Believing in a religion is illogical

Thanks to my opponent for agreeing to reduce the round length. I'll begin my argument by making a few counterpoints, and then i'll answer con's questionnaire. "It's impossible to be logical under my opponent's view, since he asserts you must consider every possible case." It is impossible to be illogical under my opponent's view, since he asserts that you can choose which cases to consider in order to make a proposition logical. My opponent believes you can just ignore any premise to prove your point, and you're still being logical. Logic becomes a pointless word, then. Yes, you do need to consider every case in order to be truly logical. The more cases you consider, the more logical you are. "The point is not whether certain apologetic arguments are correct, the point is that the very activity of apologetics is a process of logical reasoning." Again, I remind the audience that con is begging the question, a huge argumentative fallacy, by saying that believing in a religion is logical because apologetics is a process of logical reasoning for religion, which is logical because it's reasonable. It's a highly ineffective form of circular reasoning with an attempt to prove that religion is logical through use of deceiving semantics. Con completely disregards that apologetics can include faulty, illogical premises, which would mean the entire sequence of reasoning is illogical. Furthermore, this general form of apologetics cannot suddenly apply to a believing in a single religion. Accepting a faulty premise is unreasonable and illogical. I can also disprove my opponents example of apologetics almost instantly from one faulty premise : "An infinite regression of causes ultimately has no initial cause" You don't understand infinity. Infinity doesn't need an initial cause, since infinity always exists. Such an example is the theory of parallel universes, where we are just one part of an infinite number of universes. It needs no beginning because it exists outside of the dimension of time. No one said the universe had to be completely understandable to humans. "My opponent and I seem to disagree on a major issue: Whether or not you can be logical without being correct." Instead of using a flimsy quote as evidence, I use the entire field of math as my source, again. You cannot arrive at any incorrect conclusions by using flawless logic. A mathematical proof uses flawless logic; if you could get to a wrong answer using perfect logic in math, then math wouldn't work, physics wouldn't work, and computer science wouldn't work, for example. These fields require rigorous logic, something that religion doesn't need. Apologetics is only logical if it has valid basic assumptions and axioms, otherwise the individual is being illogical. My opponent somehow thinks that because religious people apply a form of logical reasoning incorrectly, that it somehow makes believing in a religion logical. False. My opponent also claims that belief in a religion does not require 100% acceptance. False. Believing in a religion based on probable likelihood is about the worst argument you can make since it defeats the point of Religion. You're an agnostic at this point by definition, because the definition of an agnostic is doubting, or being skeptical of, the existence of a supernatural deity on some level. The level is not specified to an exact quantity. http://www.thefreedictionary.com... If you accept that belief in a religion is only a probable belief, then you doubt the existence of the supernatural by a factor of (1-(%probability)). However, no where in your definition of belief does it say that belief is not 100% acceptance. I believe in gravity, which means I accept it 100%, even though technically it has an inconceivably low chance of being wrong. But because there is substantial scientific evidence, I accept it as fact. Religion, on the other hand, demands the existence of faith instead of evidence, which can be defined according to the highly reputable source, Princeton university as: Faith: complete confidence in a person, or plan etc wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn The keyword is complete, which means 100%. I'm sure you can agree that religions require faith, but in case you can't, ill cite the definition of religion as evidence: "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held with ardor and faith" http://www.merriam-webster.com... Therefore, since nothing in reality is 100% accurate, my opponent has defeated his own argument, because faith requires certainty, and nothing is ever completely certain. My opponent agrees that nothing is truly certain. Choosing a religion is thus inherently illogical, and my opponent aligns himself with agnosticism. I'd also like to discuss my mathematical analysis more, which con didn't even respond to. I still emphasize that the chance of a particular religion being right is 1/(the number of religions). The same reasoning applies to a bowl of 200 marbles, where you have a 1/200 chance of picking any particular marble out of the bowl. Therefore, even if religion isn't about faith, which it is according to my cited definitions, the chance of a religion being correct is still infinitesimally low. Logically, and reasonably you cannot accept something with such a small probability. I remind the audience and con that you can make an infinite number of religions by adding layers of complexity to a religion, which means you can take the limit of the function (1/(the number of religions)) to infinity, which from basic series mathematics, is 0 percent. Anyone with a piece of paper and a pencil can prove this logically, and reasonably, which your apologetic argument fails to encompass. Every individual has access to basic axioms of math, which contradicts your apologetic arguments. Questionnaire- 1. In some cases he acts logically, and in others he doesn't. Again this is not a black and white dilemma as you keep trying to portray it. 2. Yes, you could assume logically that he probably owns a house on that property, but you can't assume that he does in fact own a house or a property. Maybe he works for a business that needs him to have a lawn mower, etc. It is impossible to quantify this probability. You cannot have faith that he owns the property. However, blindly, and incorrectly using inductive reasoning to assume a truth is bad logic. 3. Then you're an agnostic, according to my definition of faith and agnosticism. 4. Yes, it is based on random chance and evidence, not fictional characters and risky inductive reasoning. 5. More than probable, almost certain. Something greater that 99.9% such as gravity, or evolution. 6. Yes, which is why math works. 7. Incorrect inductive reasoning is not logical. Correct inductive reasoning is. Finally, a question for you: When using inductive reasoning to choose a religion, how does the person know that the right religion, logically, is Zeus, or thor, or apollo, or Christiantiy, etc?