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No, I don't feel the death penalty to be justifiable... The same way I convey anything else; discussion.

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In the NT belief is really something that is pitted against anything that is thought or done that is independent of God in Christ. Only believers in Christ possess faith,

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If you're going to take it that far, why not take it one step further? Take anything that humans, animals, planets, etc... produce and label that as the reason the universe exists.

Hamburgers not only required all of the things required for life, not only all of the things required for animal life, and intelligent life, it also required that we reach a stage of technology capable of producing them. Truly hamburgers must be the end-game of [enter chosen deity]'s plan. [Same chosen deity] simply wanted a nice, juicy burger.

True, a hamburger in and of itself is far less complex than a human, but it required much more complexity to come into being than any individual human did. It required billions of humans, living and dying, for years untold toiling in a hundred different disciplines in order to come into being. An item requiring such immense complexity is surely more worth of the title of 'chosen' than any mere human.

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Don't exactly have the ability to look at my own cells, off hand. Even with a microscope, I really wouldn't be able to see information, I'd have to go much further than that to find any. Heck, even looking directly at a picture of a strand of DNA, without knowing anything about it I'd just think I was looking at a nice picture.
Good to know that [Chosen deity] decided to reserve 'proof' of [Chosen Deity]'s existence for peoples of sufficiently advanced technology and understanding to be able to discern it. Not exactly a flaming sign in the sky, to my mind.

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And again, "no natural explanation," is a bit misleading. Even "no known natural explanation," would be a bit misleading. "No definitive explanation," would fit the bill. As discussed elsewhere, there are plausible scenarios for the development of life currently being researched. They may not pan out, and humanity may never discover how to create organic life from scratch, but to simply rule it out is a bit hasty.

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Except that Pascal's famous wager only works if you're creating an isolated universe in which the only options are Jehovah, no Jehovah.
This, of course, is a completely skewed way of thinking. To truly make Pascal's wager, we have to take into account not only Jehovah, but all gods. This doesn't simply include all gods, currently worshiped, or all gods ever worshiped, but all possible gods.
So whereas Pascal originally proposed a 50/50 probability to the Jehovah/no Jehovah, if we're going to split the Jehovah category it now looks a bit different. We now have All possible gods/ No god as our set of possibles.
To further confuse things, there are a conceivably infinite set of gods that demand exclusive worship, and will send you to [chosen negative afterlife] simply for believing in any god but them. On top of that, we have gods that prefer that you be a good person, baring any faith. Gods that favor the agnostic, or favor the atheist. Gods that will only send you to heaven if you like treacle pudding, or if you always put the toilet seat down. Etc... Etc... Etc...
In the end, we have a ridiculous number of ways to be sent to hell, and one (or more) of any confusing numbers of ways to be sent to heaven. Doesn't exactly play out in the way Pascal originally stated. It's a bad argument, and anyone convinced by it hasn't really evaluated it.

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What in materialism is contradictory. How can the statement "The physical is all that exists," even contradict itself? It's a single statement about a single thing. (Or, a single everything, to be more specific.)
Even if the statement is some day proven false, it remains internally consistent.
It's akin to me saying, "All swans are white." Even if you show me a black swan, and the statement is proven wrong, it remains internally consistent.

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I do believe that what I believe about the universe matters, but not in any ultimate way. I believe that, someday, I will die. I believe that, someday, the universe will die. I believe that this life is all we get, and that the only meaning that exists in it is that which we create for ourselves. I believe that, in the end, every action ever undertaken will turn to less than dust, all will be forgotten, and nothing that happened will have mattered.
That being said, I also believe that, if we're going to die, and none of what we do will matter in the end, we might as well give it the best shot we possibly can. This also means that my beliefs matter now, in the short term, and since the short term is (I believe) all we've got, we might as well use it well.

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The only things that I do that go against church teaching are things that are very faith-specific. That being, I don't go to church, and I don't pray. Oh, I suppose I swear on rare occasion as well.
Other than that, nothing really. I avoid doing physical harm, lying, stealing, cheating, etc... etc... on simple principle. Even things that I see nothing morally wrong with, like drugs, gambling, sexuality, I don't generally engage in simply because I find them to be a waste of time.
Nothing has really changed since I was a Christian except the church/prayer thing. There was no reason to suddenly change the way I lived just because I'd dropped faith. Like I've said, it was an intellectual decision. I didn't drop Christianity because I was angry at God, or because I felt restricted. There was not inherent motivation to it other than that I came to see it as a pointless practice. I've come to be more accepting of many things since then that are banned not because they're harmful, but because the Bible labels them as wrong, but I don't engage in them simply because they hold no interest.

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I am absolutely confident as a former agnostic that I wouldn’t experience the success I have ... were it not for my faith;

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and the people I admire most are all people of faith. In 40+ years of life I have never met an atheist’s life whom upon close inspection I can admire. Never.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
Well, as a hamburger is a derivative of a living creature, then it would follow that as much as the universe was designed for life, then that might be life that could be consumed. Indeed, I don’t know anyone who would claim a hamburger could arise from unguided mechanisms much less a living cell – though obviously some make better hamburgers than others.

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Though interestingly, the understanding that life is designed is apparent on any number of levels, even apart from our scientific knowledge, which explains why humans have concluded that life was designed as long as they have been able to form conclusions and record them.

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And again, "no natural explanation," is a bit misleading. Even "no known natural explanation," would be a bit misleading. "No definitive explanation," would fit the bill. As discussed elsewhere, there are plausible scenarios for the development of life currently being researched. They may not pan out, and humanity may never discover how to create organic life from scratch, but to simply rule it out is a bit hasty.

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Actually, many people misunderstand Pascal’s wager. He wasn’t arguing that we should believe because it was dangerous not to do so, which is typically how his argument is stated by simple skeptics and Christians who aren’t familiar with their own philosophical heritage, but rather Pascal was ever arguing that faith in God is ultimately reasonable, but our passions prevent us from acquiring it. Pascals wager puts us in the position of forming the right belief for the right reasons; it gives us a reason to investigate with seriousness, not the sophistry that is so typical of the skeptic, who dismisses out of hand the possibility of the existence of God.

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I also thinks it really not a matter of choosing between ‘gods’; most gods can be dismissed for very basic and obvious reasons, and have been by most of humanity for the better part of a couple of millennia. Not all can of course, and we should seriously consider those.

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Well, we know that the physical is not all that exists; ideas and beliefs and opinions aren’t physical yet almost everyone considers them to exist, even as materialists. And those are only a few things that render materialists inconsistent. Purpose, meaning, and morals would be additional though not exhaustive things.

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I do believe that what I believe about the universe matters, but not in any ultimate way. I believe that, someday, I will die. I believe that, someday, the universe will die. I believe that this life is all we get, and that the only meaning that exists in it is that which we create for ourselves. I believe that, in the end, every action ever undertaken will turn to less than dust, all will be forgotten, and nothing that happened will have mattered.
That being said, I also believe that, if we're going to die, and none of what we do will matter in the end, we might as well give it the best shot we possibly can. This also means that my beliefs matter now, in the short term, and since the short term is (I believe) all we've got, we might as well use it well.

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Actually, your conclusion doesn’t follow from your premise. There is no ‘best shot’ if everything is ultimately meaningless, because ‘best’ is a value judgment about one’s efforts – which don’t amount to anything at all by your own acknowledgement. At best your philosophy amount to “Let’s all agree to pretend that anything matters because the alternative is too frightening” – the problem is, not all of us can live with such pretense.

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I am absolutely confident as a former agnostic that I wouldn’t experience the success I have as a spouse, father, friend, and citizen, were it not for my faith; and the people I admire most are all people of faith. In 40+ years of life I have never met an atheist’s life whom upon close inspection I can admire. Never.