Give me the goods

I know from personal experience that spirit exist. To ignore that would be hypocritical. I feel the need to engage and do for them as they also do for me the same as I would a living  person. I might have misunderstood the question. I thought you were asking what do you get to as a benefit from my belief. Not a factor for my belief. Caring for my dead us a priority even over working with the gods.

With spirituality and religion we don't always have immediate access to hard evidence even though they are built upon observation. So sometimes it's simply best to go with commonsense or logic to determine if something is stupid to accept or has good reason to consider it. If you already know or are 99.9 % sure God exists you can be very open-minded about many aspects of information and Theistic knowledge....once wrestling with whether or not God exists is no longer an obstacle things change dramatically if you're an obsessed thinker. For one, if God exists it changes the dynamics of reality so while things can get very strange everything must harmonize with logic.

Lol I feel you on that one. That's our curse as God lovers, we want everyone to experience what life has to offer on a spiritual level. Just keep yourself open to information and don't limit your beliefs to doctrine or dogma unless they are appropriate for application. And then you will always experience something you haven't before, don't hold anything back from God and God won't hold anything back from you. One thing people tend to trap themselves into, is lack of freedom. Religion (not referring to any particular) seems to have a knack for locking up a souls freedom in God, it's funny...they cleared the intellectual hurdle of whether or not God exists and now they have set themselves up behind barriers that limit their understanding of the Creator.

You come across as a down to earth, realistic and logical guy. Hopefully you contribute more to this section of the forum.

You’re right in that the first part can’t be used broadly to prove the non existence of God. In many ways a big portion is a rephrased PoE argument.

However, religions and the religious are all about making statements about Gods power, will, motivations; and most assuredly sets up God as a Hypothesis. 

Ramshutus Razor is a mechanism for testing that hypothesis.

It’s not so much the case it refutes all Gods; but does assuredly refute all specific Gods anyone has ever put forward.

Take a typical Christian approach - God is love, God wants us to chose him, evil exists as a necessity to empower Good. Yadda Yadda.

Wouldn’t this universe better meet those goals if childhood Leukemia had a 10% better survival rate? Or if smallpox killed 1/10 instead of 1/4. What if Paedophillia didn’t exist?

If all bad things that happen for no reason allow for potential better good, would not a universe in which a potential good can always be seen? 

Or take the whole nature of the afterlife: God needs us to believe in him - but why not make it a fairer choice? For example - no evolution - or better yet, make ever human know God exists, give them free will, make them know what God wants; and give them tests to show they’re trying, and don’t want to be sinners - but don’t tell them there is a heaven or hell.

Absolutely subjective I ageee - but rapidly leads you to the conclusion that this is such a shitty universe and structure for any God; that they can’t exist - except for maybe Zeus.

The second one is what gives me confidence that Atheism - at least in terms of major theistic themes (as opposed to zeus or being in a simulation) - is correct. I’ve been trying to come up with a collection of motivations and wills for which this universe would be the best - or even close - for 20 years; and you have two options: simple and common motivations that don’t match the universe, of Convoluted and incoherent sets of disparate goals

Me personally, I think what you're really defining here is faith and trust and you and I would appear to think of it similarly.

I certainly agree that once you accept God, logic has a certain openness to it that allows a lot of leeway. For if God exists, there's a whole lot interest as to what exactly is His doing and what isn't. I find myself more often than not deciding that while yes, "everything" is God's doing by extension, sometimes we give God credit to things that He isn't directly responsible for and we end up with people claiming false miracles or the like. It's a tricky business, sorting between the spiritual truths with regular laws of reality. More often they tend to link up as well which just makes it more fun hahaha So then my guess is what you've got going is logic, commonsense, evidence, and then faith(although not necessarily in that order).

You're not wrong, it's a sad truth and a great blessing that when you get enough people of similar belief and put them together in a community they create cultures that usually encourage assimilation and you end up with dogmatic crap. I've wrestled a bit with knowing the balance between community involvement and using the good and supporting parts while removing the less helpful parts that can discourage continued thought and independence. Idk, what I most appreciate about my own belief is that it is incredibly sensible from a conceptual standpoint and really does work in practice so long as it is being practiced. It's when folks add stuff on top or reinterpret things to fit their own sense of morality rather than having a desire to change to something better that makes me sad. I can't complain too much though, I myself am guilty of, as you say, "clearing the intellectual hurdle...and now...set [myself] up behind barriers". What might you suggest is the cause of this yourself?

Whether atheist, agnostic, or theist what do you see as the benefiting factor that most prominently contributes to your belief. To be clear, I'm not asking what caused your belief or lack thereof but rather why maintain your position? 

Me personally, I stay a religious person because I know spirituality has, and does, help me overcome challenges while having the possibility to help others. Without the focus on God that I've had I can be quite confident that I personally wouldn't have had the focus on personal growth that I have.

Lemme hear what ya got