Wow. Was that whole spiel really necessary? Athiesm isn't very difficult to define. It's just the rejection of the existence of divinity. A theist. No god.
I actually consider myself an agnostic leaning athiest. I haven't made up my mind completely, but based on what I am able to observe and reason, it makes more sense to not believe in God. I accept scientific discovery, repeatable, predictable, observable, phenomenon. You can say that I don't accept reality because I require evidence... but I think that those who believe in god don't accept reality because they rely on faith and things that are impossible to verify.
You reject the existence of "divinity" - so what does divinity even mean? God? Ok, so define what God is. Is that all that's "divine" throughout theism? What makes something "divine" throughout theism? Is there any single definition of the "divine" in theism that "atheism" itself is rejecting? Is there a definition that you accept? You may feel there is no immortal, physical/ethereal bearded man in the sky who created everything and magically peers into the future and magically wields power over all nature -but is that theism or caricature?
Those who are able to think ahead and plan and reason were better prepared to survive.
That's intelligence. Intelligence contributed to our survival as a species. We don't live like animals (as you are describing the way animals are observed surviving) because we are capable of higher thought through evolution. Who knows--maybe some day other creatures will evolve to possess the ability. /Crackpot.
Maybe being reflective and searching for abstract truths is a consequence of our species being successful--we have the time to use our minds this way.
In these times, being able to think and reason and question spiritual things helps one survive by not joining a cult and drinking the kool-aid ;-P
(I'm being kind of serious there.)
That doesn't jive with me. So basically, you need god to trust your own thoughts and know anything? Maybe I'm not understanding this right, because it just sounds so absurd to me: Humans are incapable of thought and rationality without god--therefore there is a god. It sounds like quite a jump--There's a god because you are thinking, so there.
Anyway. Really interesting post.
You are absolutely right, we do have much higher thinking than animals - yet undeniably at some point in our evolutionary history, an ancestral species of ours did have to survive without higher thinking. Never-the-less, what I meant to be demonstrating was that evolution doesn't care if we perceive truth, or conceptualize truth. Merely perceptions and conceptualizations which aid survival are favored, which should be consistent, but not necessarily true. Even if we are perceiving and conceiving reality accurately, we know we do not do either completely, and thus not fully truthfully.
The following is my explanation of C.S. Lewis's quote, whose argument is explored more in-depth in his apologetic book "Miracles."
What C.S. Lewis points out in that quote is that in order to trust our thoughts and perceptions of reality to be true, we have to accept that there is such a thing as a "true self" to experience them, and then an "objective truth" in our reality. But because the laws of our reality are based on interaction, and not rationality, if our thoughts are merely products of the physical processes we observe in our "true reality," then they are not based in rationality, but interaction. Thus, what you believe is determined by nature, not your own "convictions" - not the logic of another's argument, but the varying chemical electric reactions of the brain. So not only do we have to accept that there is an objectively true reality, but that our minds are in someway beyond the reality they observe and understand. This implies we are not simply physical, but something more. Lewis defines this 'awareness that is beyond physical nature' as the spiritual. But just because your thoughts are not influenced solely by movements of nature, does not mean you're perceiving the true and objective reality "accurately." This goes back to the evolution argument before, and how do we know we even perceive reality truthfully?
So you must not only recognize the physical reality has an objective and truthful nature, and that to ever understand that true nature, your own thoughts cannot be solely based in the physical reality, and thus reside in a "non-physical" or "spiritual" true self - but that the perceptions you have must accurately observe and relay this true reality to the spiritual self. Lewis compared this happening in nature to "upsetting a milk jug and getting a map of London." He infers from this that in our physical reality, Rationality cannot come from Irrationality anymore than Something cannot come from Nothing. Thus, our perceptions and thoughts, in being rational, came from a rational thing (as we know we have not always existed), who in being rational cannot Himself be of the irrational yet interactive based physical reality (thus He is of the "Spiritual") - and Lewis identifies that rational thing that imparted rationality to us as God.
Therefore, Lewis finally concludes that because you need "God" to think, you cannot use thought to disprove God, because the very act of rational thinking proves a reality beyond the observably physical, and cannot come from the irrational nor itself - thus another rational being, ultimately termed as "God."
EDIT: I may not have done his argument justice though, as this is my summation and understanding of it. If you wish to hear his argument (which takes chapters) and understand the position better, then I recommend you read "Miracles." Lewis, as a former Atheist himself, often explores what it means to be an atheist, and its implications.
