If you are an atheist than you must also believe in materialism.
Well, I don't think so. Some atheists seem to believe in some of the "New Age" woo, so I don't think this is a necessary conclusion.
But I do believe this, so let's have at this.
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Therefore, it is possible for me to put the chemical that you call yourself into a different environment in order to change your opinions.
Which people do. Some drugs, and some of which have beneficial therapeutic value, do just this. Physical injury to the brain also does this, as does some forms of surgery. What is the problem here?
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Theoretically speaking, with chemicals and properly chosen language, anyone can manipulate your brain into thinking whatever they want.
I doubt it. Thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and so forth are not due to
chemical reactions as much as they are due to
how the neurons are physically connected. And some connections get used in several different patterns; it's not as if individual thoughts, memories, beliefs, and habits have their own separate compartment -- they are intertwined and intermixed so trying to change one belief into another belief is going to cause other beliefs to also change, perhaps in unpredictable ways.
Taking this into account, we can change peoples beliefs and behavior through drugs -- psychiatry and psychology actually do this. I suspect, though, that precise control of actual specific beliefs and thoughts may very well be impossible since there may be a limit to how many different ways the interneural connections can be configured, and so some combinations of beliefs may be impossible to realize even theoretically.
Speaking personally, I find few things more awesome than contemplating this vast and majestic process of evolution, the ebb and flow of successive biotas through geological time. Creationists and others who cannot for ideological or religious reasons accept the fact of evolution miss out a great deal, and are left with a claustrophobic little universe in which nothing happens and nothing changes.
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M. Alan Kazlev