It is more rational to believe humanity is a random by-product of this universe than created by God.

No need to apologise, most of what I brought up in round 1 was just to make you aware of my position. I find it touching that you would choose to expend so much energy in attempting to convince me around to accepting your position, but I do consider it rather curious that you would wish to - for three reasons: 1) It sounds as if you are practically certain that you have it all definitely correct, and that by contrast I must almost certainly be definitely wrong. Aside from being slightly arrogant, I think that is far less helpful an approach to take - than say instead us both coming together and listening to each other's points of view then considering each of our stances in light of what the other has to say - with no desire to convince the other of their comparative "wrongness". 2) I could understand it if I were trying to convince you, but not the other way around so much. To explain, if I am correct, then there is a significant reason for me to want you to accept my position - because the consequences of you being wrong could be eternal. If you are correct, then I see very little I would stand to tangibly gain in moving from my position to yours. Perhaps you could demonstrate what it is I am missing that is so significant! 3) Say you are dead wrong, and there actually is a God. It is one thing to have to explain why you chose not to believe in him - but quite another that you actively tried to encourage other people who already believed in him not to! Perhaps you have never looked at it like that. I think the danger with God, is that it is all to easy to draw parallels with Santa, and the Easter Bunny, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The big difference with God, is that if He does exist then the ramifications are colossal. It is by no means a trivial thing to deny the existence of God (which is actually still true, even if God does not exist). To put it another way, I never understand what I would term "evangelistic atheism" - because atheism is basically NOT believing in something. To me, an atheist trying to convince someone of faith to be an atheist, is a bit like someone who thinks that golf is a waste of time going along to a golf match and trying to convince a load of golf fans why they are wrong to like golf! I really don't get what it is you see you stand to benefit me - whilst I enjoy the discussion all the same, I just don't understand your approach of trying to "convert" me. Perhaps if I didn't adhere to science at all, and I just blindly followed the Bible - you might be opening my eyes to another worldview. I would understand that. But I already am a scientist, and a philosopher - as well as being a theologian. If you think I haven't already travelled down other roads and flirted with other worldviews to reach where I am today - then you are significantly mistaken. Ok, all that said - on with the discussion! I don't think it is crazy at all to postulate that you might be able to create a sufficiently complex computer program to create genuine sentience. I personally don't think it is possible, and it almost certainly isn't empirically provable that what you had created was truly self-aware - but to hypothesise is certainly not crazy. Of course, this is the problem solipsism poses also - because you cannot establish whether anyone other than you is self-aware either - how could you? Your two choices offered for the source of consciousness are interesting - but inconclusive. As there is no evidence either way. You want to believe that consciousness has natural causation because that is the simplest solution to conceive (Occam's Razor or whatever) - but that doesn't make it so. And to just brush off solipsism is hardly very scientific. Again I come back to the fact that it is truly disingenuous to adopt a stance where you take one "free" unprovable assumption - and then demand the empirical from there on in. You then descend into a great deal of perhaps's and maybes - all fascinating stuff, but not evidence. And I never find "thought experiments" trivial, I'm a huge advocate! I entirely follow what you mean with the elephant analogy - and incidentally you have just made me lose "the game"... You failed with the purpose of your parlour trick - to a point, as I did think about "the game". I didn't think about elephants for any significant length of time, but I was trying to recall how long it had been since the last time I thought about "the game"! You logic about infinite homunculuses (I deliberately use the alternate plural, just as a defiant demonstration of my free conscious thought!) doesn't necessarily hold. If there is a separate eternal soul, which cuts through greater dimensions outside of this universe, then the cause is not the same entity as the effect. So too is your suggestion that a true imitation of independent rational thought can't exist. Both of your proposals only hold if your consciousness is nothing more than the neurons in your own brain. If consciousness is more than this, then your logic collapses. And it is not so much that I don't want to deal with the consequences of the implications as the reason for my not believing it; it is that I don't think the suggestion that our consciousness is solely a by-product of this random universe is a very coherent suggestion. All of what you say could be plausible, and it could be an illusion that drives me to believe in the supernatural. But that isn't evidence, it's just a load of conjecture! For which, incidentally, you HAVE to find reasons to deny the existence of God. It could equally be that, for whatever reason, you are so hell-bent in NOT wanting to believe there is a God that you choose to hypothesise anything which might suggest that he might not exist. Why? If your intention was to demonstrate that you have "proof" that your position is more coherent than mine, then I must be missing it. Onto your points on the comments board. Your rationalisation of your position on Christ is surprisingly light, for somebody who clearly thinks deeply into what he believes. Perhaps you don't think it is worth your time to investigate into any detail. Your "evidence" for thinking Christ never existed, is actually just conjecture. That Christ is spoken about (indirectly I might add) in the celestial in the Bible, and that the Romans and Greeks had some interesting ideas about their gods is entirely irrelevant as to whether a historical person existed. That there is no extra-biblical, or contemporaneous evidence, for the life of Christ is surely to be expected. Someone like Caesar, the leader of a large influential empire - yeah, probably going to be a lot of contemporaneous evidence knocking around. But an obscure leader of a tiny religious sect, in a backwater outpost of the Roman Empire - you really expect there to be any contemporaneous evidence? To set such a parameter ought to be overtly ludicrous. You say that the idea of gods coming down to get killed for us was already around; would you mind providing a cited example? I think this is a classic case of parallelomania - and I would put money on the fact that you haven't independently researched this, but just read it in a book one time! How exactly did the disciples have a vested interest in lying? Why would they leave everything behind and face torture and persecution - all for something they knew was a load of baloney? It doesn't make any sense! Onto your next thread, I entirely agree with you that to want to believe something does not make it true - and can be dangerous. I don't believe it because I want it to be true, I believe it because I consider it is the only coherent overall explanation for our existence. You say that you don't want to live forever, and you can derive your own meaning and your own path for your life - "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul" - Henley. But might I say that is all well and good for you, given that you happen to live in a rich, free nation where you can have a relatively decent life and a large degree of freedom in how you choose to live it. What of the many people around the world who's entire lives are spent in truly awful circumstances. Are they to derive their own meaning from what you say it their only existence, which could well be one of pain, torture, oppression etc? By "meaning", I mean that if we are created beings with souls - then our consciousness truly has meaning; our lives in this existence truly serves a purpose. If we are random by-products, then this life is pointless. If you are lucky, you are born in a free Western society and have relatively good health and good job opportunities and the financial means to live your life how you choose. If you are unlucky, maybe you are born in a country where you are oppressed, tortured, and live in constant fear etc. I do find it interesting that the rise of atheism is largely in those Western countries where we live in the lap of luxury. No doubt you would argue that is because of the rise of rationalism and the scientific method - but I suggest it is because we can have complete apathy towards how truly horrendous this life can actually be. My worldview gives the possibility of hope, regardless of your existence in this lifetime - and also an eternal justice for the perpetrators of evil. I note you don't offer any comment for my most significant points: 1) Give me one good logical reason why I should obey the law and "love my neighbour" etc if morality is just a by-product of evolution? Why not instead make my life's purpose to exert as much sadistic dictatorial power and control over as many other human beings as possible during my short, pointless existence here on Earth? 2) Why not run society like the Nazis? Survival of the fittest/strongest; with no conscience. 3) If human life is not "sacred", why not kill off the elderly, sick and unproductive - particularly now on our dangerously overcrowded planet with rapidly declining resources?