Good question. I didn’t care to specify–I was just asking about theism generally, not any one particular theism. But you identify a problem with asking/answering these kind of questions. “God” isn’t a clearly defined concept.
seriously, I aways think it’s kind presumptuous to suppose we know ourselves so well that we know what would convince. How can I say? I might be persuaded by something that would normally not persuade me. I might have an inexplicable change of heart and see what some random guy might see as coincidence as something more.
Fair enough. Perhaps my question is not what would convince you, but what SHOULD convince you.
I would suspect that this kind of normative question would lead to a critically (dis)astrous level of navel-gazing, smug, obnoxygen, and echo chamber effect.
I wonder whether a vision, divine encounter, or miracle would convince me. If I thought I saw a god, for example, would I abandon my atheism? Should I?
I suspect I would take Hume’s advice and doubt my eyes and perhaps even my sanity. But if others witnessed the same thing I did? Is that sufficient evidence for theism? I really don’t know. To borrow from Hume again, apparent miracles–no matter how many people witness it–may have totally naturalistic explanations. Is my skepticism unreasonable? I anticipate that theists might call this kind of skepticism a “naturalism-of-the-gaps.” And yet I don’t feel stubborn about my atheism. I’m not hostile to the idea of god(s) existing and I think I would believe in god(s) were I to encounter evidence, I just have a high standard for evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
this comment is exactly what sounds presumptuous to me, Jon ;)
how would you really know until it happened? This seems like wishful thinking. If such a thing happened, it COULD be that you have that steadfast skepticism, or it could be that, regardless what you try to think or reason, the call of God is just irresistible. “Extraordinary evidence” can be personal, nonscientific.
[I am still paralyzed by the normative part though, lol.]
Maybe it’s normative, so what? Ha ha. Calling something normative isn’t a debate-stopper. I’m interested in people’s thoughts all the same.
So what if it’s normative? It’s a debate-stopper for me ;_; How am I supposed to know what *should* be convincing? I don’t even know what *would* be convincing!
Don’t think that I’m not on to your game: “I don’t have any ideas for today, but I have to post every day or else I’ll feel bad, so I’ll write a 2-paragraph post that encourages people to talk about themselves!”
It’s a bit of a catch-22. In order for me to believe somebody was God Almighty, I’d need to personally witness something potentially so powerful that I may not survive it. I’d need to personally see God and have that experience corroborated by non-crazy people to know it was real. Even then, I’d wonder if I was just encountering some alien teenager from a more advanced race who decided to visit Earth and take the piss by playing around with their culture’s rudimentary technology to scare the apes for a laugh.
Would it be far to say that if you had such an experience, theism would at least be a reasonable explanation? Sure, it’s not the only one–I agree that it could be an advanced alien race that you encountered. But I couldn’t blame anyone for believing in god(s) after such an experience.
What indeed is the difference between vastly advanced aliens and a god? How would we tell?
i know this is a cop-out, but to me it isn’t a question of what it would take to convince me that god exists, it’s more a question of “what benefits me more – belief or disbelief?” in my opinion the benefits of disbelief far outweigh the benefits of belief. i’m free of the neurosis that generally accompany religious guilt, and i don’t have to spend my sundays in church. plus, atheist sex is better.
I don’t think benefits analysis really work well in this situation. but then again, i don’t believe belief is freely chosen, much less chosen as a result of benefits analysis.
i’m not sure it’s pascal’s wager, i guess i didn’t express myself clearly. i’ll believe in god when abiding by his law benefits my life, which in 21 years it didn’t. 8 years of disbelief have been much more fruitful.
what you were saying wasn’t pascal’s wager.
but I’m saying that if you were going to ask, “what benefits me more?” then pascal’s wager is in this line of reasoning. It’s just that you view a temporary speck in eternity (your life now) more than an eternity of (possible) afterlife. The way it works — theoretically — is that no matter how improbable you think the afterlife is, that infinitesimal number multiplied by eternal happiness (or eternal suffering) should always be bigger than whatever level of happiness or suffering is possible from your finite life.
indeed, i’m familiar with the man pascal. my dad taught me that during family home evening one night, which in retrospect is kind of weird. what tripped me up with religion was all the scriptures that talked about “by their fruit you shall know them,” etc., basically encouraging believers to experiment with the word to find out if it’s good. well, i experimented and it gave me nothing but sorrow. that experimentation led me to question all elements of organized religion, and eventually belief in god/afterlife. so i guess it does boil down to if real, actual, temporal happiness is better than a supposed, unproved and hypothetical eternity. i’ll take happiness/disbelief now.
OK, I can TOTALLY agree with your last comment. But I’ve never seen it as a question of comparing/contrasting benefits…
IMO, it really is all about what it would take to convince me. Suffering and misery from following the commandments doesn’t convince me, is all.
The Second Coming possibly. Or maybe living in an afterlife where mormon missionaries come knocking on my spirit house.
I’m interested to know, if a believer could live forever on earth, how long would they go before they stopped believing that the Second Coming will happen. I hope I will live long enough to see a major Christian sects say, “well looks like we’re wrong. Sorry folks.” Probably wouldn’t happen for a thousand years though…heh.
Some scientists predict that a human life expectancy of 500 years is in the not-too-distant future. When people live that long, and the specter of death is less imminent, I bet they’ll be less religious.
only if religious belief only really offers something as a hedge against death, Jon.
who knows, if you live for 500 years, you need something meaningful in your life. not saying that religions have a monopoly on this, but they are one kind of outlet in this vein.
I could easily see, Chris, that people could turn things around. After all, how much of Christianity is about the second coming? couldn’t someone be christian because of how it improves their lives in the here and now?
i don’t think people would go, “hehe folks; nothing to see here.” but perhaps the emphasis would change and certain eschatologies would just get buried.
Oh yeah for sure. I imagine many religions will eventually give up on much of their doctrine and become some sort of pseudo-spiritual group therapy… maybe something like scientology.
becoming more like scientology (esp. when you consider what scientology considers “spiritual group therapy”) is not a step in a good direction…D:
A clear message that could not possibly have been created by man.
A personal god that causes good things to happen to bad people and bad things to happen to good people who also pretends to reward the righteous and punish the wicked?
Short of a malevolent and sadistic God, nothing really. Especially when it comes to God as described thousands of times by thousands of religions/cultures in a multitude of ways. Each lacks foresight and describe characters who do not live up to their descriptions.
A deist’s God?
S/he (it?) would probably have to wake up from whatever cosmic nap God had been taking and give enough of a shit to intervene on a scale so grand that everyone on the earth couldn’t possibly deny the message or sign.
I’m amused because I am thinking there are many parallels between a discussion like this and one I had once with someone who believed profoundly in alien visitation.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and divinity, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)
Do you have an answer to the question put to you, Eli? What would it take for you to disbelieve in god?
Thanks to Eli for (I’ll admit, surprisingly) being one of the clearest thinkers here, or at least bringing a clear example.
Sorry for the late post. For my response, I’ll steal a phrase from Dr. Huenemann and twist it, atheism is a dead option to me. “Repeated evidence”, oh I don’t know, existence? Experience? I suppose I could be ‘open’ to it if the evidence for non reality was there, somehow having to use the tools, methods and laws that the reality that we have but don’t actually have (since it wouldn’t be real and neither would we) to do that, which is doubtful to a degree its pretty silly. Its still a probability I guess but the same as the sun not being there tomorrow. The attempts at “its a dream, a machine reality, hallucinating monads” etc are pointless anyway. Man isn’t the center of the universe, the point is there is something to experience, something experienced, something existing on both ends of that experience. And there is something rather than nothing. And as far as the being that manifests in that origin of reality, I don’t really care if it decides little Johnny at the orphanage gets a toy train for christmas or not (I know that’s not the same as an earthquake hitting a 3rd world island country, I don’t care either). Nature on earth is not compassionate to a starving calf either. Tornadoes and tidal waves do all kinds of harm to various things, they are still beautiful to behold. I look at the universe in wonder, so while I should be scientific and be open to evidence against my claim, I don’t see what other answer there could be.
Thus concludes my very long non answer provided very late to an old question
Here’s a few:
* If prayer was shown to be effective in a consistent and statistically significant way in well-controlled experiments but only for one religion, then that would be pretty convincing.
* Biblical texts unambiguously encoded in some unfakable medium. For example: The KGV version of the Gospel of Mark in UTF-8 encoded in the digits of pi, starting at position 10 trillion.
* Well documented and repeatable miracles performed by members of a single religion under controlled conditions. For example: Catholic priests can consistently faith-heal amputees under experimental conditions designed by James Randi.
@Andrew S. “I don’t believe belief is freely chosen, much less chosen as a result of benefits analysis.”
I agree. I think for the most part our beliefs are formed through non-rational, subconscious drives, urges and passions. But we are good at dressing up our motives to make them appear reasonable. So it is a mystery to me if and why I may someday begin to believe in the supernatural again. And if I do, I wonder how I will make my change of heart sound rational…
As we learned more about the natural world (rejecting geocentrism and discovering microscopic pathogens, for example), God had less and less to do, and ever since Darwin, even a limited “God of the gaps” has made no sense whatsoever. When there’s no longer room for a powerful god– one that actually does anything– we resort to metaphor when we want to express our natural emotions of wonder and awe. That’s fine, but it’s hard to pray to a metaphor.
Let me restate your question: “What would it take for you to disbelieve the foundations of biology and scientific cosmology and replace these with myth, magical thinking and superstition?” We could explore this, but it doesn’t seem like a very profitable line of inquiry.
>For atheists: What would it take for you to believe in god(s)?
What God?`
Good question. I didn’t care to specify–I was just asking about theism generally, not any one particular theism. But you identify a problem with asking/answering these kind of questions. “God” isn’t a clearly defined concept.
Reproducable Evidence that there is a God(s)
God would know, even if I wouldn’t.
seriously, I aways think it’s kind presumptuous to suppose we know ourselves so well that we know what would convince. How can I say? I might be persuaded by something that would normally not persuade me. I might have an inexplicable change of heart and see what some random guy might see as coincidence as something more.
Fair enough. Perhaps my question is not what would convince you, but what SHOULD convince you.
I would suspect that this kind of normative question would lead to a critically (dis)astrous level of navel-gazing, smug, obnoxygen, and echo chamber effect.
I wonder whether a vision, divine encounter, or miracle would convince me. If I thought I saw a god, for example, would I abandon my atheism? Should I?
I suspect I would take Hume’s advice and doubt my eyes and perhaps even my sanity. But if others witnessed the same thing I did? Is that sufficient evidence for theism? I really don’t know. To borrow from Hume again, apparent miracles–no matter how many people witness it–may have totally naturalistic explanations. Is my skepticism unreasonable? I anticipate that theists might call this kind of skepticism a “naturalism-of-the-gaps.” And yet I don’t feel stubborn about my atheism. I’m not hostile to the idea of god(s) existing and I think I would believe in god(s) were I to encounter evidence, I just have a high standard for evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
this comment is exactly what sounds presumptuous to me, Jon ;)
how would you really know until it happened? This seems like wishful thinking. If such a thing happened, it COULD be that you have that steadfast skepticism, or it could be that, regardless what you try to think or reason, the call of God is just irresistible. “Extraordinary evidence” can be personal, nonscientific.
[I am still paralyzed by the normative part though, lol.]
Maybe it’s normative, so what? Ha ha. Calling something normative isn’t a debate-stopper. I’m interested in people’s thoughts all the same.
So what if it’s normative? It’s a debate-stopper for me ;_; How am I supposed to know what *should* be convincing? I don’t even know what *would* be convincing!
Don’t think that I’m not on to your game: “I don’t have any ideas for today, but I have to post every day or else I’ll feel bad, so I’ll write a 2-paragraph post that encourages people to talk about themselves!”
It’s a bit of a catch-22. In order for me to believe somebody was God Almighty, I’d need to personally witness something potentially so powerful that I may not survive it. I’d need to personally see God and have that experience corroborated by non-crazy people to know it was real. Even then, I’d wonder if I was just encountering some alien teenager from a more advanced race who decided to visit Earth and take the piss by playing around with their culture’s rudimentary technology to scare the apes for a laugh.
Would it be far to say that if you had such an experience, theism would at least be a reasonable explanation? Sure, it’s not the only one–I agree that it could be an advanced alien race that you encountered. But I couldn’t blame anyone for believing in god(s) after such an experience.
What indeed is the difference between vastly advanced aliens and a god? How would we tell?
i know this is a cop-out, but to me it isn’t a question of what it would take to convince me that god exists, it’s more a question of “what benefits me more – belief or disbelief?” in my opinion the benefits of disbelief far outweigh the benefits of belief. i’m free of the neurosis that generally accompany religious guilt, and i don’t have to spend my sundays in church. plus, atheist sex is better.
pascal’s wager?
I don’t think benefits analysis really work well in this situation. but then again, i don’t believe belief is freely chosen, much less chosen as a result of benefits analysis.
i’m not sure it’s pascal’s wager, i guess i didn’t express myself clearly. i’ll believe in god when abiding by his law benefits my life, which in 21 years it didn’t. 8 years of disbelief have been much more fruitful.
what you were saying wasn’t pascal’s wager.
but I’m saying that if you were going to ask, “what benefits me more?” then pascal’s wager is in this line of reasoning. It’s just that you view a temporary speck in eternity (your life now) more than an eternity of (possible) afterlife. The way it works — theoretically — is that no matter how improbable you think the afterlife is, that infinitesimal number multiplied by eternal happiness (or eternal suffering) should always be bigger than whatever level of happiness or suffering is possible from your finite life.
indeed, i’m familiar with the man pascal. my dad taught me that during family home evening one night, which in retrospect is kind of weird. what tripped me up with religion was all the scriptures that talked about “by their fruit you shall know them,” etc., basically encouraging believers to experiment with the word to find out if it’s good. well, i experimented and it gave me nothing but sorrow. that experimentation led me to question all elements of organized religion, and eventually belief in god/afterlife. so i guess it does boil down to if real, actual, temporal happiness is better than a supposed, unproved and hypothetical eternity. i’ll take happiness/disbelief now.
OK, I can TOTALLY agree with your last comment. But I’ve never seen it as a question of comparing/contrasting benefits…
IMO, it really is all about what it would take to convince me. Suffering and misery from following the commandments doesn’t convince me, is all.
The Second Coming possibly. Or maybe living in an afterlife where mormon missionaries come knocking on my spirit house.
I’m interested to know, if a believer could live forever on earth, how long would they go before they stopped believing that the Second Coming will happen. I hope I will live long enough to see a major Christian sects say, “well looks like we’re wrong. Sorry folks.” Probably wouldn’t happen for a thousand years though…heh.
Some scientists predict that a human life expectancy of 500 years is in the not-too-distant future. When people live that long, and the specter of death is less imminent, I bet they’ll be less religious.
only if religious belief only really offers something as a hedge against death, Jon.
who knows, if you live for 500 years, you need something meaningful in your life. not saying that religions have a monopoly on this, but they are one kind of outlet in this vein.
I could easily see, Chris, that people could turn things around. After all, how much of Christianity is about the second coming? couldn’t someone be christian because of how it improves their lives in the here and now?
i don’t think people would go, “hehe folks; nothing to see here.” but perhaps the emphasis would change and certain eschatologies would just get buried.
Oh yeah for sure. I imagine many religions will eventually give up on much of their doctrine and become some sort of pseudo-spiritual group therapy… maybe something like scientology.
becoming more like scientology (esp. when you consider what scientology considers “spiritual group therapy”) is not a step in a good direction…D:
A clear message that could not possibly have been created by man.
A personal god that causes good things to happen to bad people and bad things to happen to good people who also pretends to reward the righteous and punish the wicked?
Short of a malevolent and sadistic God, nothing really. Especially when it comes to God as described thousands of times by thousands of religions/cultures in a multitude of ways. Each lacks foresight and describe characters who do not live up to their descriptions.
A deist’s God?
S/he (it?) would probably have to wake up from whatever cosmic nap God had been taking and give enough of a shit to intervene on a scale so grand that everyone on the earth couldn’t possibly deny the message or sign.
I’m amused because I am thinking there are many parallels between a discussion like this and one I had once with someone who believed profoundly in alien visitation.
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and divinity, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)
Do you have an answer to the question put to you, Eli? What would it take for you to disbelieve in god?
Thanks to Eli for (I’ll admit, surprisingly) being one of the clearest thinkers here, or at least bringing a clear example.
Sorry for the late post. For my response, I’ll steal a phrase from Dr. Huenemann and twist it, atheism is a dead option to me. “Repeated evidence”, oh I don’t know, existence? Experience? I suppose I could be ‘open’ to it if the evidence for non reality was there, somehow having to use the tools, methods and laws that the reality that we have but don’t actually have (since it wouldn’t be real and neither would we) to do that, which is doubtful to a degree its pretty silly. Its still a probability I guess but the same as the sun not being there tomorrow. The attempts at “its a dream, a machine reality, hallucinating monads” etc are pointless anyway. Man isn’t the center of the universe, the point is there is something to experience, something experienced, something existing on both ends of that experience. And there is something rather than nothing. And as far as the being that manifests in that origin of reality, I don’t really care if it decides little Johnny at the orphanage gets a toy train for christmas or not (I know that’s not the same as an earthquake hitting a 3rd world island country, I don’t care either). Nature on earth is not compassionate to a starving calf either. Tornadoes and tidal waves do all kinds of harm to various things, they are still beautiful to behold. I look at the universe in wonder, so while I should be scientific and be open to evidence against my claim, I don’t see what other answer there could be.
Thus concludes my very long non answer provided very late to an old question
Here’s a few:
* If prayer was shown to be effective in a consistent and statistically significant way in well-controlled experiments but only for one religion, then that would be pretty convincing.
* Biblical texts unambiguously encoded in some unfakable medium. For example: The KGV version of the Gospel of Mark in UTF-8 encoded in the digits of pi, starting at position 10 trillion.
* Well documented and repeatable miracles performed by members of a single religion under controlled conditions. For example: Catholic priests can consistently faith-heal amputees under experimental conditions designed by James Randi.
@Andrew S. “I don’t believe belief is freely chosen, much less chosen as a result of benefits analysis.”
I agree. I think for the most part our beliefs are formed through non-rational, subconscious drives, urges and passions. But we are good at dressing up our motives to make them appear reasonable. So it is a mystery to me if and why I may someday begin to believe in the supernatural again. And if I do, I wonder how I will make my change of heart sound rational…
As we learned more about the natural world (rejecting geocentrism and discovering microscopic pathogens, for example), God had less and less to do, and ever since Darwin, even a limited “God of the gaps” has made no sense whatsoever. When there’s no longer room for a powerful god– one that actually does anything– we resort to metaphor when we want to express our natural emotions of wonder and awe. That’s fine, but it’s hard to pray to a metaphor.
Let me restate your question: “What would it take for you to disbelieve the foundations of biology and scientific cosmology and replace these with myth, magical thinking and superstition?” We could explore this, but it doesn’t seem like a very profitable line of inquiry.
Independently verifiable evidence.
And anyone who wants to pull out the “where did the universe come from” argument, I would point them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo&feature=player_embedded#!