Oh, glo.
@Pascal's Wager:
Leaving aside the questions of whether one *can* or *should* attempt to acquire faith for selfish reasons, Pascal's Wager is a wholly neutral bet. For every possible god who rewards a given type of faith, there is another possible god who punishes that faith, and a third who just doesn't care. Having no way to evaluate the likelihood of these gods (thanks, Omphalos hypothesis!), the expected afterlife benefit of believing in any combination of gods (including none) is equal.
@Cosmological argument:
There is no escape from some form of illogic. We have an eternal universe (infinite regress), or a first cause (special pleading). A first cause need not look anything like a God, either. So this is not a logical argument for the existence of God.
@Fine-tuning argument:
Measuring the probability that things will turn out exactly as they have only makes sense from the present, at which point that probability is 1. Otherwise, there is no reason to restrict ourselves to *this* form of life on *this* planet in *this* solar system in *this* galaxy, and you don't have a solid basis for conjecture about the general probability of life arising.
@Morality argument:
You're just incredulous that a desire to be better to each other could exist without a God. Don't mistake your incredulity for divine necessity.
Indeed, we irreligious are often incredulous when Christians make this argument; do you truly believe yourself incapable of holding back from raping and murdering without a divine daddy telling you it's wrong and threatening eternal damnation if you do it anyway?
We grope towards a better morality and find it a worthy pursuit, whether the ends are absolute or no. Those who say it can't be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. At any rate, it's preferable to wondering whether the next priest I see is gonna summon a couple bears to maul me. That's not an ethical standard I can get behind.
@Evolution:
All I can say is, you should try learning about it some time as something other than opposition research. Evolution is not the enemy of faith; it is simply a highly robust theory of biological development.
@Prophecies:
What I'm mostly seeing here is retroactive reinterpretation of the Bible to manufacture correct prophecies out of nothing and deny prophecies that failed. An omnipotent deity could do better if it cared to.
@Historicity:
No, the Bible's historicity is not verified in anything close to its entirety. No global flood, for starters. More importantly, while relevant historical scholars broadly agree there was an itinerant preacher put to death by Pontius Pilate, there is no such consensus around claims of resurrection and divinity.
@Formatting:
Notice how I sometimes press the enter key and create space between groups of sentences that are about different topics, so that people can tell where one topic ends and another begins? You should really try it some time.
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