(December 22, 2011 at 1:01 am)Perhaps Wrote: On a side note: sometimes I'm amazed at the speech of some atheists who assert their opinions based on science as those which trump opinions based on faith. One is a stance built upon ultimately subjective evidence which itself has been built upon axioms - assumptions made that can never be proven but allow for all logic and reasoning. The other is a stance built upon ultimately subjective evidence - if you can call personal experience and posteriori justification evidence - which itself has been built upon assumptions made that can never be proven but allow for all illogical thought. We, as a whole, over simplify one of the most complex issues in all of conscious being. In the end, the only thing of value is epistemology which decisively humbles the most arrogant among us.
I too have noticed that some atheists treat the existence of god as something science can help us decide. I agree that if god has any meaning at all it has to be subjective and ontological. It isn't 'out there'
where science can get at it.
Let's see if we can square away a few of the big pieces.
Would you agree that consciousness is not something we perceive. Rather, it is the way the objective world reacts with our fields of consciousness which gives rise to perception. Consciousness arises as awareness of the objective world. There is no separate substrate of the universe made up of consciousness which gives rise to the illusion of an objective world. Rather, it is organisms interacting with the physical world which gives rise to consciousness. Many creatures have this to some degree. But as far as we know, we are the only ones who use the abstract medium of language to describe and ponder the world and ourselves.
The notion of god is not just a ponzi scheme invented by the shrewd to fleece the masses, though some organized religions seem to work that way. Religious experience in the form of gods seems to have arisen everywhere in similar motifs. These experiences may have served a number of purposes but one must be careful not to confuse causation with correlation. Appealing to gods to ensure a harvest or a hunt may have allayed anxiety but it makes no more sense to say that is why men invented gods than it does to say giraffes grew their necks longer in order to reach the higher leaves. In both cases, evolution operates to promote traits with survival value.
Now I personally don't think the god delusion operates purely in terms of mass hypnosis. I don't really think our species would have gone on believing in gods to the degree we have if there wasn't something in our nature that supports the notion. So god's ontology is linked to our own, and dependent on us rather than the other way around.
My own pet theory for what it is in our subjective lives which supports the god hypothesis is the fact that the division of the brain into two hemispheres has actually resulted in two seats of consciousness in us all. I know it sounds weird. More often we think of ourselves as a unity in which the conscious mind is seen as a kind of scoop of the total largely unconscious mind. But the structuring of the brain into two hemispheres serves the purpose of allowing us to attend to focused tasks with our left brain while a separate part of our mind carries on autonomously, scanning the environment for threats and opportunities. I also consider this account as highly provisional but before you dismiss it, watch this video on Ian McGilchrist:
