...Tut-Tut to the parade of the “super intelligent” atheist posters above…maybe it’s time to exercise some scientific research on your shrunken brains. I mean to say…Atheism and homosexuality march hand in hand, surely that fact must give you a “twig” to a problem!

<can a materialistic worldview account for the human heart?>

Yes indeed!
Marx asserted that the whole Western narrative of epistemology was delusional; that rather than pursuing the conundrum of metaphysics we abandon it; that thought can be none other than the expression of its respective mode of life, or cultural florescence; that all our pontificating is hubris.
To insist on anything other is to insist on the concept of individual, spiritual-integrity or "soul". Marx devoutly believed in individualism, but for him it was vested in our physical, exigent relationship with nature and the biologoically-adapted uniqueness each one of us brings to that condition. Consciousness cannot be objective in that way; it's derivative and ideologically conditioned. Modern Marxists tend to think our "sophisticated" consciousness is the constructed product of language; psychologically, each one of us is a unique collection of cultural verbiage--though we delude and flatter ourselves there's a centre to it.
Just as we cannot know whether we're conscious or dreaming, we cannot credit the mere yearnings of the human "heart".
This is why I think the proper course is to investigate the motivation behind the faith. In many cases it will be seen to be vested in nothing--and manifested in complacency and "dull routine", rather than spiritual practice--but there are also cases where unexplainable phenomena is compellingly experienced. The New Atheism is too dismissive of this. Whereas as William James said, we should seek "the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. [In the] individuals for whom religion exists not as dull habit, but as an acute fever".
My own position is of course agnostic; the only thing I find truly compelling is my ignorance of such matters. Indeed I scorn conceited, self-centred attentions--though I'm open to unbidden experience--in favour of my concern with the real and tangible problems of the "physical" condition and this world.

On the New Atheist side; they need to be just as suspicious of their vaunted "reason" and its diverted, partisan and/or insidious motivations and political advocacies.

Diver Dan you really need to talk to a secular counsellor, about your obession with homosexuality.

No mention of Pascal's Wager? I always liked Pascal's Wager. It's a nice little bit of philosophy. Although I must confess that I prefer the atheist's wager:

>>You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in god. If there is no god, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent god, he will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in him.<<

Cheers,

Tony

'This is why I think the proper course is to investigate the motivation behind the faith'

Indeed...

' mean to say…Atheism and homosexuality march hand in hand, surely that fact must give you a “twig” to a problem!'

There really seams to be a pathological fear going on there. I cringe at how embarrassing it must be when a homophobic person realizes that everybody knows where their fear really comes from...

Tony Lavis,

I prefer Homer's wager. 'Why can't I worship the Lord in my own way, by praying like hell on my death bed'.

It's much smarter. If you plan to become a believer in your death bed as a just in case, god cant reject you, and if he did, he wouldn't be god in the first place.

This is assuming you don't die suddenly rather of some disease as is increasingly likely these days.

Yes and no.

Yes, atheism/humanism does overstate the function of reason, attributing it with powers of motivation/drive that it does not have. Hume is correct: our emotions do drive us and reason is their "slave" as he says. Atheists would do well to learn this. Reason can inform us, reason can suggest behaviour, but ultimately only emotion/feelings can move us. Prominent atheist Betrand Russell said likewise: "all human activity is prompted by desire". So humanism is all about satisfying human desires and atheists should move on to the topic of human wellbeing/satisfaction rather than simply criticising religion all the time. The "father of secular humanism", Paul Kurtz, recognised the same problem. Can humanism fill the void left by religion? Have we evolved with a dependence of religious thought. All good questions. Only time will tell.

No, emotions do not lead to faith/beliefs. Whatever feelings of awe and whatnot we may have buried within us, they constitute zero evidence for any supernatural being. None. A simpler and more reliable explanation is that all our feelings are of and for this world, and religion mistakenly interprets them as evidence of gods.