I have to admit that most of this reply has been penned by ColinClout. I was chatting to him when your post appeared, and copied it over to him. Since he has already typed out what he thinks, and I agree with him and certainly cannot express it any more eloquently, I will post his replies. (He does not visit the site anymore.) The last section is straight from me, since he had to leave to attend to other matters, I am sure you will note the change in style - he uses bigger words and more complex syntax.

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I do think it's part of the same issue. As far as I'm concerned, what we are discussing is whether believing in the supernatural is smart or stupid. As I see it there's two distinct parts of the issue.

1) Is there such a thing as the supernatural?
2) If there is, how does it work?

More issues can be introduced like, if there is one or more consciousnesses governing the supernatural is it intelligent? And if it is, how intelligent? With that I mean, knowing everything doesn't help if you can't draw the correct conclusions.
1) A serious question over the idea of a purely naturalistic multiverse is that of determinism. If there is nothing except nature (nothing supernatural) then we seem to be left with a mechanistic multiverse, where all effects proceed from natural causes. This means that the event of someone having the thought 'There is nothing supernatural' is itself only an effect of natural causes. As such, it has no definite truth value.

2) there is nothing irrational in stating that reason cannot answer everything. Once a supernatural being such as the Christian God has been hypothesised, it is rational to admit that He cannot be fully comprehended or explained.

Yes, but how can you? Does god control everything, or just a little? What laws govern the supernatural? It's only possible to reason about the nature of the supernatural if you beforehand define the premises, (just as all christian scholars have to do). But if you can't, (which is the reality in which we live) then you can never ever make any claim on the nature of god what so ever. It just gets silly. Any conclusion will be an argument from ignorance. Mathematically there is one chance among the infinite that the the christian theory of the universe is correct. If you in spite of this make any claim what so ever about the nature of the universe, then you are lying. You would then be pretending to have a plausible explanation when you have no such thing. There are a number of interesting theories backed by pretty numbers on the nature of the universe. Christianity hasn't even got that.
You say 'Mathematically there is one chance among the infinite that the the christian theory of the universe is correct. If you in spite of this make any claim what so ever about the nature of the universe, then you are lying.' This is misleading. In the first place, one chance among the infinite is a vanishingly small chance, but it is not the same as no chance at all. If an extremely unlikely chance had not taken place, then the necessary circumstances for human evolution could not have taken place, yet to argue after the event that since it is so unlikely it has not happened is nonsensical.

Secondly, to make a statement on the basis of limited knowledge, is not lying. In fact, as you yourself argue, there is no other basis on which we can make any statement. Christians say that they believe, on the basis of all the available evidence, that existence has certain attributes, and choose to live on the basis. Non-Christians do the same, making a different interpretation of the evidence.

I'm only interested in discussing faith in the supernatural. I've got no problems with religion. I think, I and the rest of humanity need plenty of guidance in life. I have no problems with religions giving guidance. But for me personaly, if the whole religion hinges of a premis that is a lie then I would stay far away from it.
You have introduced (at least) two value judgements there: 1) humans need 'guidance' (towards what? away from what? for what purpose?) 2) our actions should be predicated on the truth, not on lies. The most important question here, then, is: where do these values come from? Why should we adhere to them?

Considering the history of mankind I beg to differ. The more people believe something and the longer they have believed it the greater chance people accept it as truth no matter what, (I've seen and read plenty of research on this and I'm sure I can dig it up again if nobody here belives me). This means that we should be even more critical toward any philosophical system that is old, like christianity for example
Of course we should be critical - but that holds good for all thought systems. And it is impossible to be intelligently critical without an understanding of what it is we are criticising. And to take an example: if you have known from a very young age that your mother's name was Helen, would that knowledge hold less weight for you than someone telling you today that she was called Derek? the age of a belief is not strictly relevant - more important is the evidence in support of it. One might even argue on the contrary that the fact that for centuries thousands of people have found something credible, whereas a newer theory is as yet untested, counts in favour of older beliefs, but that is not an absolute argument.

Again, you can't use logic and reason about the nature of god, because you don't have any material to work with. If there is a god you or anybody else will never know what god wants. That is cold hard fact. Considering the vastness of the infinite, chances are pretty good that all religions are wrong. That's cold, hard statistical facts.
I agree with you - the exercise of human reason and imagination could never have come to an accurate conclusion about God. That is precisely why Christianity has never argued that it could.

As human beings we can speculate on the nature of the universe, and we can produce any number of theories that will more or less 'save appearances' (i.e. account for all known phenomena). God is the only one in a position of perfect knowledge (which, to respond to one of your earlier points, means he does not need to infer anything, and therefore can't infer wrongly) who can make a totally accurate statement about the nature of things.

Christians state that God has made such a statement, has revealed what we could not have discovered for ourselves, and what we could not have been sure of otherwise.

Yet once that revelation has been made, it can be tested against our knowledge from other sources, judged on its own evidential merits, and we can see what credibility it has. Are the texts reliable, does the world picture they present match our own experience, and so on. On this basis, like any thinking person, we can then decide whether or not we think this is the most likely picture of how things are.

I've admitedly mostly used wikipedia. ... end
The bible most certainly has a set of answers. Other faiths have other sets of answers, sometimes complimentary, sometimes opposing, but they are still a set of answers. Now clearly they cannot all be right, but it is possible that one has the complete truth, it is possible that all have parts of that truth, it is possible that some or all are completely wrong.

I think it is part of our individual development to decide for ourselves which, if any, we embrace, using all the tools we have at our disposal to make the best decision possible. Himind has gone down a similiar route and found a different answer. Other people have posted their different conclusions.

Although I have made a personal decision to believe what the bible says, I completely agree with you that it is wrong to hammer it as the truth. I will willingly share with anyone who invites me to do so, what it says; I will tell them why I believe it is right; but I will always leave them with the challenge to decide for themselves.

Colin Clout & cariad