We are all atheists...

...in the sense that there are gods we don't believe in.  For instance, we don't belive in the capricious, lustful gods from the ancient pantheons. By our standards, they are barely even human, much less divine. This is probably no accident:  For only by becoming more human are we able to grasp more of the divine. (The gods of the ancients were probably majestic to them, just realistic enough to connect to.) It is not by coincidence, I believe, that the world's great religions push so strongly on their believers to live a moral life and discipline the mind. It is not only a good thing in itself, but also a precondition to perceive the divine with more clarity. If we were completely in the thrall of our impulses throughout the day, we would be stuck with inferior gods as well, because we can only see so far ahead of where we are.

Actually, some of us have some experience with that.  I not only disbelieve in the capricious gods of the heathens, but also the capricious God of some literalist Christians: The God who hides fake fossils to "test the faith" of his followers. Even the God who tells Adam that the punishment for disobedience is death, only to explain later that actually by "death" he meant an eternity of unbearable pain.

I won't say we all get the God we deserve. That would be bad. But I think there are limits to how far ahead (or up) we can see from where we stand, or if not our life then at least our highest aspiration. 

The fake courage of fake materialists

Occasionally a would-be materialist will mention the courage it takes to live without believing in anything supernatural.  This is amusing because it is not even wrong, just impossible. Courage is supernatural.

If you were a true materialist, you would know that courage can not exist anywhere in the universe, and certainly not in yourself. If only because there is no self.  There is this moving mass of protoplasm, wandering through the world, driven by its DNA to seek out and digest pieces of dead plant or animal matter, kind of like a slime mold but faster.  Further the DNA will occasionally drive this lump of living matter to briefly unite with other lumps to create a new cluster of cells with a combination of their DNA, to repeat the whole process over again.

There can be no courage, no beauty and no hope in a creature propelled merely by the firing of its neurons as dictated by its genes and environment. It does not even have as purpose to survive and procreate - it just so happened that those cell clumps that were programmed to survive and reproduce gave rise to the current fauna, while those whose DNA failed to contain these programs fell by the wayside.

If we zoom in, all we see is atoms combining their electrons to a more stable configuration, then being torn apart by random movements and combining again. If we zoom out, we see a dirty speck of iron circling an average star, dwindling into the background light of a random galaxy on its way through time to inevitable destruction.

So no, if you are still alive, I don't think you have ever been a materialist.  But I suppose roleplaying one can help attract shapely lumps of protoplasm of the appropriate gender.