No, you don't have a very clear understanding of it, apparently.

First of all, it's far from a very mainstream interpretation of quantum mechanics among physicists. It's a very high level speculation with little practical consequences on their everyday work, and not very interesting in a scientific sense because it can't be falsified as far as we know. Most physicists don't care about it, actually.

Second, it doesn't state that everything you can imagine must exist in some parallel universe, let alone in 50% of them. It merely states that every time there are different physically possible outcomes of a quantum reduction process, each comes true in a branched universe. Note the physically possible bit: even in this speculation, none of the branched universes will ever contain an event that is against its physical laws.

As for the last paragraph: faith as risk assessment, really? Pascal's wager is logically silly, because there is no greater chance of there being a benevolent, demanding god asking for you to live in faith, than a malevolent, rationalist one that will punish all believers and exhalt the atheists :)

I think we should lay off the religion threads...no matter what website i'm on they never go well

1 Atheist here.  I personally believe that we will only gain insight into the workings of the universe with science.  Those doubting use current scientific beliefs to say that science can never progress beyond what it is now.  But science is not a religion, it will always progress; I personally believe to infinitum.  If infinity exists and our universe is infinitely large then I don't see any reason not to believe it is also infinitely small, thus scientific advancement will be scientific as it is the mere process of gathering data on the nature of the universe.  I don't see how there ever can be a block to it's advancement.

This: I've found that it's very hard to tell atheists about my experiences because they can simply conclude I'm making it up anyway. @ninty_shareholder64, what you have described is the majority of religious people that take some things too far and expect God to act even in things that are completely their own responsibility. It's rather unfortunate. But you couldn't be more wrong about religion beinbg for the weak and boneheaded. I'll say this for the record. I have enough personal experience with spiritual things so that I'm as sure of spiritual things as i am of the existence of gravity. I've experienced gravity and God enough to be sure of the existence of both.

You can never ever beat a religious/believer for the simple reason that they base their arguments in plain bellief. 

They will always try to paint atheists in their same light  but that's just absurd because atheist we don't base our arguments in plain belief. We make questions, find answers and if an answer is proved wrong then we keep looking for it. Religious people only believe and say that they don't need proof because that will make them question their old ancient books full of horrible fairy tales. You can give them all the proofs you have but they will always find a way to twist it and make on fall in ridiculous.

We atheist better never argue with them because Just like a little kid that believes in santa claus and refuses to accept the truth that their parents buy the presents, religious people would never accept the truth that God is nothing but an imaginary friend that makes them happy even if that happiness has a fragile logic.

1

This should have been a poll :P

Oh, and another argument I just remembered.  Evolution, if true, clearly relies on improbable events occuring repeatedly over and over again, as it's never been documented in action in the few thousand years of recored history.  The second law of thermodynamics and laws of statistical probability aren't exclusive to their fields.  Scientists just like to suppress them.  Everything in the world gravitates towards equilibrium and states of higher probability, a direct counterpoint to evolution, which relies on constant gravitation towards the improbable.  Cars break, glaciers melt, deserts grow, crops die, but somehow fish sprout legs and walk. Please if anyone has a good response to this I'm trying to be rational here.  I'm not the religious nut a lot of Atheists think I am.  Why else would I rely on pascal's wager for my faith?

Genetic mutations are the cause of evolution.  DNA goes through trillions of operations to replicate itself, and errors in the gene code lead to changes in genetic makeup, and changes in genetic makeup lead to evolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teV62zrm2P0

The human genome has about 3 billion base pairs, expecting the above process to go perfectly is tantamount to being insane.

But that's exactly what I'm talking about.  I went to a conference on genomics that talked about this.  Less than 300 mutations on average occur per generation per 6 billion base pairs.  These are almost always harmless, and the probability of them impacting anything is negligible aside from those that kill you.  In order to create a new gene to express growth of new limbs or digestion of new materials or lungs or whatever you need you would need thousands of non-fatal mutations on the same gene to occur.  The likelihood of that happening in a way that doesn't kill you is so low that you wouldn't even see it once in 6 billion years.

300/6000000000=.00000005 mutations/pair

300/6000000000*299/5999999999*298/5999999998........*1/5999999701= a really really small chance of stringing all those mutations consecutively. 

Discovery channel has some interesting programs on how the theory of evolution has evolved since Darwin.

Actually the DNA that makes fins in fish is pretty much the same DNA that makes arms and legs in animals. Switches in DNA that control when certain DNA sequences are active control how limbs turn out. It's all in the timing. 3,500,000,000 years is a lot of time for some random change to go in the right direction. Natural disasters helped a lot to cull off the weaker traits and give evolution a boost.

Ofcourse if you believe god is responsible for meteor impacts, ice ages etc, then yes you could say he's guiding evolution. Maybe we're not his desired end product since natural disasters still occur :)

I don't believe in any higher power, heck I don't believe my own eyes a lot of the time (study some cognitive sience and you'll see what I mean)