You're asking for and expecting theistic answers from non-theists.

Why would you expect an atheist to respond to being asked "who's your god" or "what god do you get your Ultimate Authority from?" with any god-like answer?



So...

Any theist that thinks atheists need to provide theistic answers to their questions (so to name two: you and Lisle).







Epistemic justification (internalism vs. externalism)
The topic should be right up your alley, and is a required topic to understand epistemic justification. The difference between internal vs. external justification is night and day, which is why the switching between the two by presupp apologists is a big deal (regardless of intent). It will also address your Ultimate Authority concept.



Wiki's entry: link
Stanford's entry: link




If you prefer some audio to listen to, my favourite YouTube atheist philosopher (known as Ozymandias) talked about this topic in the following link, in responding to a question about JTB (for about 10 minutes starting from timestamp 1:29:45):
https://youtu.be/qagiQ_mepao?t=5325

How would you know what I'm "expecting." I am asking a straightforward question, and the person that I ask the question to can answer it any way they want. In fact, I obviously would not expect an atheist's ultimate authority to be "god-like" (if by "god-like" you mean a person as the ultimate standard). Everybody who makes knowledge claims has an implicit or explicit ultimate standard (or authority).

No, I don't expect a theistic answer from an atheist. But, I do recognize that any non-theistic ultimate authority will fail in at least one of three ways: It will be arbitrary, it will be inconsistent or it will fail to account for the preconditions of intelligibility.

Here is quote (actually a paraphrase, since I don't know where the paper is) from an unpublished paper written by a friend of mine:

While there may be no rational argument for theism, there is no non-theistic argument for rationality.


Thanks for the links!

I forgot to thank you for your brief excursion into psychological reductionism.

An ethical clinical psychologist would refrain from diagnosing someone without a face-to-face examination. Armchair psychologists are different in that regard, it seems.

If I may quote Dennis Prager: Psychological reductionism is the last refuge of someone without an argument.

I have a lot of "catch up" to do in these discussions.

I shan't be posting here again for several days (barring a libelous attack against me by someone.) I will be lurking a bit, I suspect.

Have a wonderful Resurrection Sunday, everybody!!!

He is Risen!