Now, though I'm writing as a scientist trained in research, having presented at conferences on the foundations of science, perhaps Stu, who does not appear to have any scientific credentials, may know more about this subject. However, here is my response:

Here is an atheist, folks, who has not engaged in one reasonable reply to what I actually wrote, as opposed to what in his imagination I wrote.

Here are the main points I made:

1. Atheists don’t acknowlwedge the non rational foiundations of physicalist belief.

2. Patterns of nature are simply taken to “be there” with no explanation (see Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg, New York Review of Books, 2003, “Does Science Explain Everything? Anything? In which he acknowledges this is a universal understanding of scientists who take a physicalist view – this has nothing to do with whether or not they could be different)

3. Scientists who take a physicalist view (as acknowledged by Steven Hawking, Steven Pinker, Carl Sagan, Neil De Grasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, to name a few) have been unable to provide a definition of “physical” (if by “physical” you mean the ultimate foundation of the universe) but they all agree it is not aware, conscious alive, sentient or intelligent – without discussing whether there’s any evidence for it (the reference to “vibrations” was not a reference to the quantum realm; but simply to the measurement of light, sound and other waves which is a common procedure in basic Newtonian physics)

. 4. There is no evidence – if by “evidence” we mean quantifiable reproducible evidence – for even the existence of intelligence (as experienced by conscious beings, not as observable behavior), sentience, awareness or consciousness except by first person reports, which are universally not accepted by physicalists as genuine scientific evidence – thus, by definition, there can’t be evidence of its absence. (I should probably add that as a psychologist, I conducted over 3000 intelligence tests and I can tell you, the notion that scientists have some clear reproducible knowledge of what even human intelligence is, much less the possibility of intelligence manifesting in and as anything in the universe is far beyond what any reputable psychologist or neuroscientist would claim. Just look at some of the 100+ year old debates on the nature of intelligence or the even the possibility of accurately measuring it - for the record, an IQ test does NOT measure "intelligence" but rather, certain observable very limited cognitive, visual spatial and information processing skills).

Ok, those were the 4 major points I made, with a few clarifications. Now let’s see how Stu completely avoided addressing virtually every point, just as I predicted

:1. Stu refers to me as a “religionist.” Note that I didn’t’ state one personal belief here. I also did not make any statements about reality I simply made epistemological observations. I have never been a member of a religion, I don’t believe in religion, and I think if all religions were gone the world would be a better place. Error #1.

I know it’s going to be very hard to keep in mind, but in nothing else I’ve written and in none of the following clarifications am I sayhing ANYTHING about my personal beliefs (therefore no “God of the gaps” or even ‘philosophy of the gaps”). I’m simply making epistemological observations, which may or may not be correct, but have nothing to do with religion, God or philosophy.

2. At the macro level, anyone can agree that material objects exist. Here there is not an error but a matter of what physicist Wolfgang Pauli used to say to comments that were so incoherent they’re “not even wrong.” As phenomenal appearances, such as the moon as a phenomenal appearance, of course it “exists.” It exists as a construction of our brain.

When Stu writes, “We go there [to the moon] therefore IT exists,” he is conflating IT as a construction of our brain (the entire process of getting in a rock and going to the moon and returning) with the substratum that is triggering our brain to construct that entire string of sensory experiences. Once again, we have a series of sensory experiences to which Stu attributes a purely objective (ie existing apart from any consciousness whatsoever) reality with absolutely no evidence to do so.

All the talk of atoms, particles, etc can be equally understood as (a) sensory appearances; and (b) mathematical models created by physics to explain those sensory appearances. Nowhere in that is there even one scintilla of movement toward an understanding of the fundamental nature of what underlies the sensory appearances and mathematical models.

We’re not any closer to understanding that nature in 2022 than we were in 1622 (in fact, we’re quite farther away, since the late 1800s when the superstitious semi-religious semi-autistic belief system of materialism – later transmogrified into physicalism – became like a parasite eating away at the integrity of science)