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Judaism (among other faiths) affirms theism - the belief in God. In practice, while religious people claim to affirm this belief as true, most have never seriously considered the question "What is God?" The problem is that merely stating that God is real says nothing about what God is; claiming to believe in something without precisely defining what that something is, is close to believing nothing at all. When pressed to describe specifically what they believe in, the average person only can repeat claims about God's actions, or about God's love for humanity. Even assuming that said actions actually happened, or that said relationship actually exists, this says little about the nature of God; it really only tells us about a particular historical incident, or about how people describe their relationship to the divine.

'Everybody's entitled to their own opinion' goes the platitude, meaning that everybody has the right to believe whatever they want. But is that really true? Are there no limits on what is permissible to believe? Or, as in the case of actions, are some beliefs immoral? Surprisingly, perhaps, many have argued that just as we have a moral duty not to perform certain sorts of actions, so we have a moral duty not to have certain sorts of beliefs. No one has expressed this point of view more forcefully than the distinguished mathematician W. K. Clifford: 'It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence.' "

Others of similar stature have echoed this sentiment. Biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, for example, declared, 'It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.' And Brand Blanshard has proclaimed that where great human goods and ills are involved, the distortion of belief from any sort of avoidable cause is immoral, and the more immoral the greater the stakes.

I am firmly persuaded by the logic. Thus, we should not believe in God without reason. It seems, then, that we would be obligated to search for reasonable arguments to believe in God. Finding such reason we would be obliged to believe in God; lacking such reason we would be obliged to dismiss God's existence as a unproven hypothesis.

Actually "Faith" is very powerful, whether GOD exists or not "Faith" can do amazing things including overcoming disease and sickness. The mind can force the body to comply is you have enough willpower to do so. Faith and Willpower seem to go hand in hand. Also Faith does not have to be FAITH in a GOD. It can be Faith in a Idea much like ZEN.

No it is not a placebo... You can believe in something strong enough that you can actually make it happen. Your mind is more powerful than you give it credit for.

I actually have a true story that I read once in the newspaper. It revolves around two men. One with a faithful family, and one with almost no family.

. . . Two men were in the hospital, dying of the exact same illness. Both were of similar age, body type, physical/mental condition etc. One of the men had a religious family that went to church on a weekly basis. The other was an immigrant, with little family. The family that he did have was not religious, and he was in strained contact with them.

. . . The man with the religious family was consistently prayed for. The immigrant, on the other hand, received no prayers. Eventually, the man with the religious and large family lived, while the immigrant with almost no family died. The doctors were absolutely dumbfounded, as they could not come up with any sort of logical reason as to why one lived and the other didn't. They even called in other doctors from around the world for extra examination of the case, but still no logical explanation.

Therefore, the only thing supporting the reason of the one man's well being was the amount of prayers he received from his highly religious family. Again, this is a true story. I kid you not.

Dude, the fact that they will mostly show you the inspiring stories doesn't take away the fact that it actually happened.

That's because situations like that are rare, and almost never happen. God doesn't dish out a miracle to every person in the world. Refer to the millions of starving, homeless people on the face of the planet.

Exactly right. Now take notice to the Old and New testaments, how does a God go from being a total whackjob that annihilates civilizations with plagues and deluges, obviously likes to interfere with mankind, to a God that just doesn't care, and does nothing to the people that starve everyday? That's some funny s**t right there. In my point of view, reason always takes the win. It's simple, you want something done right? you gotta do it yourself. It's that simple people, no miracle hand is going to push you away from a car accident. We're all we have and that's it.

I've seen people bring out that cheap card before, and it makes me laugh. God obviously can't be proven to exist. It's a matter of you believing or not believing in a higher existance.

To be honest, I look down on people that don't believe in something. It doesn't necessarily have to be God, but some higher power.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not 100% for faith. I just weigh each in how I see fit. Some situations demand faith, some demand reason, and some can call for both.