I know I'm late getting back to the party, but back when y'all were talking religion there was an undercurrent to the discussion that it was the atheists/agnostics/etc vs the christains.

As if there were really only two choices - God or No God.

It reminded me of a somewhat famous philosophical argument known as "Pascal's Wager" named for Blaise Pascal, the mathematician. In very simple terms, Pascal's Wager goes thus, "If there is a God, you gain everything by believing in Him. If there is no God, you lose nothing by believing in him."

The big problem with all such arguments, including the quote from CS Lewis and particularly any attempt to define absolute right and wrong by Christian dogma is that there is a third choice, or rather an almost infinite number of other choices - Islam, Hinduism, Bhuddism, even Chinese folk religion to name a few of the ones with larger numbers of adherents. Even within the umbrella of Christianity there is signficant divergence of opinion about the details - for example, Mormons differ significantly from Catholics.

So, I thought it might interesting to get a global perspective on the demographics of religion:




More info, including the projection that by 2025 the proportion of Christians will have decreased to about 25% with Islam making up for the majority of that loss, is available by clicking on the image

Random CS Lewis factoid: Most people don't know this, but Treebeard the Ent in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings was intended to be a cariacature of CS Lewis.

And finally, whatever faith you believe in (or not believe in for the aetheist types), it's called "faith" for a reason. Faith is something you believe in but can not prove. Consquently, any arguments or justifications based on faith can not prove anything either. Such arguments can convince or sway people, but ultimately it all boils down to believing in the unprovable.