Reddit mentions of The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions

>Once you learn about emergent properties, the whole mind/brain, dualism, soul, consciousness question becomes remarkably boring

I think this is just completely and utterly bass-ackwards. Once you learn about emergence, it just opens up even more problems. For one thing, emergence is often considered to be a type of dualism. So keep that in mind before committing to it as your solution to the mind/matter problem.

And emergence raises the problem of mental causation. You have two choices at this point:

1. One way causal (brain -----> mind)
   
2. Two way causal (brain <---> mind)
   
   If 2, then you are basically talking about property dualism and you open yourself up to the same problems as dualism, such as the interaction problem (how can a non-physical mind cause physical actions?). If 1, then you have the problem of how your mind can grasp my comment here, rationally evaluate it, and cause your fingers to type a response. If 1 then you have to say that your mind is just a byproduct that plays absolutely no role in your physical actions, which seems completely false.
   
   Your other option is to dump emergent dualism, and go with the materialist theory of identity, which says that the mind and brain are just the same thing. But then you have the problem of how aliens and AI could have minds, since they do not have human brains. If the mind can be realized by many different substrates, then you are talking about functionalism and so no longer strictly within materialism, as substance dualism can be functionalist as well (and there are functionalist dualists).
   
   Then you have the problem of how the mind can represent (or be about) things. As the IEP explains:
   
   >How can a pattern of neural firings be of or about or towards anything other than itself? As a purely physical event, an influx of sodium ions through the membrane of a neural cell creating a polarity differential between the inside and outside of the cell wall, and hence an electrical discharge, cannot be of Paris, about my grandfather, or for an apple.
   
   In light of this, you could follow the Churchlands, who are well connected with neuroscience (both their children are neuroscientists) and cannot reconcile this problem, and so they choose to believe that we have no beliefs, desires, doubts, etc. Meaningless matter cannot have any meaning.
   
   But then you open yourself up to the problem that science and reason are thereby destroyed, as they involve representation and aboutness. This could serve as a reductio ad absurdum of materialism. Or not. You could join Alex Rosenberg with his Atheist's Guide to Reality. He is a philosopher who fully understands the implications of materialism and sides with the Churchlands in saying that there is no meaning, nothing means anything, even your own mind. So you can certainly embrace that if you want. Personally, I think the criticism that it is a reductio of naturalism should be answered, but from what I can tell good responses to this charge are not forthcoming, and the worldview of materialism is just assumed to be true.
   

Human life has value. Its morally reprehensible to kill kids and teachers in a school, or kill millions of Jews. Its wrong. However, the Atheist says ultimately that human life does not have value. So either its wrong and there is a God, or its not wrong and there isn't a God. That's the end of the road. So feel free to go on living in a dream world and pretending that doing good things will make you happier - its all just another self-serving expression. And morally, what you are doing is exactly like the rapist getting his jollies off hurting people - its what makes him feel better. Subjective morality equates both actions.

But you have to agree this is wrong. There is no way around it. Now if it is wrong - this this is evidence for there being a God - for a lot of reasons. So then God has something that he wants you to do. He wants you to not kill and rape people. He wants you to not go into a school and murder kids. He wants you to not lie. He want you to not be sexually immoral. He wants to you accept His plan for your life, and come back to Jesus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBTPH51-FoU