Theism vs. Atheism

You are going back and forth. You don't believe in religion. Now you do believe in religion. You believe in a God, but not the one's religion talks about, but now you believe in Jesus. It's all very contradictory. How on Earth did you arive at your theory independently of religion? Were you a feral child raised by wolves when you came up with this idea? Yours is simply a hallow echo of the religious beliefs we are fed in childhood and like them it does not have the ring of truth. It's simply a way to smuggle in religion, without having to have a religion. You come to the exact same conclusion as religious people. Religion invented the concept of God. Now you want to keep that concept, because it appeals to you, but you want to denounce religion. So you are saying these people were wrong about absolutely everything except the God part. So I repeat - how did they discover there was a God? How can they be wrong about everything, about how the Earth was formed, about how God wants us to worship him, etc. etc. and yet some how have ascertained this incredibly unlikely phenomenon known as the existence of God? It simply doesn't make sense. Either they are right, and there was a God, and he's omniscient and he's revealed the truth to us and given us free will and will punish us if we touch ourselves and all the rest of it.... I mean this is absurd, but at least it's consistent, or there is no God and religion is all a bunch of nonsense. This is also consistent (and consistent with observations, logic, reason and rationality). Your theory is both entirely incompatible with facts and rationality while also being inconsistent. What on Earth caused these people to just come up with this incredible guess and be right? Isn't it more likely they were all just copying and elaborating on each other's stories? Story telling has always been an art in every culture. It is impossible to prove something does not exist without being all knowing. You cannot prove to me that there are not purple Kangaroos with unicorn horns that speak Latin on our planet. Yet there is no evidence that these things exist so a truth seeker must believe they do not. It's absurd to imagine that these things exist. Just like the concept of God. Some omnipotent omnisicent being that punishes us when we are bad and rewards us when we are good? This is clearly nothing more than our desire for a strong paternal influence manifesting itself into a belief system. Yes atheism is a critical analysis of the world. When you see no evidence for something, you don't believe in it. That's what critical thinking is. It's about challenging accepted dogma. Making conclusions based on the facts. Your theory that consciousness is a pervasive property in the universe is not an axiom. It's hypothetically possible but one could hardly argue that it is self evident. It is at best a speculative argument at worst the unsubstantiated yearnings of the best of Carl Sagan combined with the worst of William Blake. I do not know how consciousness arose. I'd imagine it occurred through natural selection but I'm not a biologist or an individual who studies biogenesis or evolution. If I had to guess I'd say it has something to do with how man used his brain and intelligence to out compete other animals. What is so special about self awareness that it requires mysticism to explain? Ultimately this discussion has nothing to do with theism since every aspect of man's evolution can be explained by science. We aren't the descendants of Adam and Eve. We evolved from monkeys. Before that we were single celled life forms. My computer is not conscious. Animals are not self aware. Yet you assert they should be and are. You seem to think that parrots are self aware. Consciousness can only be observed in humans. To a degree chimps can mimic us, with significant behavioural modification via training. Animals are responsive machines. They evolved this way. It helps them survive. Yet they are complex machines of signals which should, according to your theories, result in consciousness. As should machines, even desks, absolutely everything sends signals via electrons. And this is magically supposed to just awake into self awareness? No humans have something which sets us apart. Our highly evolved brains. Natural selection. I'm not a biologist or a brain dude, but I'm sure they could explain this to you. Science is great like that. The division of labour is great like that. Consciousness is neat, but it's certainly not proof that there is a God, or that it's more epistemicly (sic) superior to atheism.