…I feel sorry for Atheists. Not to sound disparaging, but I really do. Here in America, positive Atheism [a loose form of religious belief system] is in the so-called minority, and for a reason(?). As such, here in the US we have religious freedom that provides for that expression, any expression, even extremism. And in simple terms, our history indicates such values of freedom whereby we escaped religious persecution, and in many ways are still considered a refuge from the following notion of extremism which by itself, certainly continues to be a concern here and throughout the world; 911 was largely based on religious extremism.

So in that little synoptic view, what we have existing is, Atheism on one side, and then on the other side we have extreme Fundamentalism (literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, dogmatic precepts that of course can lead to violence, and so forth) which has contributed to the problem that I’ll briefly address. And so my ‘cursory thoughts’ are, at best Atheism is just another religion; at worse it’s just Nihilism.

Einstein said:

“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can't hear the music of the spheres.” (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)

Before getting to my questions, and to support my view that Atheism is untenable, here’s the brief definition of Evolution/Darwinism:

Descent with modification from preexisting species : cumulative inherited change in a population of organisms through time leading to the appearance of new forms : the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations. In Darwinian evolution, the basic mechanism is genetic mutation, followed by selection of the organisms most likely to survive.

Pushing back, here are some existential phenomena/higher-consciousness that exist for human beings:
1. Mathematical abstracts
2. Musical genius
3. Sense of wonderment
4. Sense of purpose/Love
5. Cosmological questions (all events must have a cause)
6. NDE’s (near death experiences)
7. Consciousness: human sentience/experience v. pure reason (loosely, a posteriori v. a priori)

(Those are just a few concepts that in my view largely separate us from lower life forms.) But they [in our conscious existence] also can present unresolved paradox (propositions about self-consciousness/self-reference) that exists in life (also see Gödel's incompleteness theory).

So Let me start with number 1. Mathematical abstracts. Why do we have two ways or this dual capacity for knowing the world? Consider falling objects, we avoid them through our cognitive/perceptive abilities. One does not calculate the laws of gravity in order to avoid falling objects to survive in the jungle do they? What survival value does math hold? In Darwinism, there is no reason to believe that the second method springs from a refinement of the first. The former does have a biological need, the latter has no biological significance at all.

I will demonstrate through those seven aforementioned phenomena (and other’s may have more or less), using logical inference, that the probability of a Deity is much more tenable than no-thing, nihilism or: Atheism.

Any takers?