If we are only the sum of our DNA, then we are programmed to think exactly what we are going to. Our truth would not be objective, it would be severely limited to our perspective, and our perspective would just be the result of random chance.
"Appeal to consequences is a fallacy in which someone concludes that a statement, belief, or hypothesis must be true (or false) simply because it would lead to desirable (or undesirable) consequences if it were so." As we will see, your claims, none of which you support, are based in how you want the world to be. The empiricist doesn't do that. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that our truth would not be objective or that our perspective is the result of random chance, but if this is a godless universe that was created by blind, purposeless forces, and free wiull is just an illusion, then that's how it is, and we should want to discover and know that. Arguments that say, for example, that such and such can't be true, because then there wouldn't be free will are examples of this fallacy.
Man spends an enormous amount of time searching for Transcendence, and theists see this as evidence that we are more than the sum of our DNA.
I see it as evidence that many seek to be the most that they can be. Transcendence in this context is self-actualization and delivery from superstition, faith, and magical thinking. Trading faith-based thought for critical thought is transcending unenlightened thought. The humanist seeks to transcend natural urges that evolved in pre-intellectual animal life that now are destructive in his modern world. He sees the masses believing in gods and wasting resources and opportunities in the service of those beliefs, and seeks to transcend that. Here are several statements of personal transcendence (adapted from a statement by M M O'Hair on atheism):
- The humanist loves his fellow man instead of god. The humanist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now; here on earth for all men together to enjoy. The humanist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it. The humanist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. The humanist seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. The humanist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. The humanist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. The humanist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man. He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter. He believes that we are our brother's keepers; and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now
God doesn't force himself on anyone as far as I can tell. He could, but that wouldn't be love.
Yes, sometimes love requires forcing oneself on another.
I don't have much use for the Christian conception of love, which includes blood sacrifice and persecution of gays, nor its concept of justice, which includes eternal gratuitous suffering for being human and not begging forgiveness for that fact, or granting yourself forgiveness for muttering at the ceiling fan. If you stand for and have been informed by that religion, your opinions on what is loving (or just) won't have much value to the humanist, whose understanding of those things comes from the application of reason to the Golden Rule.
Also, the reason this god doesn't force itself on anybody is the same as the reason it doesn't answer prayer or intercede in childhood rape and leukemia, or do anything else detectable.
Why would reason be reliable in a world created by blind causation?
Why wouldn't a godless universe run on rational principles that a sufficiently evolved intelligence could discern? The world is comprehensible to such creatures. You want to use that fact to bootstrap a deity into it as if one were needed in a comprehensible universe, but you haven't even tried to make that argument - just the unevidenced, unargued claim - and you know how those are viewed by the critical thinker.
We can't know reason is even reasonable in a godless universe
We don't need to know that. We only need to know that it is possible, which includes all ideas such as a comprehensible godless universe not previously shown to be impossible. You seem to assume without evidence or argument that it is impossible. You can't know that. You don't know that, even if you firmly believe that you do.
Look around you. Man longs for a perfect, peaceful existence but always fails to obtain it. Either the longing should not exist, or perfection is possible only when we reach paradise.
When I look around me, I see hundreds of people that have achieved happy, satisfying lives lived in paradise. Maybe that's why so few here are religious or church goers. Perfection is not required, just good habits of thought and deed. Being at peace with oneself and his surroundings in a safe and secure environment in which one finds love, beauty, and meaning is more than sufficient.
Do you not also have that? I know that you live life your way in a setting you consider beautiful. You are likely not threatened by homelessness of hunger. Hopefully you experience love and beauty. If so, haven't you also found what you claim we all fail to obtain? Has you faith made that seem like not enough? Has your faith taught you that it is all vanity, just dust in the wind, and a meaningless existence if there is no god or afterlife If so, it has cheated you.
