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Given that there exists not one piece of evidence that god does exist, it is reasonable to think that he does not.
The person who relies on reason to justify their belief in god is no more reasonable than the schizophrenic that thinks his tuna sandwich channels the instructions of the apostle Paul.
In short, if you want to believe in god, reason cannot be your justification, since there are no reasons. Faith is a different topic.
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I disagree with this.
One of the
definitions of reason is:
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3. An underlying fact or cause that provides logical sense for a premise or occurrence:
There is reason to believe that the accused did not commit this crime.
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If you were an Israeli who was born after Moses led your fellow Israeli's out of Egypt (therefore you missed the whole "waters parting" spectacle) and a so-called "prophet" said x was going to happen, and the probability of them knowing x was going to happen at that time was so slim it would make roulette seem like a +EV game, and x did happen - you would have
reason to believe what they say, or at the very least investigate their claims and keep an open mind.
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And tell me, what is this x of which you speak?
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I don't know, pick any prophecy from the old testament. (it was only the prophets which kept the Jews together)
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What does the "prophet" making a lucky guess have to do with the reasonableness of god's existence?
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All prophecy does have the possibility of being freakish chance, coincidence, lucky guess, or magic trick.
It's all a wager Aytumious, at the end of the day nothing is certain, no matter how much both sides argue and shake their respective books about ... it's all a gamble.
If something has a possibility to be true, then it has a possibility to be true, how big and small you rate those things is up to you. You just place your wager on what you think is the best bet and go from there.
But I don't think dismissing all theism as blind faith and without reason is correct. The Jewish people were repeatedly enslaved and persecuted and prophecy was the only thing to keep them together through all that when it would have been so much easier to abandon their faith.
Prophets like Daniel, Ezekial, and Isaiah, and Moses showed them something that made them go willingly into the lions dens and fires singing psalms to their God when renouncing their faith would have let them stay with their families and have citizenship with whoever was ruling them at the time would have been a much easier option.
Therefore if a prophet said God said x would happen and x did happen, one could either reject x citing coincidence or listen to that prophet and wager they were telling the truth.
Were they? Who knows? But it's important to note that that the Israelites stoned many "prophets" which came whose prophecies failed, so one would think they weren't easily duped by "one guess wonders" and these prophets who claimed to be talking for God knew that if they were lying they faced immediate death.
Not all theists are 'emotional lightweights' needing the shoulder of an invisible father to lean on when life gets rough, there is reasoning involved in some cases.
Cheers,
SDM