Pray to God, but keep rowing.
The choice we all face is whether to take Pascal's Wager, or challenge our intellect in an attempt at a more fully reasoned perspective. Philosophy presents questions for which there may not be answers. Religion offers answers that demand questioning. Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who suggested that "the way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason?" Is empirical reasoning not such an unreasonable basis upon which to base a system of belief?
Epicurus (341 BCE -- 270 BCE) posed some of the nagging questions asked by many who question the existence of a supreme being: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
One amongst so many poignant quotes from Christopher Hitchens' recent book "God is Not Great..." is "Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience." (p. 56)
