Argument against atheism

[Perhaps]

One of my favorite videos. I saw it on TED awhile ago, but I'm glad you brought it up. By the way, the quote from 9:12 is the inspiration for my thread Rationally proving rationality (http://atheistforums.org/thread-9924.html). It also has one of my favorite quotes at the end about the intuitive mind and the rational mind.

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.

I agree that consciousness is not something we perceive - it is what causes us to perceive (although this is an interesting concept, similar to consciously trying to perceive non-existence of the self). Consciousness does arise as awareness of the objective world, but I'm not sure how much of the world I consider objective (you make it sound like you adhere to objectivism and we simply create subjective ideas based on everything that exists) - I'm of the opinion that very few things in the world are actually objective, and from these principle objective items we perceive the subjective world we live in. I agree with the final sentence.

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.

Mhm, I suppose this is true.

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.

I think you should specify your meaning of God is this usage. The ontology of a personal God or even God as a creator may be dependent on the human species, as it mirrors many of our own traits - compassion, hate, anger, love, etc., however a God which simply exists has no need to be consciously perceived. It could be part of the objective world in which we live.

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:

Interesting, I'll have to think about it.