Ok, I apologize if someone has said largely what I'm saying here, but after reading countless threads and posts on the subject, I honestly couldn't bring myself to continue reading this one.
What we have is a propostion: "People from all over the planet believe in a supernatural deity." If you strip away all the specifics of the various religions, you'll come to this undefined/undefinable supernatual being (or beings) which RAZD seems to be defending ad mauseum. I can sort of see his point about consillience, and this consillience does imply a singular cause. As it stands, I'm aware of only two potential causes being bandied about.
1) Cause 1 is the commonality of the human brain, mind and psyche. As support for this cause, we have uncounted billions of examples of people:
a) Creating completely unreal concepts. i.e. fiction, lies, delusions, etc.
b) Believeing unreal things that they, or others, have conceived through deceit, ignorance, or psychosis.
c) Desiring explanations for natural things that, as yet, have no explanation. (at one time, lightning. now-a-days, the existence of anything rather than nothing, death, etc)
This cause is able to explain, and predict, other such phomenon.
2) Cause 2 is the actual existence of some form of supernatural deity that is not, or is unable to be, understood by human minds.
In support of this cause, we have nothing beyond the phenomenon we are trying to explain. This cause is unable to predict anything beyond the specific phenomenon we are trying to explain.
When we have cause 1, with it's superior predictive and explanatory abilities and known existence, compared to cause 2, with no predictive/explanatory abilities and is unevidenced except by the very phenomenon we're considering, I think it is not only logical, but right to place most of our support behind cause 1, and until more evidence is brought forth, to ignore cause 2.
Can RAZD, or any other Deist, tell me where in my analysis I have performed logical fallacies, or have misunderstood the argument?