It sounds like what you're talking about is Pascals Wager[0]

The idea being that belief in God pays of well if true. And is alright if false. Disbelief in God pays off poorly if true, and alright if false. Therefore, any logical person ought to be a Christian, since the consequences of belief are net positive either way. Or so the thought goes.

As a person of faith, I will say that this thought experiment is fairly flawed. For one, you must apply Pascals wager to all faith systems simultaneously if you want to be sure you get the best outcome. But of course, it's not equally likely that Pastafarianism is the one true way as is Buddhism as is Atheism. How do you weight the possibilities in such a way to do an honest analysis? These things are based on what you believe already - so then the question of what to believe becomes recursive, really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

I’m agnostic. I was raised in a relatively strict, traditional Roman Catholic family. At age 18, I embraced a strong atheist stance, influenced by the books by Hitchens and Dawkins being published around that time. Eventually my interest in this stance lessened.

However, I dislike this “act of faith” line of reasoning and find it disingenuous. In the Roman Catholic tradition, believing is an act of faith. There isn’t a “proof” so to speak for why one should believe in God, etc. That’s not to say there aren’t various reasons proposed by religious thinkers.

But to say that an atheist’s not believing in God is an act of faith in itself is strange to me. I think it’s sort of a mischaracterization of atheism. Not believing in God isn’t an act of faith. It’s declining to take that act of faith in the first place. Arguments about the influence science aren’t even necessary here.

As to my own beliefs, my position is to decline the leap of faith. I don’t believe in God, but neither do I rule out the possibility that there is a God, especially in a more pantheistic or possibilian sense (see David Eagleman).

I think it’s fair to say that science hasn’t explained everything about the universe yet. I think it’s presumptuous to argue otherwise.

Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s fair to say my lack of a leap is itself an act of faith.

...unless we want to go down the rabbit hole in which every thought or action is an act of faith...

I love how this thread is gradually devolving into a religious argument, exactly what the article was warning about in the first place.

I disagree with a lot of what you wrote, but I think the most obvious one is - this exact argument can be used to show that you must believe in the Hindu gods. Or in Islam. Or in Mormonism. Or in any of a number of other (mutually exclusive) religions.

What makes you think any particular God is the right one?

Edit: cleared up the language to make the point clearer.

I think instead of making Pascals wager, it's more useful to simply ask: What's the likelihood (or evidence) that x religion is human created?

Even though it's unknowable, science prefers simplicity. As scientist we should prefer the model of the world with the fewest number of assumptions. The existence of something is more complex than non-existence (which is the default). If we could explain the world without a god just as well as with one then there is no reason to go for the more complex theory. That is especially true in e.g. the Christian sense of god, which comes with a ton more assumptions.

I don’t know if a god exists or not, but I feel pretty confident that it wouldn’t be the puerile and judgmental, contradictory, oh-so-Human prick described in Abrahamic religions. Hopefully any creator is going to recognize the many limitations of its creations, and if not, good luck guessing its whims.