Well, this explains the mystery of why that got downvoted by someone.

for example, if I substitute every reference to the superiority of atheism to theism (or the inadequacy of theism more generally) with a similar reference to the superiority of, say, heterosexuality to homosexuality (or the inadequacy of homosexuality more generally), my emotional response is basically "yeah, fuck that shit."

Firstly, you're replying to an old version of my comment - the section you're replying to is part of a quote which had a formatting error, which is why it forms a complete non-sequitur taken as a reply. I did not write that, I merely replied to it.

These examples are not at all analogous. Claims about the existence of divine agents - or the accuracy of old textbooks - are epistemological claims about the world and not up to personal preferences.

You know, I agree with you, homosexuality isn't a great example there. However, it's trivially easy to ironman as "homosexuality is moral" or some other example involving the rationality skills of the of the general populace.

Claims about preferences can by definition not be objectively right or wrong, but only be accurate or inaccurate relative to their frame of reference, to the agent they are ascribed to. Even if that agent were some divine entity. Jesus would like you to do X, but Bob wouldn't.

The fact that something is true only relative to a frame of reference does not mean it "can by definition not be objectively right or wrong". For example, if I believe it is correct (by my standards) to fly a plane into a building full of people, I am objectively wrong - this genuinely, verifiably doesn't satisfy my preferences. I may have been persuaded a Friendly superintelligence has concluded that it is, or that it will cause me to experience subjective bliss (OK, this one is harder to prove outright, we could be in a simulation run by some very strange people. It is, however, irrational to believe it based on the available evidence.)

"There is a ball in the box" - Given the same evidence, Clippy and an FAI will come to the same conclusion. Personal theist claims mostly fall in this category ("This book was influenced by being X", "the universe was created such-and-such", "I was absolved from my sins by a god dying for me").

"I prefer a ball in the box over no ball in the box" - Given the same evidence, rational actors do not have to agree, their preferences can be different.

Ayup.

Sexual preferences, for example.

As I said earlier, it's trivially easy to ironman that reference to mean one of the political positions regarding the sexual preference. If he had said "abortion", would you tell him that a medical procedure is a completely different thing to an empirical claim?

The reason that theists are generally regarded as irrational in their theism is because there is no reason to privilege the hypothesis that any particular age old cultural text somehow accurately describes important aspects of the universe, even if you'd ascribe to some kind of first mover.

Forgive me if I disagree with that particular empirial claim about how our community thinks.

Like watching William Craig debates, who goes from some vague "First Cause" argument all the way to "the Bible is right because of the ?evidence? of a supernatural resurrection".

"The Bible is right because of the evidence of a supernatural resurrection" is an argument in itself, not something one derives from the First Cause. However, the prior of supernatural resurrections might be raised by a particular solution to the First Cause problem, I suppose, requiring that argument to be made first.

Arguing for a first mover (no restriction other than "something that started the rest") is to arguing for the Abrahamic god what predicting the decade of your time of death would be to predicting the exact femtosecond of your death.

I guess I can follow that analogy - you require more evidence to postulate a specific First Mover than the existence of a generalized First Cause - but I have no idea how it bears on your misreading of my comment.

Such motivated cognition compromises many other aspects of one's reasoning unless it's sufficiently cordoned off, just like an AI that steadfastly insisted that human beings are all made of photons, and needed to somehow warp all its other theories to accommodate that belief.

Source? I find most rationalists encounter more irrational beliefs being protected off from rational ones than the inverse.