Today's Atheist Meme of the Day:
Intuition is important and useful. But it's also very fallible. Among other things, it strongly biases us towards what we already believe, or what we want to believe. And that's just as true about religion as anything else. That's why atheists think intuition, by itself, isn't a very good argument for God. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.
I've written recently about the value of utilizing one's emotions and intuition in making decisions, in being happy, and in being "lucky". But that's not the end of the line - it's the start. When it comes to answering questions about the real world, the natural world, intuition really sucks as an answer. It might be a place to start; it might give us the questions that we should seek answers to. But it is not the answer in and of itself.
If our intuition tells us that there's something "more" going on, we should take that as a signal to investigate what that "more" is. We should not take that as the answer that there is something "more", as in: supernatural.
Intuition, emotions, perception, these are all valuable tools. But the tools must be used properly. We shouldn't pick up a hammer and expect to get a nice lathed table leg with it. I suppose it's possible that someone skilled enough with a hammer could do it, but really, the hammer should be used for hammering stuff. Emotions and intuition are great warning signals. They are tools to notify us about things, but reason, logic, and analysis are what we should be using to determine what that emotion and intuition are trying to tell us.
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