Balancing Faith and Science

If a belief in god is not irrational, then a belief in anything no matter how absurb is then also not irrational. So believers in UFOs, ghosts, ESP, IPU (Invisible pink or purple unicorns on Pluto), Scientology, you name it are just as rational.Sorry, I just don't buy it! Belief may be part of humanity, but IMHO it is ridiculous to call it rational. Believe what you will but to me the only rational belief is based on evidence.

I believe that gods and religion are "extraneous beliefs", with no real basis behind them except for some hairless apes with big brains started thinking such things were needed to explain the whys of existence. My feeling is that we all need to grow up and realize that there is no reason for our existence, we just exist. Now I feel we should contribute to society and "play nice", you know the golden rule and all, but I don't think we need gods and religion to do that.

It is your belief that there has to be a reason, a "why", for the universe to exist. For me it just does and it's a wonderful thing. That is no reason to believe there has to be a why. For the second part, why do you limit yourself to only two possible answers, aren't there possibley an infinite number?

This whole discussion reminds me of the old quest to determine how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A pin can be easily produced, examined, measured and tested, but no one yet has ever produced, examined, measured and tested any angels yet. So why even posulate or ruminate about angels dancing on pins? Thats how I feel about the beginings an purpose of the universe. We have a universe, where are these god(s) or whatever that produced it, if they did indeed produce it? Have they been examined, measured, and tested yet? Why not? I never thought it useful to conjure up something imaginary to explain something physical.

What beliefs of mine are irrational? Where I said we should all 'play nice'? That's not irrational, it's from experience, here in the real world. Things that are not here in the real world, like gods, do not exist for me until someone can produce evidence of such things.

But those are based on evidence (or lack there of) and experience. I've never experienced or seen any evidence of gods, so I live my life as though they didn't exist. There is no evidence that there is a 'reason for our existence' but plenty of evidence that we exist, or at least that I do. By the way I never claimed all my beliefs are rational, after all man is an irrational animal with only brief moments of rationality now and then.