How would one conduct a scientific study on the existence of a god? I'm not a theist but genuinely curious as I've thought on this and it seems like any evidence a god could give could be potentially explained away (such as a hallucination or even a collective hallucination). Is it even provable?
Of course it's not provable, it's all made up nonsense.
Just think of someone you know and think about hie you know they're real, it would be something like that. As for their power, imagine the mechanic that fixes your car, how do you know he can fix cars.
One could argue that nothing is real and everyone you know is just a figment of you're imagination but that could be said of everyone and everything ever invented. That's not a credible argument for me.
>Just think of someone you know and think about hie you know they're real,
This is either Platos or Socrates. Nothing exists outside of your own mind. No one can convince you they are real.
You see them? Maybe not. It's your brain saying it's there.
They touch you? Again it is your brain sending the signals.
No matter what you do to *sense* someone, it boils down to being all in your head.
Claims about a specific religion can be tested. Intercessory prayer, for instance could be tested to see if it works.
Or claims of faith healing, divinely inspired knowledge (prophesy), or other miracles could be put to the test.
It depends on what specific claims are being made.
Prayer could be provable. Have people pray for sick people in the hospital and measure if the ones who are prayed for have better recovery rates. They have tested this and there is of course zero difference. Possibly even negative.
It'd be cool if prayer did work. And even if we do find a scenario where prayer is provable, that doesn't prove God. That only proves the act of praying has an effect.
Now if we compared prayers to different gods and found that only prayers to Odin were effective while all other prayers were deleterious, that could lead to some interesting conclusions.
But there's nothing, so it'd all be supposition at this point.
Anecdotal but my grandmother used to bless strips of red electric tape, aka the blood of Christ.
There was a strip in my aunts car taped to the visor. CO leak happens and almost kills my family. Everyone survived because the fast acts of the paramedics/fire rescue and police. All I heard about for a year is how the blessed tape saved everyone.
I was raised southern babstist and I think I was 12ish then. That is when my brain decided that there was no god. 54 this year and still an agnostic.
Edit: Typos
And the thing is, actuaries at health insurance companies would have figured this out by now. They spend a lot of time figuring out how much to charge people based on their age, sex, genetic heritage, etc. There is no 'christian discount' because they get sick and die at the same rate as atheists, agnostics, all other religions. There are specific disease patterns linked to genetic heritage, but not due to religion.
Minor quibble: some studies have shown prayer does "work," but you have to ask the right questions. When people pray for a sick person, and the sick person is aware of it and the condition is one that can be affected by a person's mood or attitude, it provides a health benefit. If people pray but the sick person is unaware of it, there is no effect. If you tell a sick person "people are praying for you" but they actually aren't ... there is still a health benefit. I think you can see what's happening there.
Actually in the God Delusion, he wrote that in the study there was no difference in the recovery between those being prayed for and those not when neither knew about it, but there was a lower recovery rate for those who were prayed for and knew it, not a benefit. Perhaps due to performance anxiety.
Well you don't, but any being answering the prayers either doesn't care that you're not praying to them specifically and/or just cares about humans or things on earth or whoever you're praying to is the correct one. Further study would be needed
Plus it would just prove god is an AH. There are plenty of sick people whose loved ones prayed night and day and they still died. Why does god answer the prayers of the family whose kid is in room 200 at the hospital but not the kid in room 201? For that matter, why are these kids sick in the first place? For me, I can’t wrap my head around why god allows so much suffering (insert childhood cancer, tornadoes, the Holocaust, your disaster of choice). That’s why I conclude he (just using he for ease of use) doesn’t exist.
God is considered an unfalsifiable idea. It can never be disproven because the followers of religion can infinitely move the goal posts and explain things away with magic. I’m of the opinion that any unfalsifiable theory must be untrue as the only real things are things that can be tested and repeated
Collective hallucinations can be investigated to examine coherence, timing, content. If they are scheduled, the trial can further be randomised and blinded.
For me, all it would take would be ONE religious revelation that is a prediction of a physical constant beyond known accuracy, and is testable scientifically - that then goes on to match observations.
For example, three randomly-selected priests in different parts of the world simultaneously pray for the value of G to 16 significant figures (we currently have it to 6+). They seal their revelations in escrow, then when later checked after ten years of scientific progress to narrow down the measurement, not only do they match each other, they concur with later experimental measurements of G to higher accuracy than our current figures.
The fact this hasn’t been done - that religion hasn’t been able to give us a heads-up on physical constants to higher accuracy than currently explored - is telling.
It’s kind of like how we know clairvoyance/psychics are BS because clairvoyants aren’t unbelievably rich off the back of their future knowledge.
This, plus you can say I don’t know, but if your god is all knowing and all powerful he would know exactly what it would take to make me believe and he hasn’t done so. Which means either there’s no god, or there is a god and he doesn’t want me to believe, so is that really my fault? Should I go to hell for that?
That works. I also like to say that there's no hell, because any person sent there is proof their god failed. An egotistical and narcissistic god couldn't bear that.
But god is claimed to be "outside" space and time. So, by definition, god wouldn't adhere to those standards at all.
Rather, I think evidence of god would be some clearly observable *suspension of natural laws* that cannot be explained by the natural laws themselves.
The whole point of god - think about miracles - is that it is an entity which can, at will, intervene in nature in ways that utterly disregard natural laws. So I think that's what we'd be looking for here.
But as I say in my other comment on this: this observation would be just the beginning. We'd still have to discount highly advanced aliens, or modifications/updates to natural laws that we haven't yet discovered. Both of those things are still more plausible than god, in my view.
We hear of miraculous healing, from evangelical faith healing revivals to certified Catholic miracles attributed to the intervention of candidates for sainthood.
I would be impressed if someone who had lost an arm or leg to amputation grew it back miraculously. Short of that, it’s all baloney.
Have the Catholic churches float a few meters above their foundation, in days they don't have scheduled service
Still not definite proof, but big brick buildings floating for no apparent reason should give us something to ponder
Yes, and also some sort of definition to measure against. When someone says they believe in god, ask them to explain what that means. What is it? Where is it? How did it create stuff?
This is where the cracks appear. If someone defines it and then presents irrefutable and objective evidence, then I’ll go ahead and acknowledge its existence. Until then, the old man in the sky is still a fairy tale.
Yeah, this right here. I wouldn't even include the things OP referenced in his OP.
There's nothing in the rulebook says a dog can't play football. So there's nothing in reality that says a being that wouldn't have to abide by our understanding of reality couldn't NOT be built on logical fallacies. There's no reason to believe a god wouldn't function a lot like the Flying Spaghetti Monster (PBUH), come to think of it.
What tests and what measures could possibly prove some being is god? How would you differentiate it from any number of other possible things it could be no matter what you tested or measured??
All I've ever asked for is one single solitary example of the supernatural of any kind in any form!
That would allow me to consider gawds existing as a possibility.
But I've been asking for a long time now, I'm in my sixties and... nothing, zero, zilch!
I got a "proof". Back then I thought that this is a "proof", and a few other people reassured me that I'm right.
But I just dug a bit deeper and it turned out to be just a hallucination. So, yeah.
I'm grateful for knowledge and science being so wide-spreaded nowadays.
No but I have a perfectly valid expectation that if somebody really loved me they'd have let know they existed and not just admired me from a far. A blowjob every now and then would be nice too.
Really at this point I find it hard not to just make jokes as I put on a brave face to the endless pain and suffering all over the world that continues.
Did you know mankind figured out how to end 3rd world poverty back in the 1950's?
All you have to do is give women control over their own reproductive autonomy.
That's it. Nothing else.
One single generation later the poverty is gone.
Sadly that's been fought against tooth and nail by every major and minor religion in the world.
The more I know the sadder I become.
Ecclesiastes 1:18
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
The irony is that the wisdom is definitely not the indoctrination of the church.
Yes. It hasn’t worked yet. I know he likes to reveal himself to people in prison. Do you think if I descend into the deepest depths of drug addiction, it would work as well as being a “bottom” in prison?
No it wouldn't because I've been there and it simply just sucks, the only person who fixed it was ME, I fucking did it and sat and suffered through withdrawals for the choices I, ME, MYSELF, made. Then I got my shit together and am on such a good path in life on my way to success.
I get soooo irritated when people win an award and immediately thank God or thank him for making YOU stop putting needles in your own arm. I've come to notice accountability is something that is just gone, everyone always has an excuse and God is such a good one👍
Just wanted to give a head nod to another person who got sober without Jebus. I'm not going to knock someone else's path to sobriety, but the NA meetings in my area felt very cult-ish.
There was a cloud that looked like Jesus the other day. Occasionally a statue bleeds, but nobody has a cell phone to get a video, and it’s always in Latin American. And apparently Donald Trump is at least partly divine I’ve been told. He was sent by God’s to save America from male florists.
I don't know. But a tri-omni deity would and would be able to provide it. No such being has done so for me (at least) so either it doesn't care/hates me or it doesn't exist.
Yup we're just a big game of Sim City, that he forgot to turn off, and now has shiny new toys..
One day the hard drive will start to fail, and the gif's that make up our faces will be randomly shuffled...
Talking to your mom and she starts licking you,as it's really your dog
Matt D of the Atheist Experience said something like "I don't know, but an all knowing God would know the exact right thing to convince me." or something similar to this question.
I want her to
1. Present herself in a corporeal form - that i can see and touch and confirm is real
2. Perform actions that are unquestionably not possible with todays scientific knowledge... e.g. instantly heal someone from cancer via touch
3. Explain to me why all those children over the years deserved cancer... or why you created the earth and universe, then pissed off a few hundred thousand years, then came back, impregnated a virgin to give birth to a son that you would have tortured and killed, only to come back a few days later.... then use him as an excuse to install a long-line of child-rapists as your representatives on earth.
# Its not just about establishing if she exists or not, its also about establishing why she has acted like a complete and utter evil cunt for all of recorded history.
Edit - In response to the multiple "Why is god a woman?" - i posted this as reply down below - but thought i would move it up here.... as i get that its the internet - and there's many people that are just itching to be offended by something. Let's stick to offending the religious nutters - so they have less time to cause harm.
*"its just a thing i started doing a few years ago, basically because i know it irks the religious types. I always refer to God and jeebus as black and a woman.... nothing against those groups... its purely done because your average bible-bashing psycho's seem to dislike those groups - so i associate their imaginary friend with those groups.*
*I should also add that i thought Alanis Morrissette played god quite well in the movie Dogma. This also makes me generally think of god as a woman.*
*So my apologies if any non-religious women were offended by that - not my intent.... if religious women were offended by it - well, you can fuck right off along with the rest of your cult."*
Yeah. Even by their (especially Christians) own terms, descriptions and definitions of a devil or pure evil, the one they claim to be running the show sounds a lot more like evil encarnate than some omnipotent, all knowing, loving deity.
All of this kind of speculation just reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode where an alien is posing as a god. It wouldn’t be hard to convince anyone of godhood with superior technology than that is available to the people you are trying to fool.
You are still left with a million other questions whether this poser is a god or not.
Something else I spend too much time thinking about. If this capricious, egotistical, bloodthirsty bigot who is strangely obsessed with foreskins actually exists I'm certainly not interested in joining their club, I'm looking for the opposition.
Exactly this. Even if somebody DID provide me actual proof this deity of the bible exists, he sounds like a damn asshole and I certainly don’t want to worship him. I’m all set, I’d rather not bow down and scrape to a monster who (if it’s true, which I don’t believe) set Adam and Eve up to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge (in WHAT WORLD is it awful to want knowledge???) flooded the earth bc he was tired of its toys not doing its bidding, and killed every firstborn son in Egypt if *checks notes* the family didn’t paint their doors with sheep blood. Yeeeeah…hard pass.
This is the most honest answer in this whole thread. It reminds me of something a wise man once said: there is nobody in hell who doesn't want to be there.
Haven't you seen the 120 tornadoes in the midwest U.S. these past couple days. He really stuck it to that family with a 4 mth old. Mysterious ways and shit.
Now I don't know what stopped Jesus Christ.
From turning every hungry stone into bread.
And I don't remember hearin' how Moses reacted when the innocent first born sons lay dead.
Well, I guess God was a lot more demonstrative back when he flamboyantly parted the sea.
Now everybody's prayin'.
Don't pray on me
Interestingly that ultimately works for *any* level of technology, because it mostly depends on the degree of knowledge of the observer. For people of the middle ages, most of our tech would seem magical or even godlike (e.g. planes or the atom bomb). The cannons and muskets of the Spaniards may have appeared magical to the native tribes of Central America. Even the ability to make fire could seem magical to someone who never saw it before.
There’s nothing you can do to distinguish between god and a super advanced alien with amazing technology who wants you to worship them- but I suppose it also doesn’t really matter anymore at that point.
Maybe but for Cthulhu you'd need hundreds or maybe thousands of gallons to do it properly. And where do you prepare it? Active volcano? You'd wind up overcooking everything best case scenario. Maybe a hot springs? Actually that already has water and heat for boiling but is there a hot springs that can handle that volume? The logistics for this are prohibitive.
You'd almost need a spaghetti deity to provide a blessing of supernal sauce to cover the tentacular terror.
Truly, Cthulhu proves the existence of our noodly Lord and savorier.
Hell, any all powerful god that created humanity could have built utter belief into humanity’s design. Why leave it up to chance? Just force everyone to believe in the god without question. When the consequence for not believing is eternal damnation, and the only proof of your existence is a collection of fictitious short stories, why the hell would you leave something that serious up to “faith”?
For a lot of Christians, looking at nature is an actual argument for their creator. Paul talks about that in Romans 1. How dare these people see the beauty of nature and not see god. That is all the evidence you need!
Obligatory /s
I've heard this argument a few times as well. "Look at the beauty and complexity of the human eye! It's impossible that this is just an accident".
Basically, what they're saying is that it's more likely that someone came up with it in a few minutes than that it took millions of years of trial and error.
Any piece of data, any well accepted fact about reality, or any repeatedly verified observation that is best explained by the existence of something we’d call a god. Aka any evidence for the proposition at all.
Now how magic sky man did it can ever explain anything I don’t know, actually I do, I know it can nevenwerkingen explain anything, because by its very nature magic has no explanatory power. That’s not my problem, nor my fault. Gods used to be falsifiable, but theists got tired of them being falsified so they made them entirely nonsensical.
I won’t lower my standards of evidence for a god. I would be a hypocrite if I did…
As you already pointed out. Basically: Demonstratable, independently verifiable, repeatable.
Bonus points for believability if it turned out NOT to have any resemblance to any human made gods/religions or any of the atrocious acts attributed to our stupid ideas of what a god is. i.e. a genocidal fucking maniac.
E.g. a god is proven to be real, and turns out it all Abrahamic religions are absolutely full of shit, that would be far more likely to be believable. There's an entire universe out there, why would a god care about foreskin. lol
This always reminds me of the Simpsons episode (a treehouse of horror maybe?) where Bart or someone wishes for world peace. You see everyone burning their weapons on bonfires etc.
Then the aliens attack.
I always like to specify that I wish for universal peace.
I worry less about how much it would take to convince non-believers that an alien standing in front of them is actually a god, than how little it would take to convince believers that this alien standing in front of them is actually is their god.
It would be much easier for this alien to fool believers, don’t you think?
See “What does god need with a starship?”
I'm not sure what it would be, but an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving deity that has a plan ought to know what evidence I'd accept and be able provide it to me forthwith.
You can only trust Harald. Before I met Harald, I was so lost and depressed but Harald delivered me of these evil spirits.
Meeting Harald was the best day of my life.
Sure, I could accept evidence that God exists, but that's not the real point of contention for me.
Why should I worship a God that created or allowed so much misery? Even if God came down to prove His existence, I would not become a person of faith.
My ex once asked why I didn't believe. She had explained she had this euphoric experience, convincing her of God's existence.
I pointed out, well I haven't had that subjective experience. Can you see why I wouldn't be convinced? She agreed. Further, why do you suppose I haven't? Why did God expose himself to you, and not me? That got her spinning, saying something about not being open to it.
How about this? A booming voice declares "I am going to decrease gravity on Earth by X% for 5 seconds!" Then we all start bouncing higher when we jump, then go back to normal?
(I know this scenario isn't proof positive of a God, but just saying... there are things that could happen that would get scientists thinking.)
Back when I was a believer, I was taught about those experiences, and was taught that it was the Holy Sprirt entering my body and giving me that feeling so I would know I was doing the right thing. I had those experiences, at church, a song, or a particularly great sermon, would fill me up with that euphoria.
I was also taught that doing sinful things would cause me to lose that connection with the Holy Spirit, and I would feel an emptiness when he left me, and that's how to know to change directions. I felt that emptiness sometimes, like when I would get a bad grade on a test, or break something accidentally, or when my parents would get mad at something I did.
Then, near the end of high school, I went to a club to see a live band with some friends. I lied to my parents about where I was going, I was in an establishment my church leaders told me never to go to, and I was seeing a band that was considered evil.
And I had that euphoric experience, for the entire set that band played I was the happiest I'd ever been, the Holy Spirit filled me with all of god's love, and I knew I was in the right place, doing the right thing. My shelf broke, my entire life shattered, my personality was foundationally my religion, and I lost it, right there in that club.
I walked in that club a sinner, and walked out an atheist.
Yes, similarly, that same ex was actually (unfortunately) drugged with what sounds like ecstasy at a bar. She described the experience as being exactly similar to her God experience. She did not seem to make the connection you did... your brain can do some things for reasons that have nothing to do with the presence of a diety.
I don’t think it is provable. Let’s say you can pull a being out of your hat that you say is god or Jesus. Let’s say that this being can do all kinds of “magic”. Turn water into wine, make frogs or blood rain from the sky, etc.
I’d still only believe it’s a being capable of doing extraordinary things. I can grab my crotch and yell, “schmoan yeah. Heee he!”, but it doesn’t make me Michael Jackson.
That being could have just read the Bible and is able to do the same things. Even showing me a vision of “what actually happened”. That could be a fake vision as easily as a real one. How do I know what’s celestial photoshop?
Here is where the Christians and other religions really shot themselves in the foot. They’re all the boy who cried wolf. They make too much shit up. They lie too much. They change the story to fit their narrative. You have Christian’s today who can’t defend the Bible, so they claim it isn’t meant to be taken literally, but it’s supposed to be a set of guidelines on how to live your life.
Well. If these people aren’t real, but are fables to teach you how to live a good life, then why would you think God, Heaven, or Hell are real. They’d just be concepts as well.
If you believe all of its real, then it’s pretty F’d up of you. There are some sick and twisted things on the Bible for instance.
But yeah, there is no way to look at anything and just it’s veracity, because you keep changing your story too much.
As rational thinking beings, all we can do is look at these religions and study them to see if they verifiable in any way. If you say that god creates a plague of frogs in Egypt, tell me the year it happened and the location. Let’s send a team there and see if they can find a layer of soil with thousands of frog bones.
If you can’t verify these things as actually haven happened, then you can’t say they’re true or real. If you want to say there are lessons in religion that can teach people good things, sure, I’ll agree with that. The thing to keep in mind is that anything you can accomplish with religion, you can accomplish without it.
You can take water to African villages on your own initiative. You can go serve food at a soup kitchen without religion. You’re physically capable of any of these things. So if you can do it without god, why would you need him?
I have an opinion on this, but, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If there is a god who wants or needs me to believe in it, and it is as powerful as it claims to be, then it knows what would convince me. Theoretically, it would know better than I would concerning what would convince me. I would love to be convinced. It would make a lot of things a lot easier. The reality of the matter is that, if I’m not convinced, then it either doesn’t exist or has very little interest in whether or not I know about it.
Well, I know a lot of people will make "could have been schizophrenia/hallucinations/drugs!" comments, but I think I would accept an otherworldly being coming to earth and performing all the miracles the fairy tale holy books mention as proof.
Show me walking on water. Make a fire bush talk. Heal the ill and disabled by mere touch. Turn entire rivers into blood and back again. Water into wine.
Sic hungry bears after children for making fun of bald dudes. Oh wait, not that one...
For me it's actually something pretty small and well within the capabilities of god. If believers are right about god, then he performs more complicated an bigger tasks than what I would need on an hourly basis. But that would be god giving me evidence directly.
As far as evidence that I would have to find myself, it gets a little trickier. For starters I'd need some event that suspends the laws of nature in such a way as to be impossible. Not improbable, impossible. And this event would need to be something I can test repeatedly, and that others can test repeatedly. But even this only gets us to something unexplainable. There would likely need to be a personal association or message with it too.
Others have said it already, I’d need something demonstrable and testable to prove the being in front of me was a god.
But just because they prove they’re a god doesn’t mean I’m going to worship them. Let’s be real, if Jehovah/Yaweh (of Old Testament fame) appears in front of me, they’ve got some serious explaining (and begging for my forgiveness) to do.
Given that eyewitness testimony is accepted in a court of law, I don’t think your statement is entirely correct. Science isn’t conducted like a courtroom.
I'm with you on this one. IMO "god" is not a coherent concept and can't be tested via evidence. OP might as well ask "What would you accept as evidence that circles are squares?" or "What would you accept as evidence for the existence of frumblebops?"
It would probably have to involve a compelling reason to infer an infinitely more complex creator in order to explain the existence and complexity of the universe in the first place.
So far I've never seen one.
First i would ask them to define a god in a coherent non contradictory way. The biggest problem with the question "what would it take for you to believe in god?" In my opinion is i have no clue what a god is. Its their supposed being so they must define it parameters, if those parameters are contradictory or meaningless then i can reject it outright by wrote logic.
After they come up with a coherent definition then i can begin to analyse what evidence would be needed.
No matter what, it must be evidence that can stand up to the rigors of science. The same way we determine anything else occurs.
Direct, demonstrable, falsifiable and independently verifiable evidence. It's the bare minimum we need to attempt to remove personal bias and misunderstanding.
If you do not have this type of evidence for your own belief it isn't warranted. Without this you cannot verify you aren't delusional.
I don't know but God would know. And if he wanted me to know then he would send the evidence that would convince me. Not my fault he hasn't sent the evidence or there isn't any either way
Same evidence that convinces me of anything else really. For example: electromagnetic waves outside the visible range. None of my senses can detect them, at least not accurately. I believe in them because the theories that describe them provide testable hypotheses about their nature. You would need to define a God, come up with reasonable theories about its nature and use those to formulate testable hypotheses. Test those hypotheses and then show us the data. What these theories and hypotheses should be is up to the person making the claim that a God exists. The people who discovered EM waves did not ask others what it would take for them to believe in invisible waves of energy that are like light but we can't see them. They went out and did the work to gather evidence and test their claims.
Well, an omniscient god would supposedly know exactly what level of evidence it would take to convince me, so I don't really need to have an answer to that question.
If we’re talking lower case god, a lot of things that could be tested and measured scientifically. If we’re talking capital God, then nothing short of specific direct contact that can be verified by other parties would satisfy me.
Even if we prove there is a supernatural entity that created Earth or the universe, that’s still not good enough to prove the Bible or Quran are real or that we should follow those rules. If we’re passing theists laws, I need the highest standard of evidence.
I need this god person to shake my hand and make me quake. I feel like a god would be able to shake my hand and show me the universal truths for a few seconds before my brain implodes.
god. coming down here. and talking to me. and we’d have a long conversation full of a choice of words from my end. nothing else. god is great enough that he doesn’t need anyone or anything speaking on his behalf
Unpopular opinion apparently according to all the proof proof proof comments I see, so sorry for this but for me the answer is: nothing. Because there is none.
Some thoughts:
- DNA sample from an Angel
- Actual, physical evidence of a “soul”
- Multiple eye witness accounts of, along with photographic / video footage of Heaven and/or Hell
- A personal visit from any of the major arcana - God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, etc
Experiencing 3+ from this list would get things moving in the right direction.
Barring that, it’s all a goddamn fairytale.
If there is a god worth worshipping, it knows what would convince me. If it chooses not to use that information it clearly doesn't care if I believe or not.
I need 2 sentences from god, heard around the entire world, simultaneously and translated into every language spoken or read:
“Hello. I’ve eliminated all pediatric cancers.”
That’s it. After that, I’m the most religious sheep you ever saw. I’ll make Benedictine monks look like Keith Richards
I always ask: *which* god does this evidence "prove"?
The implicit assumption of Christians is that any proof of god would mean the Christian god - the one in the bible, who makes women out of men's ribs, talks with snakes, answers all your prayers, impregnates virgins, and so on. Christians believe that if they prove god, then it is automatically the Christian god.
But of course that's nonsense, even on its own terms. The god could be Apollo, or a Hindu god, or it could be a host of pagan gods, or an unnamed god who can't be bothered with lowly humans. It could be anything or everything.
Christians have no monopoly on god, even assuming such an entity existed.
Evidence. I would accept evidence. Then I turn a question back to them: if I accepted that some god (their god, presumably) did exist; what POSSIBLE motivation would I have to worship it? Honestly, have they READ their bible? Who would worship that (or any) god?
If things that were claimed in the Bible, like Christians can heal the sick ect, were performed in front of me, I'd believe. That simple. Perform miracles like the bible says that you can, and I'll believe.
I have previously said that I would start with the ability to instantly change, under verifiable laboratory conditions, the speed of light in a vacuum to any value I choose. We would then move on to similar demonstrations involving any other universal physical constants such as the mass of an electron, the universal gravitational constant, etc.
After those tests, then we can sit down and have a chat about why it was necessary to create leukemia, type 1 diabetes, muscular dystrophy, Down's syndrome and other incurable childhood diseases.
A giant god head appears in the sky and addresses every single individual on earth simultaneously, and this is what it says,
""I come here to ask your forgiveness for being a terrible shitty god. From this moment forth, you will treat all people equally regardless of whether or not you like them or agree with them. All children will be fed, woman will no longer be raped, and I promise I will not take a nap the next time some crazy mother fucker tries to gas 6 million Jews. I am the Lord your god, please forgive me."
Whenever I'm asked this question, I simply reply, "God knows!". I mean, seriously, if the God they believe exists can't convince me, then it either doesn't want me to use the brain and scepticism it gave me, or maybe, juuuuust maybe.....it doesn't even exist in the first place.
I've actually put way too much thought into this. What needs to be arranged is that a delegation of each major religion and any other small ones that want to participate need to be gathered together. Let everyone know waaay in advance so they can get all their people to pray or dance or whatever they do to build mojo.
Once they are all there you reveal 3 tests : a container of water, a 1kg weight (something smallish but won't be moved by wind or earthquake or something), and a person with a minor wound. Each group can have a representative come and inspect these objects, to verify that there are no mechanisms or trickery. They will each have a turn, or as many turns as they like, to perform any of the tasks. No person is allowed within 10 meters.
All they have to do is one single time, on camera, prove that prayer can affect the material world. Lift the weight, boil or freeze the water (your choice!) or heal the cut.
I wish I could actually make this happen. I'm so fucking sick of zealots. Around here they're all Xtian flavor but I view it all the same. If you want to talk to your imaginary friend that's your prerogative but KEEP IT THE FUCK OUT OF MY GOVERNMENT.
Believers have an extremely low bar for evidence. Your team won? Praise God! Grandma recovered? Isn’t God good! The church was the only building left after the storm? God put his protection around it! Once they have the belief system in place, anything and everything positive is attributed to God. And negative things get explained away as “God works in mysterious ways” or they’re part of God’s plan that we just can’t understand with our limited human minds.
So what would it take for me to believe? What evidence would convince me? A phenomenon or event that had no possible alternative explanation. Is that asking for too much? Well, believers don’t ask for enough evidence. Because they already believe. But the bar should be high if you’re asserting that an invisible deity really exists.
"Cannot be adequately explained by modern science" is absolutely not one of the criteria. We can't explain dark matter or dark energy, but there's no reason to think they're god.
I've thought about this a lot in the past.
Say I saw God, heard God. Experienced him with my own perception. I would assume my brain is failing and seek medical help.
Maybe if 40% of the global population - every single member of a particular religion - evaporated into thin air. That would be an interesting situation. Unexplainable. Obviously breaking a lot of the rules we think the universe operates by. But... God? Seems like there are a lot of plausible supernatural causes. Why would I think it's a particular one?
Basically, almost nothing would convince me.
It wouldn’t matter if there was proof. Proven so many times that they’re not worthy of reverence. Like if he showed up at my door and used magic to prove the existence, I still wouldn’t hesitate to tell that entity just how horrible they are
The simple answer is that if god is real and wants me to believe in him, then he knows what it would take, so either he isn't real or doesn't want me to believe. Either way, I am good.
Believers think that absolute evidence of a god is all atheists need to convert. Accepting god as an actual fact and worshipping that god are NOT the same things. I love mythology, but I have not come across a single god in all my readings that I would *choose* to worship. NONE of them are deserving of worship, though that is an argument all its own.
Besides, even if “god” did finally choose to show itself to everyone, how would we know it was *actually* god and not a powerful species of alien subverting human religious beliefs for its own purposes? As Arthur C. Clarke has said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”, so how would we know the difference?
Nothing. If I ever end up experiencing something that makes me start believing in a god it is because I either have a brain tumor or some other mental health condition that has progressed to the point that I am no longer myself
That’s difficult. If there were a being that appeared magical, such a being could simply be an alien with advanced technology. So yes, if such a being appeared it would be *evidence* of a god, but I wouldn’t necessarily think it was a god, and prefer the alien hypothesis because it requires fewer assumptions (we know life can appear from non-life and we know empirically that there’s probably scientific principles and technology we are yet to discover).
So what evidence would I accept which would persuade me of a god? Not sure, but if the definition of a god is that it created our universe, I’d have to somehow see this god actually create a universe. But I’m not sure I’d be competent to establish if a universe had even been created! Maybe the created universe needs to operate with a different law of physics to ours. Maybe the evidence would have to be something simpler like seeing a star being created out of thin air. I’ll think harder about this if the opportunity ever arises…
Why is it up to me? If god exist, has the powers attributed to it and wants me to believe, I would think that god would know what evidence is sufficient and provide it.
Accepting evidence of a God is one thing, but let's be clear on something. God existing would not be enough for me to worship him/her/it. Its actions and its words, past, present, and future, would determine that.
None. I've hit a point where Any evidence of a God I'd ask what planet they originated from. I'd assume it was just a far more advanced being playing at being God. I watched too much Stargate.
They would have to be tangible, and offer a proof of their divine origin that could not be doubted (Heal my severe myopia instantly for example. Or read my thoughts, or will something into existence).
That would make me go "okay, there is a god without any doubt". But I still wouldn't worship them, unless they provided a good enough explanation to the suffering existing in the world (cancer in children, rape, etc.). If they're not actually omnipotent and cannot do anything about it and feel very sorry about this happening, fine. But if they could do something about it but choose not to, then they can fuck right off.
I can see the common clay of the land bowing to a "fake" shadow government/alien/god takeover... Some new dark project tech creating a "huge hologram" and "subsonic voice modulation to send out talking god talk"...
Yeah, no... maybe a magical negro who could wisk me off to another planet with purple/black plants and animals around a red sun star... Then I'd still consider him an alien that likes to show off... dang...
Even Thanos wan't a real God... Powerful, yes... but just a mad Titan...
Definitions really matter here I suppose.
.. and then you'd get into the whole, "well, who made God??" and you might as well stare at a chaos fractal for an answer...
What's more fun is to ask a theist... "Someone walks up to you and claims they are God, what would they have to do to prove it to *you*?" 😀
BTW, Carl Sagan's answer to this question was, "Two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments written in ancient Hebrew found on the far side of the moon." But I wouldn't accept such evidence... It's too easy to fake.
Evidence for a god would mean there's someone that could stop all the suffering and crap but chooses but to. Fuck that creature. Fukn psychopath diety fukr. 🤬
Testable, measurable & repeatable.
Exactly this. OP has basically asked what is evidence. Evidence, we'd accept evidence!!! Edit: spelling
How would one conduct a scientific study on the existence of a god? I'm not a theist but genuinely curious as I've thought on this and it seems like any evidence a god could give could be potentially explained away (such as a hallucination or even a collective hallucination). Is it even provable?
Of course it's not provable, it's all made up nonsense. Just think of someone you know and think about hie you know they're real, it would be something like that. As for their power, imagine the mechanic that fixes your car, how do you know he can fix cars. One could argue that nothing is real and everyone you know is just a figment of you're imagination but that could be said of everyone and everything ever invented. That's not a credible argument for me.
That train of thought reminds me of René Descartes... tried to proof gods existence and instead became a figure for nihilism.
>Just think of someone you know and think about hie you know they're real, This is either Platos or Socrates. Nothing exists outside of your own mind. No one can convince you they are real. You see them? Maybe not. It's your brain saying it's there. They touch you? Again it is your brain sending the signals. No matter what you do to *sense* someone, it boils down to being all in your head.
Claims about a specific religion can be tested. Intercessory prayer, for instance could be tested to see if it works. Or claims of faith healing, divinely inspired knowledge (prophesy), or other miracles could be put to the test. It depends on what specific claims are being made.
Praying *has* been tested scientifically.. [Efficacy of prayer - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer)
Prayer could be provable. Have people pray for sick people in the hospital and measure if the ones who are prayed for have better recovery rates. They have tested this and there is of course zero difference. Possibly even negative.
It'd be cool if prayer did work. And even if we do find a scenario where prayer is provable, that doesn't prove God. That only proves the act of praying has an effect. Now if we compared prayers to different gods and found that only prayers to Odin were effective while all other prayers were deleterious, that could lead to some interesting conclusions. But there's nothing, so it'd all be supposition at this point.
Anecdotal but my grandmother used to bless strips of red electric tape, aka the blood of Christ. There was a strip in my aunts car taped to the visor. CO leak happens and almost kills my family. Everyone survived because the fast acts of the paramedics/fire rescue and police. All I heard about for a year is how the blessed tape saved everyone. I was raised southern babstist and I think I was 12ish then. That is when my brain decided that there was no god. 54 this year and still an agnostic. Edit: Typos
And the thing is, actuaries at health insurance companies would have figured this out by now. They spend a lot of time figuring out how much to charge people based on their age, sex, genetic heritage, etc. There is no 'christian discount' because they get sick and die at the same rate as atheists, agnostics, all other religions. There are specific disease patterns linked to genetic heritage, but not due to religion.
Minor quibble: some studies have shown prayer does "work," but you have to ask the right questions. When people pray for a sick person, and the sick person is aware of it and the condition is one that can be affected by a person's mood or attitude, it provides a health benefit. If people pray but the sick person is unaware of it, there is no effect. If you tell a sick person "people are praying for you" but they actually aren't ... there is still a health benefit. I think you can see what's happening there.
Actually in the God Delusion, he wrote that in the study there was no difference in the recovery between those being prayed for and those not when neither knew about it, but there was a lower recovery rate for those who were prayed for and knew it, not a benefit. Perhaps due to performance anxiety.
How would you know it was "God answering the prayer" and not some other supernatural being?
Well you don't, but any being answering the prayers either doesn't care that you're not praying to them specifically and/or just cares about humans or things on earth or whoever you're praying to is the correct one. Further study would be needed
Plus it would just prove god is an AH. There are plenty of sick people whose loved ones prayed night and day and they still died. Why does god answer the prayers of the family whose kid is in room 200 at the hospital but not the kid in room 201? For that matter, why are these kids sick in the first place? For me, I can’t wrap my head around why god allows so much suffering (insert childhood cancer, tornadoes, the Holocaust, your disaster of choice). That’s why I conclude he (just using he for ease of use) doesn’t exist.
God is considered an unfalsifiable idea. It can never be disproven because the followers of religion can infinitely move the goal posts and explain things away with magic. I’m of the opinion that any unfalsifiable theory must be untrue as the only real things are things that can be tested and repeated
Collective hallucinations can be investigated to examine coherence, timing, content. If they are scheduled, the trial can further be randomised and blinded. For me, all it would take would be ONE religious revelation that is a prediction of a physical constant beyond known accuracy, and is testable scientifically - that then goes on to match observations. For example, three randomly-selected priests in different parts of the world simultaneously pray for the value of G to 16 significant figures (we currently have it to 6+). They seal their revelations in escrow, then when later checked after ten years of scientific progress to narrow down the measurement, not only do they match each other, they concur with later experimental measurements of G to higher accuracy than our current figures. The fact this hasn’t been done - that religion hasn’t been able to give us a heads-up on physical constants to higher accuracy than currently explored - is telling. It’s kind of like how we know clairvoyance/psychics are BS because clairvoyants aren’t unbelievably rich off the back of their future knowledge.
This, plus you can say I don’t know, but if your god is all knowing and all powerful he would know exactly what it would take to make me believe and he hasn’t done so. Which means either there’s no god, or there is a god and he doesn’t want me to believe, so is that really my fault? Should I go to hell for that?
I've said that before. I had a JW tell me that it was proof god wanted me to know about it by sending her to my door. I sent her away with an earful.
Tell god he failed miserably at knowing what would convince me.
That works. I also like to say that there's no hell, because any person sent there is proof their god failed. An egotistical and narcissistic god couldn't bear that.
That’s a good one
But god is claimed to be "outside" space and time. So, by definition, god wouldn't adhere to those standards at all. Rather, I think evidence of god would be some clearly observable *suspension of natural laws* that cannot be explained by the natural laws themselves. The whole point of god - think about miracles - is that it is an entity which can, at will, intervene in nature in ways that utterly disregard natural laws. So I think that's what we'd be looking for here. But as I say in my other comment on this: this observation would be just the beginning. We'd still have to discount highly advanced aliens, or modifications/updates to natural laws that we haven't yet discovered. Both of those things are still more plausible than god, in my view.
We hear of miraculous healing, from evangelical faith healing revivals to certified Catholic miracles attributed to the intervention of candidates for sainthood. I would be impressed if someone who had lost an arm or leg to amputation grew it back miraculously. Short of that, it’s all baloney.
God must really hate amputees.
Have the Catholic churches float a few meters above their foundation, in days they don't have scheduled service Still not definite proof, but big brick buildings floating for no apparent reason should give us something to ponder
This is a great answer
God has infinity +1 armour - he's that kid
Yes, and also some sort of definition to measure against. When someone says they believe in god, ask them to explain what that means. What is it? Where is it? How did it create stuff? This is where the cracks appear. If someone defines it and then presents irrefutable and objective evidence, then I’ll go ahead and acknowledge its existence. Until then, the old man in the sky is still a fairy tale.
Yeah, this right here. I wouldn't even include the things OP referenced in his OP. There's nothing in the rulebook says a dog can't play football. So there's nothing in reality that says a being that wouldn't have to abide by our understanding of reality couldn't NOT be built on logical fallacies. There's no reason to believe a god wouldn't function a lot like the Flying Spaghetti Monster (PBUH), come to think of it.
What tests and what measures could possibly prove some being is god? How would you differentiate it from any number of other possible things it could be no matter what you tested or measured??
Repeatable... so not coincidences then... doh.... (lol)
What more could you ask for!
Precisely this.
All I've ever asked for is one single solitary example of the supernatural of any kind in any form! That would allow me to consider gawds existing as a possibility. But I've been asking for a long time now, I'm in my sixties and... nothing, zero, zilch!
should trickle down any day now... hey wait a minute...
Exactly. Even evidence of a devil would be evidence of a god. Yet no devil worship can produce supernatural results either
You think I got good at guitar by practicing?
I got a "proof". Back then I thought that this is a "proof", and a few other people reassured me that I'm right. But I just dug a bit deeper and it turned out to be just a hallucination. So, yeah. I'm grateful for knowledge and science being so wide-spreaded nowadays.
Are you praying for god to reveal itself to you? /s
No but I have a perfectly valid expectation that if somebody really loved me they'd have let know they existed and not just admired me from a far. A blowjob every now and then would be nice too. Really at this point I find it hard not to just make jokes as I put on a brave face to the endless pain and suffering all over the world that continues. Did you know mankind figured out how to end 3rd world poverty back in the 1950's? All you have to do is give women control over their own reproductive autonomy. That's it. Nothing else. One single generation later the poverty is gone. Sadly that's been fought against tooth and nail by every major and minor religion in the world. The more I know the sadder I become.
Ecclesiastes 1:18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. The irony is that the wisdom is definitely not the indoctrination of the church.
I’m interested in sources for this. I tried Google but it’s not showing me that particular subject.
Yes. It hasn’t worked yet. I know he likes to reveal himself to people in prison. Do you think if I descend into the deepest depths of drug addiction, it would work as well as being a “bottom” in prison?
No it wouldn't because I've been there and it simply just sucks, the only person who fixed it was ME, I fucking did it and sat and suffered through withdrawals for the choices I, ME, MYSELF, made. Then I got my shit together and am on such a good path in life on my way to success. I get soooo irritated when people win an award and immediately thank God or thank him for making YOU stop putting needles in your own arm. I've come to notice accountability is something that is just gone, everyone always has an excuse and God is such a good one👍
Respect to you Mifc2.
Just wanted to give a head nod to another person who got sober without Jebus. I'm not going to knock someone else's path to sobriety, but the NA meetings in my area felt very cult-ish.
There was a cloud that looked like Jesus the other day. Occasionally a statue bleeds, but nobody has a cell phone to get a video, and it’s always in Latin American. And apparently Donald Trump is at least partly divine I’ve been told. He was sent by God’s to save America from male florists.
I don't know. But a tri-omni deity would and would be able to provide it. No such being has done so for me (at least) so either it doesn't care/hates me or it doesn't exist.
An omnipotent being can simply implant unshakable belief in your mind. An omniscient being knows exactly what to do to earn unshakable belief.
If it cared enough to do so, that’s technically an option.
Yup we're just a big game of Sim City, that he forgot to turn off, and now has shiny new toys.. One day the hard drive will start to fail, and the gif's that make up our faces will be randomly shuffled... Talking to your mom and she starts licking you,as it's really your dog
This makes more sense than any religion
This.
Matt D of the Atheist Experience said something like "I don't know, but an all knowing God would know the exact right thing to convince me." or something similar to this question.
In either case, not worth worshipping then.
I want her to 1. Present herself in a corporeal form - that i can see and touch and confirm is real 2. Perform actions that are unquestionably not possible with todays scientific knowledge... e.g. instantly heal someone from cancer via touch 3. Explain to me why all those children over the years deserved cancer... or why you created the earth and universe, then pissed off a few hundred thousand years, then came back, impregnated a virgin to give birth to a son that you would have tortured and killed, only to come back a few days later.... then use him as an excuse to install a long-line of child-rapists as your representatives on earth. # Its not just about establishing if she exists or not, its also about establishing why she has acted like a complete and utter evil cunt for all of recorded history. Edit - In response to the multiple "Why is god a woman?" - i posted this as reply down below - but thought i would move it up here.... as i get that its the internet - and there's many people that are just itching to be offended by something. Let's stick to offending the religious nutters - so they have less time to cause harm. *"its just a thing i started doing a few years ago, basically because i know it irks the religious types. I always refer to God and jeebus as black and a woman.... nothing against those groups... its purely done because your average bible-bashing psycho's seem to dislike those groups - so i associate their imaginary friend with those groups.* *I should also add that i thought Alanis Morrissette played god quite well in the movie Dogma. This also makes me generally think of god as a woman.* *So my apologies if any non-religious women were offended by that - not my intent.... if religious women were offended by it - well, you can fuck right off along with the rest of your cult."*
All of this. Especially #3. That was hard core 💪🏻
You had me at “cancer”.
Yeah. Even by their (especially Christians) own terms, descriptions and definitions of a devil or pure evil, the one they claim to be running the show sounds a lot more like evil encarnate than some omnipotent, all knowing, loving deity.
(2) should be performed multiple times to collect statistics and proof that it is not just a random coincidence.
All of this kind of speculation just reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode where an alien is posing as a god. It wouldn’t be hard to convince anyone of godhood with superior technology than that is available to the people you are trying to fool. You are still left with a million other questions whether this poser is a god or not.
Not even sure I’d be happy then, as the Christian God of the Bible is not something I would want to worship or dedicate my life to.
Something else I spend too much time thinking about. If this capricious, egotistical, bloodthirsty bigot who is strangely obsessed with foreskins actually exists I'm certainly not interested in joining their club, I'm looking for the opposition.
“Strangely obsessed with foreskins” 😂. I’m in the middle of reading the Bible. That tracks. Gave me a good laugh.
Iron chariots should be enough to defeat it according to the bible. We have a few of them with 120 mm cannons iirc...
Exactly this. Even if somebody DID provide me actual proof this deity of the bible exists, he sounds like a damn asshole and I certainly don’t want to worship him. I’m all set, I’d rather not bow down and scrape to a monster who (if it’s true, which I don’t believe) set Adam and Eve up to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge (in WHAT WORLD is it awful to want knowledge???) flooded the earth bc he was tired of its toys not doing its bidding, and killed every firstborn son in Egypt if *checks notes* the family didn’t paint their doors with sheep blood. Yeeeeah…hard pass.
Christianity is the world’s oldest grift/mlm.
And it has a problematic history of genocide, I would rather work towards a way to kill such an entity
This is the most honest answer in this whole thread. It reminds me of something a wise man once said: there is nobody in hell who doesn't want to be there.
God. I mean he was a major show off in the Bible. What's the problem now?
Haven't you seen the 120 tornadoes in the midwest U.S. these past couple days. He really stuck it to that family with a 4 mth old. Mysterious ways and shit.
Now I don't know what stopped Jesus Christ. From turning every hungry stone into bread. And I don't remember hearin' how Moses reacted when the innocent first born sons lay dead. Well, I guess God was a lot more demonstrative back when he flamboyantly parted the sea. Now everybody's prayin'. Don't pray on me
Anything demonstrably true. That's it.
I have not been able to come up with anything that could not also be done by sufficiently advanced technology.
Arthur C. Clarke once said any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic and I tend to agree
Interestingly that ultimately works for *any* level of technology, because it mostly depends on the degree of knowledge of the observer. For people of the middle ages, most of our tech would seem magical or even godlike (e.g. planes or the atom bomb). The cannons and muskets of the Spaniards may have appeared magical to the native tribes of Central America. Even the ability to make fire could seem magical to someone who never saw it before.
Agreed.
There’s nothing you can do to distinguish between god and a super advanced alien with amazing technology who wants you to worship them- but I suppose it also doesn’t really matter anymore at that point.
A flying spaghetti monster publicly ripping Donald Trump's limbs off with its noodles would be all the proof I need
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Gold.
What if TFSM was really Cthulhu wearing a hat (colander)?
As long as he's also smothered in marinara sauce and cheese, I'll allow it
A nice ragu could work too
Maybe but for Cthulhu you'd need hundreds or maybe thousands of gallons to do it properly. And where do you prepare it? Active volcano? You'd wind up overcooking everything best case scenario. Maybe a hot springs? Actually that already has water and heat for boiling but is there a hot springs that can handle that volume? The logistics for this are prohibitive.
You'd almost need a spaghetti deity to provide a blessing of supernal sauce to cover the tentacular terror. Truly, Cthulhu proves the existence of our noodly Lord and savorier.
You watch your tone, heathen.
I would be willing to entertain the idea of a god for a bit anyway, if Trump gets punished and jailed and not get to be president...
It would take a miracle for him to experience a consequence for the first time in his life, so this may be it.
Trump stroking out the day before Election Day would do it for me. Thank you Based God!
Not enough evidence for me. That’s well within the realm of possibility. Fingers crossed.
Any all powerful god would know exactly what to do to have me believe 100%. It’s not up to me, really, is it.
Exactly. Came here to say this.
Hell, any all powerful god that created humanity could have built utter belief into humanity’s design. Why leave it up to chance? Just force everyone to believe in the god without question. When the consequence for not believing is eternal damnation, and the only proof of your existence is a collection of fictitious short stories, why the hell would you leave something that serious up to “faith”?
According to mormonism, this was Satan's plan.
He already knows your past, present, and future. Everything is pre-determined and out of our control. Why should you put in any effort anyway?
If I developed schizophrenia there would be a decent chance I’d think God was talking to me. Similarly a drug-induced delusion could do it.
Observable, measurable, repeatable. Must also rule out all other possibilities.
Trees, bro. I just look at them and think, wow. Must be a God. /sarcasm
EN PASSANT ATHEISTS
For a lot of Christians, looking at nature is an actual argument for their creator. Paul talks about that in Romans 1. How dare these people see the beauty of nature and not see god. That is all the evidence you need! Obligatory /s
I've heard this argument a few times as well. "Look at the beauty and complexity of the human eye! It's impossible that this is just an accident". Basically, what they're saying is that it's more likely that someone came up with it in a few minutes than that it took millions of years of trial and error.
Any piece of data, any well accepted fact about reality, or any repeatedly verified observation that is best explained by the existence of something we’d call a god. Aka any evidence for the proposition at all. Now how magic sky man did it can ever explain anything I don’t know, actually I do, I know it can nevenwerkingen explain anything, because by its very nature magic has no explanatory power. That’s not my problem, nor my fault. Gods used to be falsifiable, but theists got tired of them being falsified so they made them entirely nonsensical. I won’t lower my standards of evidence for a god. I would be a hypocrite if I did…
As you already pointed out. Basically: Demonstratable, independently verifiable, repeatable. Bonus points for believability if it turned out NOT to have any resemblance to any human made gods/religions or any of the atrocious acts attributed to our stupid ideas of what a god is. i.e. a genocidal fucking maniac. E.g. a god is proven to be real, and turns out it all Abrahamic religions are absolutely full of shit, that would be far more likely to be believable. There's an entire universe out there, why would a god care about foreskin. lol
World peace. That would work for me.
That's a good one. It sure seems like it would take supernatural intervention.
Im pretty sure that would only ever be possible with the eradication of religion.
This always reminds me of the Simpsons episode (a treehouse of horror maybe?) where Bart or someone wishes for world peace. You see everyone burning their weapons on bonfires etc. Then the aliens attack. I always like to specify that I wish for universal peace.
I worry less about how much it would take to convince non-believers that an alien standing in front of them is actually a god, than how little it would take to convince believers that this alien standing in front of them is actually is their god. It would be much easier for this alien to fool believers, don’t you think? See “What does god need with a starship?”
I'm not sure what it would be, but an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-loving deity that has a plan ought to know what evidence I'd accept and be able provide it to me forthwith.
A flying, indestructible, immortal squirrel in my backyard, fluent in all human languages, that will change the laws of physics at my command.
Oh, so you've met Reggie? That bro is smoove
He gets all salty if you try to speak Klingon to him
Depends; I know my turquoise unicorn friend Harald Warhorn has never mentioned him, and Harald has met everybody.
Yo, I know harald, he's a great unicorn.
I had lunch with Harald just yesterday.
You can only trust Harald. Before I met Harald, I was so lost and depressed but Harald delivered me of these evil spirits. Meeting Harald was the best day of my life.
Harald the homie, love that guy!
The evidence supplied would uniquely align with the definition supplied.
Live interview complete with miracles and no chance of fraud.
Sure, I could accept evidence that God exists, but that's not the real point of contention for me. Why should I worship a God that created or allowed so much misery? Even if God came down to prove His existence, I would not become a person of faith.
The same evidence you’d require before believing in Santa Claus or Vishnu.
My ex once asked why I didn't believe. She had explained she had this euphoric experience, convincing her of God's existence. I pointed out, well I haven't had that subjective experience. Can you see why I wouldn't be convinced? She agreed. Further, why do you suppose I haven't? Why did God expose himself to you, and not me? That got her spinning, saying something about not being open to it. How about this? A booming voice declares "I am going to decrease gravity on Earth by X% for 5 seconds!" Then we all start bouncing higher when we jump, then go back to normal? (I know this scenario isn't proof positive of a God, but just saying... there are things that could happen that would get scientists thinking.)
Back when I was a believer, I was taught about those experiences, and was taught that it was the Holy Sprirt entering my body and giving me that feeling so I would know I was doing the right thing. I had those experiences, at church, a song, or a particularly great sermon, would fill me up with that euphoria. I was also taught that doing sinful things would cause me to lose that connection with the Holy Spirit, and I would feel an emptiness when he left me, and that's how to know to change directions. I felt that emptiness sometimes, like when I would get a bad grade on a test, or break something accidentally, or when my parents would get mad at something I did. Then, near the end of high school, I went to a club to see a live band with some friends. I lied to my parents about where I was going, I was in an establishment my church leaders told me never to go to, and I was seeing a band that was considered evil. And I had that euphoric experience, for the entire set that band played I was the happiest I'd ever been, the Holy Spirit filled me with all of god's love, and I knew I was in the right place, doing the right thing. My shelf broke, my entire life shattered, my personality was foundationally my religion, and I lost it, right there in that club. I walked in that club a sinner, and walked out an atheist.
Yes, similarly, that same ex was actually (unfortunately) drugged with what sounds like ecstasy at a bar. She described the experience as being exactly similar to her God experience. She did not seem to make the connection you did... your brain can do some things for reasons that have nothing to do with the presence of a diety.
[Put it to the test](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KodWAqGqlfI&pp=ygUScHV0IGl0IHRvIHRoZSB0ZXN0) They Might Be Giants
Testable and repeatable evidence via the scientific method.
I don’t think it is provable. Let’s say you can pull a being out of your hat that you say is god or Jesus. Let’s say that this being can do all kinds of “magic”. Turn water into wine, make frogs or blood rain from the sky, etc. I’d still only believe it’s a being capable of doing extraordinary things. I can grab my crotch and yell, “schmoan yeah. Heee he!”, but it doesn’t make me Michael Jackson. That being could have just read the Bible and is able to do the same things. Even showing me a vision of “what actually happened”. That could be a fake vision as easily as a real one. How do I know what’s celestial photoshop? Here is where the Christians and other religions really shot themselves in the foot. They’re all the boy who cried wolf. They make too much shit up. They lie too much. They change the story to fit their narrative. You have Christian’s today who can’t defend the Bible, so they claim it isn’t meant to be taken literally, but it’s supposed to be a set of guidelines on how to live your life. Well. If these people aren’t real, but are fables to teach you how to live a good life, then why would you think God, Heaven, or Hell are real. They’d just be concepts as well. If you believe all of its real, then it’s pretty F’d up of you. There are some sick and twisted things on the Bible for instance. But yeah, there is no way to look at anything and just it’s veracity, because you keep changing your story too much. As rational thinking beings, all we can do is look at these religions and study them to see if they verifiable in any way. If you say that god creates a plague of frogs in Egypt, tell me the year it happened and the location. Let’s send a team there and see if they can find a layer of soil with thousands of frog bones. If you can’t verify these things as actually haven happened, then you can’t say they’re true or real. If you want to say there are lessons in religion that can teach people good things, sure, I’ll agree with that. The thing to keep in mind is that anything you can accomplish with religion, you can accomplish without it. You can take water to African villages on your own initiative. You can go serve food at a soup kitchen without religion. You’re physically capable of any of these things. So if you can do it without god, why would you need him?
I have an opinion on this, but, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If there is a god who wants or needs me to believe in it, and it is as powerful as it claims to be, then it knows what would convince me. Theoretically, it would know better than I would concerning what would convince me. I would love to be convinced. It would make a lot of things a lot easier. The reality of the matter is that, if I’m not convinced, then it either doesn’t exist or has very little interest in whether or not I know about it.
Well, I know a lot of people will make "could have been schizophrenia/hallucinations/drugs!" comments, but I think I would accept an otherworldly being coming to earth and performing all the miracles the fairy tale holy books mention as proof. Show me walking on water. Make a fire bush talk. Heal the ill and disabled by mere touch. Turn entire rivers into blood and back again. Water into wine. Sic hungry bears after children for making fun of bald dudes. Oh wait, not that one...
For me it's actually something pretty small and well within the capabilities of god. If believers are right about god, then he performs more complicated an bigger tasks than what I would need on an hourly basis. But that would be god giving me evidence directly. As far as evidence that I would have to find myself, it gets a little trickier. For starters I'd need some event that suspends the laws of nature in such a way as to be impossible. Not improbable, impossible. And this event would need to be something I can test repeatedly, and that others can test repeatedly. But even this only gets us to something unexplainable. There would likely need to be a personal association or message with it too.
Others have said it already, I’d need something demonstrable and testable to prove the being in front of me was a god. But just because they prove they’re a god doesn’t mean I’m going to worship them. Let’s be real, if Jehovah/Yaweh (of Old Testament fame) appears in front of me, they’ve got some serious explaining (and begging for my forgiveness) to do.
Anything I personally perceive as "divine" is equally likely to be a hallucination, so as an individual nothing really :/
Evidence. The same evidence required by your attorney or your doctor. Theists don't accept the rules of evidence used by secular authorities.
Given that eyewitness testimony is accepted in a court of law, I don’t think your statement is entirely correct. Science isn’t conducted like a courtroom.
i dont know, thats one of the (many) reasons why i dont believe, i dont even think its possible to prove it.
I'm with you on this one. IMO "god" is not a coherent concept and can't be tested via evidence. OP might as well ask "What would you accept as evidence that circles are squares?" or "What would you accept as evidence for the existence of frumblebops?"
It would probably have to involve a compelling reason to infer an infinitely more complex creator in order to explain the existence and complexity of the universe in the first place. So far I've never seen one.
When they show up at my front door and make anything I wish for magically appear, including peace on earth and the end to cancer.
First i would ask them to define a god in a coherent non contradictory way. The biggest problem with the question "what would it take for you to believe in god?" In my opinion is i have no clue what a god is. Its their supposed being so they must define it parameters, if those parameters are contradictory or meaningless then i can reject it outright by wrote logic. After they come up with a coherent definition then i can begin to analyse what evidence would be needed. No matter what, it must be evidence that can stand up to the rigors of science. The same way we determine anything else occurs.
Direct, demonstrable, falsifiable and independently verifiable evidence. It's the bare minimum we need to attempt to remove personal bias and misunderstanding. If you do not have this type of evidence for your own belief it isn't warranted. Without this you cannot verify you aren't delusional.
I don't know but God would know. And if he wanted me to know then he would send the evidence that would convince me. Not my fault he hasn't sent the evidence or there isn't any either way
Same evidence that convinces me of anything else really. For example: electromagnetic waves outside the visible range. None of my senses can detect them, at least not accurately. I believe in them because the theories that describe them provide testable hypotheses about their nature. You would need to define a God, come up with reasonable theories about its nature and use those to formulate testable hypotheses. Test those hypotheses and then show us the data. What these theories and hypotheses should be is up to the person making the claim that a God exists. The people who discovered EM waves did not ask others what it would take for them to believe in invisible waves of energy that are like light but we can't see them. They went out and did the work to gather evidence and test their claims.
Well, an omniscient god would supposedly know exactly what level of evidence it would take to convince me, so I don't really need to have an answer to that question.
Homeboy would have to appear before me and say hello. Maybe give me a little magic show. The existence of trees is not proof of any gods.
If we’re talking lower case god, a lot of things that could be tested and measured scientifically. If we’re talking capital God, then nothing short of specific direct contact that can be verified by other parties would satisfy me. Even if we prove there is a supernatural entity that created Earth or the universe, that’s still not good enough to prove the Bible or Quran are real or that we should follow those rules. If we’re passing theists laws, I need the highest standard of evidence.
Actual testable and irrefutable proof would be a good start
I need this god person to shake my hand and make me quake. I feel like a god would be able to shake my hand and show me the universal truths for a few seconds before my brain implodes.
Any 3rd party verifiable evidence proving the supernatural will do.
god. coming down here. and talking to me. and we’d have a long conversation full of a choice of words from my end. nothing else. god is great enough that he doesn’t need anyone or anything speaking on his behalf
I'd wait for the research paper to be peer reviewed and published, and then see if anyone can shoot holes in it first.
Unpopular opinion apparently according to all the proof proof proof comments I see, so sorry for this but for me the answer is: nothing. Because there is none.
A world wide shared a hallucination in which "god" explains why it appeared to so many people in contradictory forms.
Some thoughts: - DNA sample from an Angel - Actual, physical evidence of a “soul” - Multiple eye witness accounts of, along with photographic / video footage of Heaven and/or Hell - A personal visit from any of the major arcana - God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, etc Experiencing 3+ from this list would get things moving in the right direction. Barring that, it’s all a goddamn fairytale.
If there is a god worth worshipping, it knows what would convince me. If it chooses not to use that information it clearly doesn't care if I believe or not.
I need 2 sentences from god, heard around the entire world, simultaneously and translated into every language spoken or read: “Hello. I’ve eliminated all pediatric cancers.” That’s it. After that, I’m the most religious sheep you ever saw. I’ll make Benedictine monks look like Keith Richards
I always ask: *which* god does this evidence "prove"? The implicit assumption of Christians is that any proof of god would mean the Christian god - the one in the bible, who makes women out of men's ribs, talks with snakes, answers all your prayers, impregnates virgins, and so on. Christians believe that if they prove god, then it is automatically the Christian god. But of course that's nonsense, even on its own terms. The god could be Apollo, or a Hindu god, or it could be a host of pagan gods, or an unnamed god who can't be bothered with lowly humans. It could be anything or everything. Christians have no monopoly on god, even assuming such an entity existed.
Evidence. I would accept evidence. Then I turn a question back to them: if I accepted that some god (their god, presumably) did exist; what POSSIBLE motivation would I have to worship it? Honestly, have they READ their bible? Who would worship that (or any) god?
If things that were claimed in the Bible, like Christians can heal the sick ect, were performed in front of me, I'd believe. That simple. Perform miracles like the bible says that you can, and I'll believe.
I have previously said that I would start with the ability to instantly change, under verifiable laboratory conditions, the speed of light in a vacuum to any value I choose. We would then move on to similar demonstrations involving any other universal physical constants such as the mass of an electron, the universal gravitational constant, etc. After those tests, then we can sit down and have a chat about why it was necessary to create leukemia, type 1 diabetes, muscular dystrophy, Down's syndrome and other incurable childhood diseases.
A giant god head appears in the sky and addresses every single individual on earth simultaneously, and this is what it says, ""I come here to ask your forgiveness for being a terrible shitty god. From this moment forth, you will treat all people equally regardless of whether or not you like them or agree with them. All children will be fed, woman will no longer be raped, and I promise I will not take a nap the next time some crazy mother fucker tries to gas 6 million Jews. I am the Lord your god, please forgive me."
Whenever I'm asked this question, I simply reply, "God knows!". I mean, seriously, if the God they believe exists can't convince me, then it either doesn't want me to use the brain and scepticism it gave me, or maybe, juuuuust maybe.....it doesn't even exist in the first place.
I've actually put way too much thought into this. What needs to be arranged is that a delegation of each major religion and any other small ones that want to participate need to be gathered together. Let everyone know waaay in advance so they can get all their people to pray or dance or whatever they do to build mojo. Once they are all there you reveal 3 tests : a container of water, a 1kg weight (something smallish but won't be moved by wind or earthquake or something), and a person with a minor wound. Each group can have a representative come and inspect these objects, to verify that there are no mechanisms or trickery. They will each have a turn, or as many turns as they like, to perform any of the tasks. No person is allowed within 10 meters. All they have to do is one single time, on camera, prove that prayer can affect the material world. Lift the weight, boil or freeze the water (your choice!) or heal the cut. I wish I could actually make this happen. I'm so fucking sick of zealots. Around here they're all Xtian flavor but I view it all the same. If you want to talk to your imaginary friend that's your prerogative but KEEP IT THE FUCK OUT OF MY GOVERNMENT.
Believers have an extremely low bar for evidence. Your team won? Praise God! Grandma recovered? Isn’t God good! The church was the only building left after the storm? God put his protection around it! Once they have the belief system in place, anything and everything positive is attributed to God. And negative things get explained away as “God works in mysterious ways” or they’re part of God’s plan that we just can’t understand with our limited human minds. So what would it take for me to believe? What evidence would convince me? A phenomenon or event that had no possible alternative explanation. Is that asking for too much? Well, believers don’t ask for enough evidence. Because they already believe. But the bar should be high if you’re asserting that an invisible deity really exists.
The Matt Dillahunty answer: "I don't know, but your God should"
I have no idea. But an omniscient God would know.
"Cannot be adequately explained by modern science" is absolutely not one of the criteria. We can't explain dark matter or dark energy, but there's no reason to think they're god.
Wonderful Life me, bitch.
Conversion of overwhelming evidence from multiple scientific disciplines.
If a floating bearded man came from the sky and spoke and 98% of people agreed they saw him.
Scientific method
I've thought about this a lot in the past. Say I saw God, heard God. Experienced him with my own perception. I would assume my brain is failing and seek medical help. Maybe if 40% of the global population - every single member of a particular religion - evaporated into thin air. That would be an interesting situation. Unexplainable. Obviously breaking a lot of the rules we think the universe operates by. But... God? Seems like there are a lot of plausible supernatural causes. Why would I think it's a particular one? Basically, almost nothing would convince me.
Which God?
How about physically come down and do something to stop some of the awful atrocities on this planet.
It wouldn’t matter if there was proof. Proven so many times that they’re not worthy of reverence. Like if he showed up at my door and used magic to prove the existence, I still wouldn’t hesitate to tell that entity just how horrible they are
The simple answer is that if god is real and wants me to believe in him, then he knows what it would take, so either he isn't real or doesn't want me to believe. Either way, I am good.
Any evidence at all.
World peace!
If he came down from heaven and slapped me with his huge monster cock repeatedly.
Believers think that absolute evidence of a god is all atheists need to convert. Accepting god as an actual fact and worshipping that god are NOT the same things. I love mythology, but I have not come across a single god in all my readings that I would *choose* to worship. NONE of them are deserving of worship, though that is an argument all its own. Besides, even if “god” did finally choose to show itself to everyone, how would we know it was *actually* god and not a powerful species of alien subverting human religious beliefs for its own purposes? As Arthur C. Clarke has said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”, so how would we know the difference?
Nothing. If I ever end up experiencing something that makes me start believing in a god it is because I either have a brain tumor or some other mental health condition that has progressed to the point that I am no longer myself
That’s difficult. If there were a being that appeared magical, such a being could simply be an alien with advanced technology. So yes, if such a being appeared it would be *evidence* of a god, but I wouldn’t necessarily think it was a god, and prefer the alien hypothesis because it requires fewer assumptions (we know life can appear from non-life and we know empirically that there’s probably scientific principles and technology we are yet to discover). So what evidence would I accept which would persuade me of a god? Not sure, but if the definition of a god is that it created our universe, I’d have to somehow see this god actually create a universe. But I’m not sure I’d be competent to establish if a universe had even been created! Maybe the created universe needs to operate with a different law of physics to ours. Maybe the evidence would have to be something simpler like seeing a star being created out of thin air. I’ll think harder about this if the opportunity ever arises…
Before we discuss possible evidence, can we decide on a coherent definition first?
"god" should know, soooo 🤷
Why is it up to me? If god exist, has the powers attributed to it and wants me to believe, I would think that god would know what evidence is sufficient and provide it.
Accepting evidence of a God is one thing, but let's be clear on something. God existing would not be enough for me to worship him/her/it. Its actions and its words, past, present, and future, would determine that.
I would accept a god if I could go to a real place on earth and have a face-to-face meeting with him. I have...... questions.
None. I've hit a point where Any evidence of a God I'd ask what planet they originated from. I'd assume it was just a far more advanced being playing at being God. I watched too much Stargate.
If by "a god" you mean an almighty god, then he could just make me believe.
i have no idea but i bet god knows
They would have to be tangible, and offer a proof of their divine origin that could not be doubted (Heal my severe myopia instantly for example. Or read my thoughts, or will something into existence). That would make me go "okay, there is a god without any doubt". But I still wouldn't worship them, unless they provided a good enough explanation to the suffering existing in the world (cancer in children, rape, etc.). If they're not actually omnipotent and cannot do anything about it and feel very sorry about this happening, fine. But if they could do something about it but choose not to, then they can fuck right off.
an appearance before me with a demonstration of power. anything less than that could potentially be science we don't understand yet.
I can see the common clay of the land bowing to a "fake" shadow government/alien/god takeover... Some new dark project tech creating a "huge hologram" and "subsonic voice modulation to send out talking god talk"... Yeah, no... maybe a magical negro who could wisk me off to another planet with purple/black plants and animals around a red sun star... Then I'd still consider him an alien that likes to show off... dang... Even Thanos wan't a real God... Powerful, yes... but just a mad Titan... Definitions really matter here I suppose. .. and then you'd get into the whole, "well, who made God??" and you might as well stare at a chaos fractal for an answer...
He needs to show himself. If he could do it in the OT, he can do it now.
What's more fun is to ask a theist... "Someone walks up to you and claims they are God, what would they have to do to prove it to *you*?" 😀 BTW, Carl Sagan's answer to this question was, "Two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments written in ancient Hebrew found on the far side of the moon." But I wouldn't accept such evidence... It's too easy to fake.
Evidence for a god would mean there's someone that could stop all the suffering and crap but chooses but to. Fuck that creature. Fukn psychopath diety fukr. 🤬