[adamzap]

Interesting. Thanks for the response.

If one obtains answers to a number of questions (meaning, morality, afterlife, etc) by postulating the existence of God, is the nonbeliever exempt from having to answer those questions?

In pursuit of the answers, the nonbeliever must make new assumptions outside of simple nonbelief because simple nonbelief doesn't provide answers. Doesn't Occam's Razor then side with belief in God? I am not referring to simple belief in some higher power, but Biblical Christianity.

I believe that those questions (meaning, morality, afterlife, etc) are essential to a coherent worldview and are human questions rather than religious questions.

[YuriNiyazov]

The nonbeliever is not exempt from having to answer those questions. The reason that Occam's razor is on the side of the nonbeliever is because the nonbeliever's answers to those questions are unrelated: on the standard humanist worldview, how the universe was created (stuff that we don't know anything about but we hope the LHC will tell us) has absolutely nothing to do with what moral choices one makes in life (utility maximization). In other words, those two answers are "simpler" because they are not linked as compared to an answer that links the two by saying "well, God is responsible for those".