# Atheist Materialism Interrogated Discussion Thread **URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/atheist-materialism-interrogated-discussion-thread/85309 **Category:** Discussion **Created:** [April 23, 2026, 2:50pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/atheist-materialism-interrogated-discussion-thread/85309 "2026-04-23T14:50:32Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 4
### Author: ![TheIllustriousMrCat](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/user_avatar/www.ilovephilosophy.com/theillustriousmrcat/32/25783_2.png) [@TheIllustriousMrCat](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/TheIllustriousMrCat) #### Post date: [April 25, 2026, 10:47pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/atheist-materialism-interrogated-discussion-thread/85309/4 "2026-04-25T22:47:28Z")
> [@ghatzige](#): > > For Plato’s Thrasymachus: I gave you a quote from Epicurus about the pleasant life. This is incompatible with tyranny and what bad guys are doing. They are both living a materialist life. The good guys l would assume to be enfranchised, i.e. they have things to be getting on with. The bad guys having nothing better to do. That’s one reason l’m against prison sentences. They give bad ideas to already bad guys with nothing better to do. > [@ghatzige](#): > > Plato was an enemy of the physical philosophers. There was an ancient rumor that he burned a Democritus book. So, there is no surprise that he built a case against physical philosophy by bringing pure hydonism. You could have invalidated hedonism. Why say these things now? I’d have been interested to hear Stoicism’s virtue-ism. Sufis are a stoic emphasis on Islam. How would a materialist Stoic ever claim virtue without looking like a poor person who found an aristocrat’s top hat at the charity shop? You could turn that into a new debate. You already know my stance but l’m still 100% l can defeat materialist Stoicism (not Islamic stoicism, Sufism, of course). > [@ghatzige](#): > > I gave you two materialistic schools. Stoicism, which has nothing to do with hydonism (virtue is not pleasure), and Epicureanism which has categorizations in pleasure. You could choose even more modern materialists (Marx, for instance). Instead, you used an enemy of materialists to build an argument. It wasn’t for me to choose anything. I am just following the OP of the debate: you are to explain from your heart (= from your own self) why you choose life over death. Stoics and cats and dogs may criss-cross our paths but it is all about your answers. > [@ghatzige](#): > > I was polite when I said Vedas, I should have said a direct enemy of Islam. I have little idea what’s in the Vedas but the point is you defined them such that they were to prop up a circular argument. I am ambivalent to whatever arguments you bring, bring them. Just don’t make it about my form. My form is good enough and this debate is many years old in my mind. The best response l had from an Atheist was instant: there’s nothing wrong with a man raping his cancer patient dad The next best response was an Atheist admitting his dad _is_ handsome. Better than asking me why l didn’t choose Marx to … for … what … I don’t know. I was just going off your input. > [@ghatzige](#): > > About death: In order to have death, you first need to have life. Death without life does not exist. > You mix death with the process of dying. The process of dying can be painful, death is painless because there are no emotions. Not in my beliefs and l suspect you have zero data on it. The Angel of Death always causes pain when he severs the cord. _Interestingly, the Angel of Death severing the cord of life is the only explanation to matter not changing at the precise moment of death from a nano second before and after._ > [@ghatzige](#): > > Seriously I am serious. > [@ghatzige](#): > > are you debating philosophical school, or arbitrary people’s opinions? You talk about drug lords, rock stars and I do not know what else. I’ve given my explanations. The concepts are what matters, not their bearers. > [@ghatzige](#): > > When you are interrogating a philosophical school of thought, you should treat it as you interrogate a religion. You refer to the principles of the school, not every arbitrary Joe. I am not interrogating a school of thought. The examples l cited were not as formal reps of a school of thought. They illustrated how every materialist principle crashes and burns. > [@ghatzige](#): > > In our previous debate/Q&A I never tried to develop an argument using irrelevant Muslims. I could have used the extremists to build a full question. Had you done that, you would have failed, and l suspect you know it, and so you didn’t do it, because it’s pointless lying in order to make a debate proceed. > [@ghatzige](#): > > Conciousness was not the theme of this debate, the theme was materialists should prefer death. It was not mentioned neither on the title nor in the OP. It became a theme of the debate. The themes of debate l mentioned were themes of the debate, not the OP. Consciousness became a key theme because l said Materialism’s views are all sentiment and you agreed but said sentiment is biologically rooted. And so it naturally became a contention that consciousness is rooted in matter. This has been explained many times as it was **a theme of the debate.** > [@ghatzige](#): > > The suicidals lost their souls? So, there are humans walking around us without souls? Is this the position of Islam? No, they still have souls but as l say, the light of their souls is dirtied. This is not an Islamic belief, it is something l made up. I also feel their life force - Qi (Chinese philosophy or Buddhism l think) / Prana - cannot rise beyond their hearts, because the heart chakra is blocked, i.e. choked with filth. That is what l mean by lost soul. > [@ghatzige](#): > > And stop talking about proofs. There are no proofs in axioms. I am not the average atheist youtuber who asks proofs, because philosophy has proofs only AFTER the axioms are set and accepted. Spinoza (quite close to materialism as philosopher) demonstrates this process clearly. Everything is physical is an axiom of materialism. I repeated it multiple times and you skip that. Do you really not understand such a simple point? The proofs l gave, l gave. The axioms l questioned, l questioned. The proofs l requested, l requested. I was never answered in either 3 of these. An axiom is not something which is per se unfalsifiable, it is merely something that is agreed to be objectively true, quite the opposite of unfalsifiable actually. Also, when there are rival views and both are unfalsifiable (ie. consciousness arose / did not arise from matter), then you simply cannot call either of these an axiom. You should Google “axiom”. > [@ghatzige](#): > > Everything is physical is an axiom of materialism. I repeated it multiple times and you skip that. No, l loved when you said that. **It formed the basis of my entire steamrolling of Materialism** (at least, as you presented it). > [@ghatzige](#): > > Your axioms in Islam are all from the Quran. If I ask you to “prove” all the claims of Islam without using the Quran, what exactly are you going to say? You cannot have it both ways, soul from Quran for you but not “everything is physical” for me. Not all of our axioms are in the Qur’an. Some are in Sunnah, some are just inferred and never stated (e.g. I just sat down and calculated that the Seven Sleepers were a crucial link in continuity between true Christianity, and Islam, because they lived for centuries in suspended animation then emerged from their cave and lived among people in a drastically different epoch, then they died, and this must have coincided with the advent of Islam if you add the years up - it was never mentioned in the Qur’an and similarly, the speed of light is never mentioned in the Qur’an but one verse mentions angels conveying messages to Allah, in a journey of a day which is 1,000 years of what we count, it is inferrable that angels being made of light, this verse can refer to the speed of light, which equates to the distance the moon travels in 1,000 lunar years, divided by the time in 1 sidereal day or something like that). Feel free to make a debate challenging an axiom of Islam. > [@ghatzige](#): > > If I ask you to “prove” all the claims of Islam without using the Quran, what exactly are you going to say? You cannot have it both ways, **soul from Quran for you but not “everything is physical” for me.** That’s what you said though: > [@ghatzige](#): > > Everything is physical is an axiom of materialism. I repeated it multiple times and you skip that. I am fine if you argue for the soul, but you can’t and so you won’t. It’s not about my choices. > [@ghatzige](#): > > Evolution does not explain life… So I am not even allowed to refer to the evolution theory to explain why death is not preferable? > You know, at one point I was thinking to bring the evolution theory, which clearly demonstrates that humans are coming from animals. Since all animals try to survive (no suicidal animals around), humans should also have survival/life choice as their predetermined option. > > Emotions are not physical. Seriously? Then the brain scanners and the MRI that detect brain activity when people have emotions, what exactly are they measuring? Souls? If that is what you believe, then that is that. You can cite evolution but l will knock it down every time, using accessible counterarguments that the layperson can understand. There are recently one or two cases that l cannot understand well or at all, and these have arisen after about 175 years of evolutionary thought. Too little too late, but you’re welcome to give it a go. Brain scanners will scan biological processes, physiological changes. Drugs may induce pleasure. But as l stated in the debate: > [@Atheist Materialism Interrogated: Why Choose Life?](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/atheist-materialism-interrogated-why-choose-life/85308/10): > > Observation: Emotions may be modulated by chemistry but **there’s absolutely zero basis for attributing emotions to chemistry.** You are not seeing emotions in a scan, otherwise big pharma would have bottled them and sold them. You are seeing their effects on the body. Sorry. > [@ghatzige](#): > > Again, you tried to build a case against materialism by mentioning everything else, except things that materialism claims. Souls, consciousness being non-physical, uncontrolable pleasure have nothing to do with materialism. I was only going by your answers as per the requirement in the OP. You are welcome to open another formal debate to propose all these other things. But when you answer, l will ask about those answers. If l were presenting an idea, l would present it honestly. I am not the one presenting an idea in this debate, it is you. I destroyed your idea. Sorry. --- _[View the full topic](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/atheist-materialism-interrogated-discussion-thread/85309)._