I assume you all know about this.

An alternative - The Atheist's Wager
This seems to be much more reasonable, both for atheists and theists :
"It is better to live your life as if there are no Gods, and try to make the world a better place for your being in it. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, He will judge you on your merits and not just on whether or not you believed in Him."

(And if God is not benevolent, he's gonna git ya whatever you do!)

Yes I'm aware of it, and I think it is inherently flawed.

For those who don't know, the reader's digest version is you ought to believe in God because even if he doesn't exist, the benefits of believing outweigh any liabilities. Sortof, "Hey, why not believe? You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain."

My two thoughts on it are:

1) I am amused by how predictable a mathematician is in coming up with a spiritual theory. Methodical scientific method. Of course, he's a mathematician! LOL

2) Belief in something is not logical or rational. It's gut, soul, heart, etc. If you believed in God simply on some pros/cons based theorem, then I don't think that truly is belief. Compare it to love for a spouse. Do you add up all the pros and cons and then conclude, "okay I love them." No. Its a subjective.

Tim

He may look like he's produced a weak docu-comedy eating fast food for a month, but the man talks a heck of a lot of sense, gents....

And he has a damn hot girlfriend.

Johnny, could you elaborate and detail how Occams Razor supports the existence of a God, apart from Trodgers, there isn't much depth to the discussion.

Personally, I pretty agree with JDlush. I'm not one of those really annoying secular humanists who turn atheism into a religion in itself. If there is a God and someone can prove that it/he/she's existence is provable then I'd be happy.

I can't really think of too many definites in life, I've read too many books on fuzzy logic and philosophy books discussing the possibility of 'our' universe being merely being a computer program left to run, or that Barrow and Tipler's Cosmological Anthropic Principle could mean that our definitions of God would be something that life on earth could evolve into a LONG way into the future.

Molina

Molina and JDrush's comments have prompted me to share two beliefs I have. I hope I don't start a huge religious fight. Feel free to disagree

First, I am a Christian and believe that God exists, and he intentionally makes it not so obvious to believe in his existence. A huge part of being a Christian is faith. God could easily make it obvious to us all, but then faith would be destroyed. Faith can be an incredible thing because it causes a person to look within, to search, to come to their own decisions, to grow, and to believe. Its a gift. It causes people to become better IMHO. Its like a teacher that forces you to take the long, difficult road. You complain while you are on the road, but once you get there, you look back and realize the teacher was doing you a favor by making it difficult.

Second, I disagree with the part of the atheist wager that says a benevolent god will judge you on merits. Of course, I disagree because I am Christian and pretty much believe in "faith not deeds." In my opinion, God is perfect and none of us, no matter how many good deeds we do, are worthy in our own right to be in his perfect place (least of all me). I realize this is contradictory to how we usually think. We prefer a world where good deeds are rewarded and bad punished. However, as far as God's judgement goes, I think even one sin, one tiny little sin, makes a person "ineligible" to be in a perfect place. I think God believes that too, and that's why he sent his son as a sacrifice for our sins. God shows his benevolence by not judging us on our deeds, but allowing sacrifice to erase our misdeeds.

Well, I hope this doesn't come across as too preachy. I'm not much of a proselytzer, and I'd hate to lose my quasi-degenate status.

Tim

I saw this complicated discussion panel about religion and the existence of God.

One guy had a great short comment. He felt the fact that most people and all cultures have a belief in right and wrong, good and bad, or ethics indicates morality is the norm for most people. This comes from inside each of us and God dwells inside.

My faith is not heavy or detailed. None of us will know for sure until we die. Jesus has been a huge influence with his words and life. It seems logical that he was divinely inspired. Following Jesus does not require absolute faith in Virgin birth or the Republican party or a literal interpretation of the Bible. Faith includes doubt.

Faith is healthy for the heart. Praying for others is good for you even if there is no God.

I think that Darwin's theories of evolution and intelligent design can work together.

My prayers for the safety and health of my favored loved ones seem to work. Thinking that Jesus watches what you do and knows what you think is a guide for better living and behavior. I enjoy this discussion

William of Occam's Razor is not that 'the simplest explanation is more likely to be correct' but actually that 'nature abhors an unnecessary multiplication of entities'.

If there are 2 theories that fit the facts equally well then Occam's Razor demands you should choose the simplest.

It's the fitting the facts well that is the problem for creationists. Their explanation doesn't fit the observed facts at all, whereas evolution by natural selection provides a fantastically good fit for all observed fossil and DNA data. To insist that there is a creator meddling away under (or against) the proven natural selection mechanism is an unnecessary multiplication of entities - he (or she) isn't needed to explain the observed facts.

Now before evolution was discovered a rational person clearly had to believe in a Creator - the existence of all these apparently perfectly 'designed' organism needed to be explained and throughout human history people had invoked god or gods to explain it. What other explanation could there be? You might argue of which God (or gods) were the real ones or over which holy book was the best reflection of his will (Islam, the Jews and Christians all worship the same god after all) but a Creator there must be..

Darwin's 'dangerous idea' was to point out that other purely natural and mechical explanation - one that didn't rely on supernatural forces. That is why the fervently religious attacked him and his 'idea' and are still trying it one 150 years later, even when by now with advances in molecular biology it has been proven beyond any rational doubt..

To a rationalist's mind evolution takes the need for God away - at least to the exent that Occam's Razor renders him unnecessary to explain the observed world.

That isn't to say that he doesn't exist or that belief in Him is a bad thing - it may for example be true that religious people are simply more caring and better neighbours than atheists - it just means that those who profess a belief in God really are in the realms of pure belief - they only have faith and no proof...the strength, longevity and numbers of people believing the same thing also fail to make such a belief any more or less likely to be true as it remians founded on belief rather than evidence...

I am an atheist simply because I see not one shred of evidence to tell me that any god or (ghost, faery, unicorn or any other supernatural thing) exists in this universe. I don't regard a 2000 yr old book written by a then obscure Jewish sect as constituting evidence any more than the equivalent works in hundreds of other human cultures.

As a result I take the view that it's for mankind to take responsibility for its own actions and decisions - I'm probably best described as a scientific rationalist or humanist.