V wrote: “God exists (or there'd be no point in a religion)”. 

The foundation of religion is the love of God, and not His existence. I don't know if God exists. I don't even know the exact meaning of the term “existence” when used in reference to God. But I do know, and try to gain every day a better understanding of, what is the love of God.  If someone thinks that the existence of God must be guaranteed to the intellect before the heart can love Him, he doesn't understand what love and faith are all about!

One does not need to be a brilliant philosopher before he can believe in God. On the contrary – viewing knowledge as a prerequisite for faith is the Original Sin.
 
The god of the philosophers is a concept or idea that reveals nothing of the love and worship of God. Even if I accept the idea that the universe was created by a Supreme Being, nothing tells me I should worship that being. I do not worship a concept, a proof or an idea. I do not worship God because he is the creator of the world, and I do not worship the Demiurge of Plato. I worship God because I made a religious decision. – Faith demands a decision, not recognition.
 
I do not worship the “existing” god of the philosophers. I worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

W wrote: “Lucifer always tries to convince us that God either doesn't exist or isn't fair”.

Actually the Devil rarely makes such arguments. The Devil is not trying to convince us with false statements, but to raise false problems (or false subjects) that will occupy our minds. He is more subtle than commonly assumed. He has no need to argue “God doesn’t exist”, it is enough for him to ask "does God exist?" and his job is done. – The Devil is an intellectual distraction from the love of God. 

The question is like a trap. While the mind considers the existence of God, or His fairness, the worship of God is suspended.

There is no prohibition against dealing with the existence of God. But taking it as the first postulate is not a religious attitude.

Doubt is not a sin, but making it an issue, focusing on it, or giving it too much attention, is a sin. Doubt is a problem if its appearance interferes with the love of God.

This is why it has been said: “A man must not open his mouth to Satan” (Tractate Brachot 19). – Not because the subject Satan is discussing is wrong, but because the discussion itself, as an action, is wrong. In discussing with Satan you might find knowledge of Good and Evil, but you are idling and do no Good at the time. A discussion with Satan is a denial of “I keep the Lord always before me”. (Book of Psalms 16, 8)

The serpent said, “For God knows that on the day you eat of it [the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil”. (Genesis 3, 5) – The Devil cites scriptures. What the serpent was actually saying is “how could you worship your God without knowing the difference between Good and Evil? You must be like God, knowing good and evil, before you can worship your God and do Good.” – The Original Sin involves speculations on the possibility of loving God and doing Good, instead of simply loving God and doing Good.

The Original Sin is the assumption that knowledge must precede action, or that action should be suspended as long as knowledge is not assured. In any positive science this assumption is obvious and fundamental, but in a religious system it is destructive. For God explicitly said, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Genesis 2, 17). In other words: the knowledge of what is Good and Evil is not essential for doing Good (in the religious sense). Sometimes knowledge must be sacrificed. And this is the meaning of “Teach your tongue to say: I don’t know”. (Tractate Brachot 4)

During the preparations to worship God in the future, or during the internal struggle on religious questions, one is not dismissed from the religious duty of the present. After eating from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil man became worried about tomorrow’s duty and forgot about today’s duty – the religious problem entered the domain of the “eternal tomorrow”. – “Do not say ‘I will change my ways when I will take the turn’, lest you will not take the turn”. (Tractate Avot 2, 5) 

The religious tragedy is that while focusing on doing the right thing in the future, one neglects the present. The religious development of the mind and the heart must not deny the present, for “If not now, when?” (Tractate Avot 1, 14)

X wrote: “I do not believe it is possible to prove the existence of God. If it were possible to prove it, then it would suggest that God forces us into belief in Him, and this too is a contradiction in terms”.

The existence of God is a religious issue, not a meta-question that assures faith.

To believe in God is not to assume that God exists.  Faith is not an attitude toward the statement “God exists.”  Faith, in this context, is not the opposite of certainty, and it is not an unproved opinion or an axiom. Faith is a religious decision! – A decision to worship God, a commitment to a certain way of life.

I cannot be “forced” into belief by facts and proofs. I can only make a decision to believe. This does not mean it should be impossible to prove the existence of God, only that the existence of God, as a fact, is irrelevant to faith, as a decision.

It is impossible to deduce the love of God from His mere existence. It is impossible to “force” faith with a proof.

A proof, if taken as a catalyst for faith, is a golden calf.

Y wrote: “there are things which can neither be proven nor disproven, and the existence of God is certainly one of them. Belief or, more accurately, faith, is something that is a choice. Pure and simple -- one that each person makes for themselves; either to believe, not believe or be indifferent. It's just a choice, but for me, not an unreasonable one.”

I do not make the religious choice because I failed to reach a conclusion by other means; I do not choose to believe because other methods have failed and no proof was found. The religious choice is the quintessence of the religious life. The choice is the principle of faith, not its product. The product cannot be observed or expressed with words. It is not a factor. It has no substantial presence. The only meaningful thing for me is: what is the human choice, here and now.

Faith is not a single and unique decision, and from that point on - inertia. Faith is an endless struggle with doubts and questions. The endless struggle is faith.

Rabbi Menahem Mendel from Kotzk: “If someone pray today because he prayed yesterday – a wicked man it better than he”. Faith is a repeated and continuous choice. The religious life is a maintenance of faith. I must take a fresh decision every day and every night. Every prayer is a new beginning. – The habit is another name for the Devil.

“I think, therefore I am”. (Descartes, Discourse on the Method IV). – I can be wrong in what I think, but not in who I am! I make a choice and I learn how to live by it. The religious choice says who I am, not what I think – it defines me. I cannot be wrong – it is who I am!

I do not summon faith in order to overcome scientific uncertainty or logical undecidability. Religion should not interrupt science. Religion is not a substitute, and neither is it an escape or a rescue. Faith involves no arguments about the world that someone might prove or disprove with scientific tools. If I can study a subject by scientific means, I leave the subject to scientific studies. In failure, I admit a failure; I do not turn to religion as “plan B.” I do not believe in God because my scientific knowledge and intelligence were not enough for me to proof His existence.

I do not believe because I do not know. I do not believe “meanwhile”, as a temporary solution, until I will know. My love of God assumes no knowledge or facts. I assume nothing, and hence cannot be proven to be wrong. I am certain in my faith because it is tautological. My love of God cannot be wrong because it is not an argument. – “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You!” (Psalm 84, 12).
 
 “Teach your tongue to say 'I don’t know' lest you will be proven wrong and get attached”. (Tractate Brachot 4) – Do not think that by saying “I don’t know” your faith is damaged. What we know or don't know doesn’t suppose to affect our love of God. “Any love that is attached to something, once that something ceases, the love ceases. If it is not attached to something, it will never cease”. (Tractate Avot 5, 19) – If the love of God depends on knowledge, then being proven wrong means the love ceases. The love of God is non-attachment. And knowledge is always attachment.

“Do not believe in yourself until the day you die”. (Tractate Avot 2, 5) – Do not believe in what you think you know. So that if everything you think you know about God will turn out to be wrong – your faith will remain intact.

I try to learn how to love God under all conditions, and with no conditions. What I know or do not know, what is happening or not happening, what I feel or do not feel... these things might all be very important in themselves, but they are irrelevant to my religious decision to love God and worship Him.

“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it”. (Wittgenstein, Culture and Value) – Try to pull with your heart, rather than to push with your mind.

X wrote: “[religion is] essentially something less than you.” And so that “religion is one of man's most pervasive needs.”

Karl Marx was right. From a sociological point of view, religion often serves the same function as opium. There is no doubt that, for a great number of people, religion is nothing but a satisfaction of emotional, psychological and intellectual needs. But from a religious point of view, any restriction of God to “something less than you” is a sin. And it doesn't matter whether the restriction is to an emotional need, intellectual enlightenment, scientific investigation, concept, hope or wish. – An idol is a restriction of God.  – “The word of Sin is Restriction”. (Libel AL vel Legis I, 41).

In worshiping God, I place Him before everything else. Preceding questions like “does God exist?”, “what is my gain in faith?” or “will I attain eternal life by worshiping God?” to God himself, is profanity. Doing so always means to pre-assume a selfish interest and to put God second. Let us make no compromises of comfort: it makes no difference whether the selfish interest is the intellectual curiosity of men, their material greed or their fear of death. Anyone whose faith is conditioned by answers (or the absence of answers) to questions of this kind is in fact worshiping himself (which is the most popular idol) and making God an instrument to satisfy his own needs.

To acknowledge God is not the principle of faith. If my faith is subordinate to my intellectual ability to acknowledge God, then I am subordinating God to my intellect (which is not much different than worshiping my intellect).

The human mind is capable of inventing the concept of God without knowing God. But confusing such concept, which is “something less than you”, with the subject of religion, is a fatal mistake. We are not worshiping the images and inventions of our own mind!

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image -- any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them”. (Exodus 20, 3-5) – This includes the inventions and images of the mind.

One should not be misled by our ability to say “God”, as if by doing so we actually reach God in some way. “The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name”. (Lao Tzu, Tao-Te Ching 1) God cannot be meaningful in our language, for He cannot be expressed in our language. Hence, God cannot function as a subject in our language. And so He cannot be the subject of faith or religion. The subject of faith and religion is not God, but the love and worship of God by man.

Whether we can hold any speculative certainties about God is questionable. It is even very probable that everything essential we could try to say about Him will lead to nonsense (or worse – to foolish mysticism). The mind is a very capable tool, but is hopelessly incapable and impotent with respect to God. "Thoughts will not reach him". (the Zohar, Elijah opening). Wittgenstein was right when he said “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”. (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 7). But this conclusion succeeds mainly in dealing with the mystical and the metaphysical, which are the subjects Wittgenstein deals with at the end of his book. It fails to deal with the love and worship of God. For it is possible for me to speak about the love and worship of God. How to worship God, how to love and to fear Him, is the subject (in the grammatical sense) of religion.

Whether one should worship God is impossible to discuss. But after a choice is made to worship God, it is possible to discuss how it should be done.

Z wrote: "I don't believe anyone can know anything about God, and what they believe they know can never be proven - this makes me an agnostic. Being an agnostic I don't know myself whether God exists or not, therefore I don't exclude either of these two possibilities. However, considering my life, I can't see how it could be different if God existed or not – this makes me indifferent. Finally, because I realize I can't know anything about God and His existence has no impact on my life, I don't find it reasonable to believe in God. I choose the other option - this makes me an atheist".

The existence or non-existence of God has no impact on my life. But the decision to worship God has a great impact. And this is what religion is all about – God’s worship, and not the existence or non-existence of God. – "The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him". (Pascal, Pensees)

Faith is not an answer, but a framework in which to handle the problem.
 
The question and the answer are not co-existing, nor there is a dialectic movement from “what is the utility of faith?” to faith itself. The distance between the two is infinite – as the one who holds true faith in his heart knows! Sometimes the question must be sacrificed in order to allow space for faith. Faith is not gained by finding an answer, but by losing (or cherishing) the question without answering it. – “Infinite resignation is the last stage prior to faith, so that one who has not achieved this state has no faith; for only in infinite resignation do I become clear to myself with respect to my eternal validity, and only then can there be any question of grasping existence by virtue of faith”. (Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling)

Faith is tautological. Prayer is tautological. There is no deeper meaning that can be expressed in words. “A good deed leads to a good deed. A sin leads to a sin. The reward of virtue - virtue. The reward of vice – vice”. (Tractate Avot 4, 2). The object of good deeds is good deeds. The object of virtue is virtue. Faith holds faith. The prayer is answered by the prayer itself. And the love of God is the love of God!