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Now who is delusional? The man whose reality is defined by, and his hopes rest upon, the living, personal God, Creator of time, matter and energy and sustainer of life and being or the man whose 'reality' is defined by, and his hopes rest upon, non-life-bearing, mindless created stuff — the "alternative reality" of non-self? — void (nothingness), matter, and energy?

Great observation, dear spirited. Except the materialist likely would quibble with you about matter having been "created." It is uncreated; it simply "is." Period.

There's an analogy that might shed some light on the insufficiency of materialist explanation. Evolutionary biologists of the persuasion indicated in the above italics tend to admire "the machine metaphor." One hears of the "machinery" of the living cell, etc.; even of the brain as "a meat machine." The machine metaphor seems to them a good way to account for organic matter "in its motions."

I gather they like the machine metaphor because its presumes machines are merely a collection of material parts. If you "fractionate" the machine into its various material components and study each of the components, then at the end of your analysis you can add up all the information regarding the component parts, with the expectation that you have captured complete information about the whole system constituted by the many parts.

But such a presupposition strikes me as ludicrous. It sees the machine only as a collection of material components — to me, itself a very reductionist idea of "machine."

What this concept of "machine" ignores are at least two indisputable and indispensable facts about machines: (1) all machines are purpose-built. That is, they are constructed to accomplish some goal, end or function (final cause). (2) Machines do not construct themselves: They are always found to have been designed and built by intelligent agents (formal cause).

In short, you can't even explain what a machine is in terms of material and efficient causes only.

But if you put the formal and final causes back into the reductionist machine model, you end up by making ID at the very least plausible.

And this cannot be allowed.

So it seems to me that applying the reduced machine analogy — only material and efficient causes allowed — as a framework for understanding living systems, is bound to come up seriously short WRT gaining actual understanding of living systems in nature.

But ideologues never let facts stand in their way....

Thank you so much for writing, dear sister in Christ!

LOL ... the machine exists, in the mind of the materialist, whether they will admit it or not, as a result of magic! Magic thinking will allow for many explanations, all of which terminate or are sourced in an initial point of magic.

In short, you can’t even explain what a machine is in terms of material and efficient causes only.

Thats true IF you overlook the Rube-Goldberg Machine(s)..

Which are cartoons of Intelligent Design... Materialist Comedy..
Dialectical final cause snark... like evolution...

bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKpxd8hzOcQ

In biological systems the inescapable conclusion is that the organism is always greater than the sum of its parts.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!