its not a legitamate reason to believe something that is not true just because it make you feel stronger or happier. it would make me happy to believe i have won the lottery but that doesnt make it true.
I feel like you've taken up a lost cause here if you're trying to argue that it isn't legitimate for a person to have faith in something. When we talk about reasons of something's existence the question of "how" is less relevant than "why" and I've stated perfectly good reasons as to why someone would have faith. I explain below why it's not a matter of evidence, so that nullifies that argument.
your logic here is flawed because it is an argument from ignorance. what you are basically saying is 'i cant understand how the universe came into being and i dont have and explanation, therefore a higher power (god) must exist'.
also your 'higher power' explanation immediately falls flat because it immediately poses a new question - what created the higher power? was the higher power created by another higher power and that higher power created by another higher power and so on. or was the first higher power in existence for eternity?
You must have me confused with someone else because I never "basically" said anything resembling what you've stated here. So check your own ignorance when talking about this in the future. You'll be hard pressed to find someone more appreciative of the sciences and everything they are capable of, but it's been essentially settled that the question of god cannot be proven one way or another by scientific inquiry. It's not a falsifiable question, even if we have solid evidence that the universe is the necessary answer to an equation, there's still no way to rule out a creator, and because there's no way to effectively rule it out there's no way science can answer it.
Also, what if I said the higher power is a network of living things and it simply sustains itself and grows from emergent properties as the network gains complexity, it, therefore, doesn't need a creator because we are all part creators and part creation. When you see two people lifting a long and heavy table that one person couldn't you'll know what I mean.
That's just one way of looking at it.
I'm a firm believer in the limits of superficial logic, and how its application is not called for in every circumstance. The world is not merely a clockwork mechanism, especially the beings that inhabits it.
Many other symbolic behaviour of man has no function either (e.g. a funeral has no purpose; or art has no purpose either).
This.
To deny the layers of creation is the height of ignorance, which is why I am desperate to distance myself from my atheistic tendencies because I believe that it has nothing positive to offer as a world-view beyond the simple practice of examining things skeptically, which is by no means a unique quality to atheism. My lack of enthusiasm for atheism has nothing to do with fear of cosmic retribution for me not conforming to some arbitrary dogma. I'd hate to be close-minded.
)/Baal/Mars/every God in the Hindu pantheon loves me therefore you should all believe in all those Gods too. Why? Because I feel I have an intimate relationship with all them supernatural beings.