No.That last, of course, was cribbed from Ayn Rand's essay on "Philosophy: Who Needs It", a speech delivered to the graduating class at West Point circa 1971. (You can listen to it here.)
That's the short answer. And no one is at "stage 3" for any kind of validation of God except in a countdown on imploding reasoning. Call it belief, call it a desire for some kind of moral code because you can't imagine one yourself, call it a desire to cling to a child-like belief in an all-knowing father figure who will always be there to protect you from a hostile world and your own screw-ups, but let's not pretend it's anything more than that -- a rationalization for a state of unjustified emotional security. It's just an unfounded belief, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.
Ed Cline also made a great identification:
Postulating the existence of God or the Big Bang is a form of the classic Abbott and Costello routine of “Who’s on First?“ A long line of philosophers, from Plato to Kant to Nancy Pelosi (she of the pass-the-bill-so-she-can-let-you-see-what’s-in-it school of reality) averred that we cannot know anything for certain or at all. the same approach applies: Why bother contesting the non-rational or the irrational?To get a sense of what he means, look at this:
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