Debate: Is Religion a Rational Belief to Have?
Side: Yes Religion is/Mixed/Other

I'm going to say that yes, Religion (in general, not any specific one) can be a rational belief to have. Often, the religious beliefs are not rational or reasoned at all, but that doesn't mean that they never are.Assume, for a moment, that the individual in question is neither a religious scholar, nor does he or she have anything resembling a university level science background. This in fact represents most of the population of even developed countries.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. 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. 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. For some, the fact that science is constantly being revised as new data is uncovered is a mark in science's favor- but for others, that in and of itself compromises the trust that those individuals can place in current scientific knowledge. 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.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. Before something can be reasoned, the key concepts at play must first be conceptualized (even vaguely) as a starting point. As an example, people knew about gravity, if not in so many words and without the actual physics involved, simply due to the fact that when something is dropped, it falls. Quantum Mechanics and its ilk, on the other hand, appear as arcane hocus-pocus to most laymen due to an inability to conceptualize it.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.This is why religion has persisted for so long; whether correct or not, it provides answers to many questions that fit what is observable by the layman. 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.