After a protracted and painful crisis of faith, I have seized upon the idea that if the origin of life could be shown to be possible only through nature and natural processes without the influence of a creator/god, then that could do away with any pragmatic need for the existence of a deity. Is this a tenable position?

If God exists and he knows it all, even the future, then he knew Hitler would go to hell before Hitler was even born. Why would God give someone life, just to send him to hell for all eternity? Is this fair to Hitler and all those doomed to go to hell or is this proof that God doesn't really know it all, not the future at least?

Is this bad logic? As all religions claim they are right and all others wrong, then only one can be right (though they can all be wrong). And is Pascal's Wager now statistically a complete waste of time with so many religions to choose from? And why should the comparative age of a religion serve to lend it credence and respectability?

In response to question 26 [http://www.amherst.edu/askphilosophers/question/26], should it not be possible for an omnipotent being to create the possibility for a contradictory object to exist?

I remember reading A.J. Ayer quoted somewhere as saying 'All morality based on authority is worthless' in the context of religious authority which I took to mean dictates like the Ten Commandments. Am I right in thinking he meant that acting morally based on fear of punishment or reward in an afterlife is repugnant because one is motivated wrongly, i.e., purely out of self-interest, or by just blindly conforming to one's religious text of choice? If this is so are we not only left with secular humanism as a basis for 'good' acts without self-interest? All religions seem to have similar ethical commandments which would point to their human (and sociological) rather than divine origins, wouldn't you say? I believe the Vatican has 'approved' Aristotle's ethics too which surely underlines my previous point. Are there any beginners' texts dealing with these matters you can recommend? Thanks for a great and edifying site.

If I believe that God does not exist, but at the same time think that the idea of God is meaningful, am I an atheist? If not, then what position - philosophically - do I take?

Is it fair to say that when Western philosophers who are religious (such as a few who answer our questions here) profess 'faith' as a justification, they are effectively going against all the tenets of the logic and philosophical analysis they are quite happy to apply elsewhere to epistemology, ontology, &c? Is it an effective shrug of the shoulders and a 'There ya go! let's move on!' cop out? This seems particularly important to me in the light of Christians masquerading as Intelligent Designer advocates. I find it hard to believe any scientist or philosopher who was not religious to start with would find the mechanism of the eye or whatever 'irreducibly complex'and use it to deny Darwin's theory. They are simply trying to bolster beliefs already held, as no philosopher would dispute. And the 'faiths' some philosophers cling to are surely the dominant ones in their societies and/or the ones they were brought up to believe in. Are we now in the realms of anthropology and psychology in the above beliefs...

In many sporting competitions (and other types of competition) people will pray to God for help. Would it be fair to call such help cheating if it were granted? Is it ethical to even ask for what would be an unfair advantage over an opposing side in what should be a purely human competition? The critics of performance enhancing drugs seem to say nothing on this issue.

Can "God" be used as a name for whatever created the universe, while not actually meaning the "God" that exists in religion? Just a quick example, if the Big Bang was caused by a massive black hole that eventually absorbed all existing matter before imploding, could we call that process "god"? Or is "god" a defined word?

Is the question of whether God (or a god) can be posited as the 'designer' of the universe related in any way to the question of whether we can know anything about an author from studying their books?