’re inventing meaning for them in your head because of chemical reactions in your brain.
Strict materialists are atheists, and most atheists (at least, the ones that understand their own philosophy) are strict materialists. There are several examples of corroborated veridical NDE events alone that effectively destroy the philosophy of strict materialism, and it is only by denying reality that advocates of strict materialism can maintain their existing worldview by preemptively denying any event that fails to conform that worldview without bothering to examine the evidence.
Strict materialism isn’t just wrong, it’s absolutely silly, but people still believe in it because of one reason–the only real alternative leads to God.
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