Yes there is a Creator and he made a Way for us. Not for only those of high intellect to attain, nor for those with abundant means to aquire, but for everyone; regardless of station in life, capacity to fully understand, or inclination toward right or wrong, to approach a higher existance.

Yet for all the in depth searching,one need only look back to the origin of free choice in the garden of Eden and ask ourselves do we as if Gods place our faith in the commandments only given to slay us equally and show our eakness in the flesh…or do we accept the Word of God with childlike faith and escape the unavoidable penalty.
This is the Tree of life, take from it eat freely, and you will never die. But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you cannot eat///lest you surely die.
And He yet He stands and asks every last man and woman at some point… Will you finally Believe Me, and choose to Live?…or will you yet believe a lie?

One simple fact remains yet is overlooked when trying to explain God or describe His reasonings. The creator exists at the end of all things and where we each finish in the grand scheme of things is a past occurance to Him. And the unfairness you sense in this life can oft be explained by realizing that the very one who asks God “why”…may already have the answer for himself in heaven and not wish to alter things in the least.

If you can’t see it at once…by all means read it twice my friends. And by the grace of God through Jesus Christ…choose to live.

That poll is meaningless as far as the general public (even the “Tweeting” public).

@denis: “The whole point of religion is to retard technology and progress so that they can continue to flourish.”

The whole point of religion, eh?

Not much of point using reason or rational when people can get away with absurdities like that.

But I’ll try.

I consider myself quite “religious” by your standards, and I happen to run a web design business. My dad is a senior developer. Many of my Christian friends are involved in the tech industry.

Not to mention the fact the at modern technology and real science have their roots in the Judeo-Christian worldview. Say, Isaac Newton, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Michael Farrady, Samuel Morse, Louise Pastuer, Bacon, Kepler, Pascal, DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin, Mauray, Lord Kelvin, Lister…
http://tinyurl.com/z89t6

So before you accuse religion of being “anit-technology” or “anit-progress”, please throw out this religious crackpot’s theory of gravity. He probably got the idea from praying to an apple on his desk.

Good night……

If you make this poll on the streets all across the world, you know very well the result will be much different. But sure, things are moving and people really are slowly abandoning religion (mostly thanks to internet and knowledge it provides), but we have a long way to go..

Visualise the benighted origins of religiosity; It’s quite obvious that the early Human mind was BOUND to generate mythological imagery of an Elysian nature & from there, receptive, fanciful & PREDACIOUS minds took over.

‘Beliefs’ were surely born of ignorance & fear of the unknown. With this realization, why can’t we all recognise simple basic facts & treat ALL ‘Faiths’ of today as ever they really were – - – Dogmatic preservations of irrational early thought – - – Pure Phantasmic Godswallop!

The PAST is unveiled through time. Of necessity, we must Profit from it, not Perpetuate it!

@ Brian: Although I am not sure being a gnostic Atheist could be considered 100% certain, there are certainly logical reasons for concluding a perfect, omiscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, intelligent creator could not exist (primarily that it leads to a being with multiple sets of mutually exclusive properties). If you loosen the definition of God it becomes more difficult, of course. So although I would not say it is as good a conclusion as agnostic atheism, I would disagree that is is just as religious as theism.

Personally, I’m an agnostic atheist. I have no friggin’ clue whether or not there’s a god, but I (unscientifically) think there probably isn’t. (And frankly I just don’t care about it enough; I don’t consider it an Important Life Question.)

Non-agnostic atheists are just as “religious” as theists.

(Or perhaps I’m just rationalising my averse reaction to being lumped in with the “there is no god, and those who believe in one are idiots” crowd. Those who think they know for a fact that god doesn’t exist are deluding themselves just as much as those who believe in the factual existence of god.)

We could also speculate that eight years of evangelical Bushism strengthened the opposition culture, which became more vocal about its non-majority views. I’ve always thought that an especially dominant/oppressive main culture can breed strong subcultures, which is why you have Japanese perversion, punks in Salt Lake City, great vegetarian restaurants in Munich, etc.

Or maybe this is just the forward march of progress? Abolitionism, women’s suffrage, civil rights, feminism, gay pride, militant atheists, …

I sort of agree with @lmb that the existence of God is unknowable, but only for certain more theoretical/mathematical definitions of God that I think most theists don’t actually believe. Most theists believe in a “guy in the sky” who is listening to their prayers and who cares about their lives, and who occasionally appears in our world to parcel out land and kill Egyptians and that sort of thing.

And like Xan said, there are an infinite number of unknowable things that transcend our frame of reference, so I also apply Occam here.

Also, @Xan, thanks for reminding me about Russell’s Teapot, that really is great. You might enjoy this lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equfju9kJfA
Although it is a bit insulting to theists.

And whatever its downsides, one of the great things about religion is that it can provide a community infrastructure and a sense of comfort to people who need it. Social connections to other people, sympathy, and comfort are really important to leading a happy and healthy life. Although that community can come with negatives too — bigotry, racism, ignorance, discouraging independent thought.

It’d be great to have more supportive communities/social institutions that are non-theistic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyauGeRa5T0

At the University of Arizona, there have been some (seemingly) objective/non-religious studies of consciousness and the possibility of an afterlife, and possible connections to quantum physics. Stuart Hameroff, maybe? Or, maybe Gary Schwartz… either way, while it can be a little far-fetched, it’s at the very least something to think about.
Check these links out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Schwartz
http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/

If I remember correctly, one of their studies “found” that certain quantum particles which “may be responsible for consciousness” are still just as active after death. Which doesn’t prove the existence of God, no, but maybe “spirituality” is just very big things happening on a very small scale. Am I even making sense anymore?

Sorry if I’m getting a bit deep here, I’ve a lot of thoughts on this issue, but no real idea how to say it. My point being, though, that I believe it is absolutely impossible for us to know “what’s out there”, at least not while we’re alive. I’ve never been a religious person, I realized that God most likely does not exist when I was about 8 years old. However, that won’t stop me from thinking of the infinite number of possibilities. What’s out there? Most likely nothing at all.

But, I suppose we’ll never know.

I agree with you about the existence of God being impossible to prove or disprove, but as you say the only sane choice, IMHO, is to assume it’s not real until we have any evidence on the contrary.

That being said, I think this only applies to the concept of God in its most general and abstract form. All the particular religions that exist are tied to specific historical and social contexts, and I believe we have enough data and means to show that their claims of absolute truth are not actually true (because, at the very least, there’d be no particular reason to give more credit to any one of them than to the others).

However, it still strikes me as impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God; as defined, God is outside physical reality, and thus trying to argue within about God is prone to be, well, a question of belief, one way or the other. (See all the attempts at logically proving or disproving said existence, and how all empirical facts can be interpreted in either way too. See Kant’s first critique. Though some of the logical arguments about whether prayer works or not, whether God can interact with the creation etc are quite fun.)

So, yeah, if applying Occam’s Razor, we should do without. However, that is not formal proof either; it just seems useful and sane.

My conclusion indeed is that the question is unanswerable, and that unless they can make a proof one way or the other, science is better of not making a statement and claiming “You know, we don’t know, the question is not within our domain.”