The presumption in a godless universe is materialism. No God. No spirit world. No soul. To premise 'no God!', but allow spirit beings, heaven, hell, and an eternal soul is highly illogical.
Materialism is not my presumption. It is one of four logical possibilities, idealism, neutral monism, and dualism being the other logical possibilities for the most fundamental aspect of nature from which all other manifestations derive. Matter is a derivative of energy, and energy may be derivative of something more fundamental, the way that space and time are actually derivate, from space-time, or electricity and magnetism from the electromagnetic force. Neutral monism proposes that mind and material substance both derive from a prior substance that is both and neither.
We have no way to rule any of these four possibilities in or out at this time, and there is no need to choose one, so agnosticism is the reasonable position. We don't know what aspect of reality is most fundamental.
Having said that, I confess to a preference for neutral monism just on the basis of the fact that history of science is one unification after another like the two I just mentioned. Newton unified the falling apple with the orbiting moon. Somebody unified the sun and stars. After Maxwell unified electromagnetism, this was unified with first the weak and then the strong nuclear forces, energy and mass (E=mc2), wave and particle, etc. So, with that in mind, I tend to see all of reality as derived from a substance more fundamental than either consciousness or physical reality, and the source of both. But that's just a compelling intuition, not a conclusion.
morality is a human construct, to control and manipulate people., in a godless universe. It is not real, but a delusion.. a manipulation.
Again, that does not resonate with this atheist.
Morality is a consequence of evolution, where behaviors that promote fecundity are selected for throughout much of the animal kingdom. In man, it takes a linguistic form, where mere urges become proclamations of right and wrong behavior based on those urges, which we experience as a conscience if we have one, a faculty that rewards and punishes us for our choices. Manipulation in its sinister sense isn't part of the process.
Collectively, we look for rules that will promote our core values such as the greatest opportunity for the greatest number, and tweak them until they best approximate our vision. I don't see manipulation there.
And individually, we do the same on a smaller scale, identifying that which we value and which will make our lives and the lives of others that we touch better. I don't see manipulation there, either. I don't know what you mean by morality being a delusion, but the pain and reward of bad and good moral behavior is very real. I still live with residual shame for the way my friends and I viciously teased a classmate of ours who was very hard of hearing and spoke with deaf speech like somebody just coming from the dentist. Yeah, I was only eight, and hadn't developed a conscience yet, but when I eventually did, and I recalled my behavior, it punished me for my choice. That's pretty real albeit immaterial.
I think that you have a misconception of what atheism is and what atheists think. My world is godless as best I can tell, but I am not the person you describe. You recently started a thread entitled "Lies and Phony Caricatures of Christianity." Now, you're caricaturizing atheists in extremely simplistic terms..
How could there be a spirit world, at all, in an Atheistic naturalism/materialism based universe?
Whatever a spirit is, why does it need a god to exist?
If this is a godless universe, delusion seems quite universal, among human beings.
The reason for that has already been explained to you several times. I left three terms from psychology that account for the proclivity to see patterns and agency where none exist. Man's gods and religions phase connect the periods between when man first asked questions, and when he eventually discovered his naturalistic answers several millennia later.
why would the human brain be 'flawed?' Would this not be an evolved survival trait, or something? How could believing in delusions improve survivability?
The brain is always evolving to keep up with changes in man and his environment. We still carry many if not most or all of our instincts from pre-human days, some of which may be maladaptive in our modern world.
Why is this delusional tendency so common in man? It seems counterintuitive.
Dawkins has an interesting hypothesis. He proposes that religion arose as a result of co-opting the natural tendency of people, especially children, to unquestioningly submit to authority figures, especially fathers and tribal chiefs - a behavior which offers a survival advantage.
Also, add the intuition to impute
agency to nature, which we inherited from the beasts. Better to assume that that sound or movement was due to a conscious agent, run, and to have been wrong than the other way around. Thus lightning and thunder became gods warring once linguistic thought and ideas such as that became possible.
Given these proclivities in man, it's nor surprising that gods were invented to explain the wrath of nature, and religions established with priesthoods ostensibly to appease these gods with offerings and obedience. You referred to manipulation above. This is manipulation at the grandest scale, using the literary device of a god for those wishing to exploit others by usurping its alleged authority when speaking as if channeling a divine command
Dawkins offers the example of the moth spiraling into the flame or light bulb as an illustration of this usurpation of an instinct by a modern development. If you ask what survival advantage that behavior provided the moth, the answer is the same as with religious activities
: none. Following paths using light sources evolved when the only night lights were celestial bodies, bodies that were so far away that their beams, which the moth uses to navigate, are parallel for practical purposes. It's the radial beams emanating from nearby light sources that confound the moth and condemn it to spiraling into the light.
Dawkins' larger point is that just because a behavior is widespread doesn't mean that it offers a survival advantage. The moth's behavior is clearly destructive. Dawkins argues that man invests so much energy and consumes so many resources on this activity, religion, that like spiraling into a flame, it is actually counterproductive rather than conferring a survival advantage.
Would not it be better to face reality, rather than live under a delusion?
Yes, which is why I avoid faith, the quickest path to a false belief.