Debate: Is Religion a Rational Belief to Have?
Side: No Religion is Not

From this perspective, with limited information available, an individual is essentially choosing which group of humans to have faith in; the atheist community or the community of the religion in question.This is a false dichotomy. You ignore soft atheism and agnosticism, which require no evidence because they are essentially statements of the absence of belief rather than a belief for or against religion. Without the capability to perform any but the most basic experiments by oneself, trusting in the atheist perspective essentially means accepting the results of experiments one not only did not perform, but does not even truly understand; additionally, it means accepting the conclusions drawn by those performing the experiments.The theistic option of course being that believe in hearsay rather than research, though your point is taken that most people either lack the resources or the dedication to generate an informed and opinion. However, a lack of education/knowledge does not make any belief more rational (just maybe less irrational). Science is not as perfect as we would like it to be; experiments themselves can be performed incorrectly, not properly controlled, and even when they are properly executed the conclusions drawn are not necessarily valid.The fallacy here is that imperfection of evidence is conflated as being equal to the absence of evidence. Science is certainly imperfect, but given its checks against human error it is more probabilistically and reliably true than non-scientific belief.Certainly, there is peer review amongst the scientific community for the aspects of science that are at odds with religious perspectives- but also recognize that for every verse of every holy text, there are hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years of analysis and interpretations available. From a certain point of view, one could say that any given religious interpretation has had its own heavy share of peer review.The difference of course is that scientific peer review follows standards of proof whereas religious interpretation does not. Further, while science has internally challenged and modified its understandings religion has not changed at all in its fundamental beliefs (i.e. a god exists and created life). What changes and what is challenged internally has nothing to do with the belief in god but with relatively minor things (i.e. what clothing is acceptable, the role of women in congregations, the acceptability of homosexuality). So sure, religion has changed but that change has not been informed by any rational process substantiated by reason and evidence.Belief in an afterlife, for example- whether factual or not- is a rational position simply due to the inability of most (if not all) humans to actually conceptualize oblivion.The inability to reconcile a genetically and socially conditioned drive towards life and significance with the reality of impermanence and insignificance does not make belief in an afterlife rational. In fact, it is a clear example of the ways in which religion allows the human mind to sidestep rationality in favor of emotional gratification.Evolution vs. Creationism is a similar topic; from a certain perspective, applying Occam's razor seems to favor a creation event caused by forces we simply don't understand over current life taking its current shape over a time period that nobody can actually conceptualize and caused by random mutations. Without influences in either direction, simple observation shows that pretty much every life form on the earth has its own place in a huge system that fits together neatly like a puzzle. Experiments that seek to verify or observe speciation are exceedingly difficult even for the scientific community, and are well beyond the reach of the layman.You assume Occam's razor is true of course. Playing along, the principle is meant to give preference to theories. An irrational belief is not a theory, and thus creationism does not weigh against evolution. Otherwise we would assume that leprechauns are a better explanation of an apple falling than gravity; do not conflate simple with easy. Furthermore, creationism has its own host of objections and complications. Not the least of which is: if God created everything, where did God come from. You are only displacing the point of arbitration without actually resolving the matter (which actually makes creationism a more complex notion, rather than a simpler one). What is being rational, what is being reasonable, if it isn't arriving at a conclusion that is consistent with ones observations? Not all rational, well reasoned positions are factual, and not all factual positions are rational or well reasoned.Rationality is a process of substantiation. As I said earlier, a lack of knowledge does not make something more rational only less irrational. If you dilute the meaning of rationality to include anything observed it looses its purpose altogether, namely it ceases to serve as a distinction between uniformed assumption and educated thinking.